Grand Challenges: A Way Out of the Ivory Tower for Management Academic Discipline

Abstract

The academic discipline of management has a long and successful history of legitimacy building. Concerns about scientific rigor have brought major improvements in research, publication, and teaching practices. However, the established academic status fosters a rigor-relevance gap emerging between researchers and managers. Scholars are confined in metaphorical “ivory towers” of scientific rigor and orientation toward an academic audience, which disconnects the discipline from management practice. Consequently, both the social legitimacy of management academia and its development prospects are threatened. This study argues that management has a predilection to solving grand societal challenges, thus contributing both to social progress and discipline development. Three overarching grand challenges are outlined and linked to management challenges. By taking the lens of scientific legitimacy stemming from methodology, this study identifies how management methodology can be usefully developed.