We are adrift. The work of organization theorists has
been called everything from solipsistic to dangerous,
and prominent scholars are concerned. Augier et al.
(2005) and Scott (2004) took stock of our field’s history
and concluded that our research questions may be
constrained by our perhaps too-comfortable academic
affiliations with business schools and their economicsoriented,
probusiness ethos. Hinings and Greenwood
(2002, p. 413) spoke of our migration to business
schools as a move away from our intellectual
home within the university—among the social science
faculty—to a professional school where senior managers’
perspectives dominate. Starbuck (2003a) worries
that this affluent setting renders us “self-absorbed”
(p. 441) and “self-indulgent” (p. 448) and as a result,
inattentive to human welfare and world affairs. The
charge is that our central theoretical questions have
shifted along with our change in locale. Ironically, this
shift to a purportedly probusiness setting has not left
management theorists happy either. Before his untimely
passing, Ghoshal (2005) appraised our scholarship and
left us with some very pointed criticism. He argued that
“bad management theories are, at present, destroying
good management practices” (p. 86). Strong words.
There is a bad mood rising.