In times of growing institutional pressures for publication, looking at the socialization
process leading to membership in the business academic community provides the
opportunity to reflect on the set of dominant values and practices being advocated to and
inculcated by emerging scholars. This essay focuses on the changing role of the doctoral
rite of passage which tends, under certain conditions, to construct the doctoral
apprenticeship primarily as a technicist path toward professional writing, and less as
an empowering and reflexive social inquiry undertaking. Faced with shifting standards, we
need to recognize conditions of possibility for emancipation and change, which will
hopefully support and sustain scholarly debate through more creative, socially relevant
and eclectic research.