Paradigm prison, or in praise of atheoretic research

Alexander Fleming might well have cursed the mysterious spore that had entered his lab and killed his bacterial cultures. His colleagues considered the agent a nuisance and source of delay. But Fleming thought it a possible godsend. At once, he abandoned his original research and research domain, and spent untold hours trying to isolate and culture the troublesome spore – penicillin. Mankind will be forever grateful. Sadly, the current institutional setting within which administrative studies develop has evolved to de-legitimize Fleming’s type of research. Specifically, it degrades and discourages research that is non-paradigmatic or atheoretical. This essay demonstrates the dark side of that tendency and points to the salutary effects of atheoretical research, both in the natural sciences and within our own discipline.