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Mortality, Reproducibility, and the Persistence of Styles of Theory

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  • Jeffrey Pfeffer

    (Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5015)

Abstract

It seems somehow appropriate that Peter Frost’s letter sending me a draft of John Van Maanen’s (Van Maanen, J. 1995. Style as theory. Organ. Sci. 6 (1) 132--143.) article should have been dated November 7, 1994. For on November 8 we witnessed, at least in the United States and particularly in California, the culmination of a season of political campaigns notable for their viciousness and appeal to emotion rather than reason. Frost’s (Frost, P. 1995. Crossroads. Organ. Sci. 6 (1) 132.) characterization of Van Maanen’s article as “less restrained than we are used to” was an understatement. John is nothing if not a master of rhetoric, and his comment on my paper employs tried and true rhetorical devices. This includes contrastive pairs (Atkinson [Atkinson, M. 1984. Our Masters’ Voices . Methuen, London, England.]), in this instance, implicitly Weick and a style of theory that “rests on its more or less unique style” (p. 135) versus Pfeffer, a presumed apologist for (if not an example of) “a logocentric tradition of empirical science with its count-and-classify conventions” and “more than a little physics envy” (p. 134). Van Maanen’s article also follows Edelman’s ([Edelman, M. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics . University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.], p. 124) description of political speech as “a ritual, dulling the critical faculties rather than awakening them. Chronic repetition of clich’es and stale phrases that serve simply to evoke a conditioned uncritical response is a time-honored habit among politicians and a mentally restful one for their audiences.” Van Maanen promotes a caricature of normal science and reinforces its protagonists’ unacceptability with emotion-laden adjectives (shrill, sour, vain, autocratic, insufferably smug, orthodox, and naive, among many others).

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey Pfeffer, 1995. "Mortality, Reproducibility, and the Persistence of Styles of Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(6), pages 681-686, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:6:y:1995:i:6:p:681-686
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.6.6.681
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    Cited by:

    1. Alfred Kieser, 2007. "Entwicklung von Organisationstheorien als Zeitgeistphänomen," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 678-705, September.
    2. Johan S. G. Chu, 2018. "A Theory of Durable Dominance," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 498-512, September.
    3. Kenworthy, Thomas P. & Verbeke, Alain, 2015. "The future of strategic management research: Assessing the quality of theory borrowing," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 179-190.
    4. repec:dau:papers:123456789/2598 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. William B. Gartner, 2001. "Is There an Elephant in Entrepreneurship? Blind Assumptions in Theory Development," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 25(4), pages 27-39, July.
    6. Kevin Morrell, 2008. "The Narrative of ‘Evidence Based’ Management: A Polemic," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 613-635, May.
    7. Michael J. Ashworth & Kathleen M. Carley, 2007. "Can tools help unify organization theory? Perspectives on the state of computational modeling," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 89-111, March.
    8. Hazhir Rahmandad & Keyvan Vakili, 2019. "Explaining Heterogeneity in the Organization of Scientific Work," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(6), pages 1125-1145, November.
    9. Vogel, Rick & Hattke, Fabian & Petersen, Jessica, 2017. "Journal rankings in management and business studies: What rules do we play by?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1707-1722.

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