In the Spirit of Scholarship

Management scholarship has recently received an increasing amount of criticisms, centered on its alleged lack of relevance and alleged dysfunction associated with publication-based scholarly competition. In defense of the spirit of management scholarship, we make two arguments. First, the criticism that management scholarship is flawed because it is irrelevant may be irrelevant itself. It reflects a lack of awareness of the nature of scholarship. Instead of losing self-confidence, management scholars should be very proud of our scholarship, which has enabled modern business schools to abandon the highly “relevant” but academically bankrupt “trade school” model of the 1950s. Second, we suggest that our scholarly competition resembles the Olympic Games, which captivate the entire human race. Clearly, the ability to win Olympic medals (such as outrunning, outskating, and outshooting competitors) is not that relevant in the modern world. But it is the focus, the discipline, and the dedication that represent every bit of the human spirit in search of excellence—so is the spirit of scholarship that we vigorously advance and support here.