Making Sense of a Seemingly Random Walk

Abstract

This chapter traces the origins of my research on corporate governance and describes the pitfalls and challenges that arose early in my career. Many of these pitfalls are characteristic of conducting interdisciplinary research more generally. They include criticism from discipline-based scholars, special challenges in negotiating the peer review process, failure to articulate a coherent theoretical framework in individual articles, and the struggle to articulate a coherent identity as a scholar. The lessons learned should apply broadly to conducting interdisciplinary research on virtually any topic in organization theory and strategic management.