Journal of Management Studies 41:6 September 2004 0022-2380

The Bridge to the Real World: Applied Science or a Schizophrenic Tour de Force?*

Alexander T. Nicolai
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Private Universitt Witten/Herdecke
This article concerns those publications which have received considerable attention in an academic as well as in a practical context. In these rare cases, it seems that it was possible to transfer scientic ndings more or less directly into managerial implications. This widely shared view is contrasted with a socials systems perspective. From this point of view there cannot be a direct application of scientic knowledge. This also holds true for the classic examples of applied science. It is argued that even in these cases there is no evidence of linear knowledge transfer but rather Applied Science Fiction (ASF). ASF comprises all techniques with which the scientic system reacts to external application pressure without having to relinquish its own selfreferential logic. Different forms of ASF are introduced. These are retrotting, reputation, symbolic labels and undisciplined eclecticism. The ASF-concept will be illustrated by Michael Porters Competitive Strategy. Paradoxically, however, the conventional concept of application and ASF are a barrier for the sustainable relevance of management studies.

INTRODUCTION There is growing pressure on business schools and other institutions in which management research is being conducted to produce applicable knowledge (Huff, 2000; Lyles, 1995; Rynes et al., 2001). A number of factors could be responsible for this tendency toward the Market-Driven Business School (Zell, 2001): for example, the share of private nancing is increasing in comparison to the public share. The rankings published in Business Week since l988 and in which practiceorientation plays an important role have been very inuential (Elsbach and Kramer, 1996). Increasingly, the growing number of MBA programmes oriented

Address for reprints: Alexander T. Nicolai, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA (alexander.nicolai@ medien.uni-weimar.de).
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to managerial practice is replacing the more research-oriented PhD programs (Zell, 2001). The competition for students as well as the evaluation of the teaching staff reinforces the pressure to teach applicable knowledge. The call for more practical management orientation is growing louder, not only from external stakeholders but also from academics themselves (Wren et al., 1994). These observations are valid mainly for US business schools which are traditionally characterized by a more instrumental view of education in comparison to European universities (Engwall, 1992; Locke, 1985). In Germany, for example, most academics share the view that their essential role lies in the schooling of mind and in the UK the whole idea of marrying higher education with business has a comparatively weak tradition. Locke (1985) suspects that there might even be an antagonism between both sides. Nevertheless, increasing pressure for practical relevance can also been seen in Europe (Gomez and Spoun, 2002; Kipping, 1998; Starkey and Madan, 2001) which stems mostly from external stakeholders, both public and private (Shove and Rip, 2000). As a result many European universities are beginning to review the kind of research they wish to encourage. In this debate the US business schools have in many cases an exemplary character (Kipping, 1998). Regardless of the country-specic and institutional differences, management studies as a eld of research dene themselves as applied science (Whitley, 1995) and their practical irrelevance has been a subject of complaint throughout many subdisciplines for some time (Buckley et al., 1998; Daft and Lewin, 1990; Rynes et al., 2001). The problem has, however, only rarely been researched seriously in terms of what should be expected from an applied science and how the process of applying scientic knowledge really looks. This discussion is only gradually starting (Rynes et al., 2001; Starkey and Madan, 2001). An obvious approach is to examine the rare academic publications that actually have attained relevance to practitioners. In view of the pressure to produce applicable knowledge it is astonishing that no such research has been done. This article will examine the characteristics of successful examples of applied management studies to determine why in those cases the so often requested connection between science and practice seemed to be successful. In light of the aforementioned environmental changes it can be assumed that academic research that claims to have relevance to the practitioner is a model for further research. With that assumption in mind, analysing these cases also means dealing with the further development of management studies. This includes the question of whether or not these cases really constitute a desirable model. This paper concentrates on strategic management. Unlike nearly all other management disciplines, strategic management has been application-oriented, and yet it also suffers from its own irrelevance (Bettis, 1991; Lyles, 1995; Rumelt et al., 1995a). The relevant strategy knowledge stems primarily from consulting companies (Marcus et al., 1995; Meyer, 1991). However, the discipline can cite a few
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remarkable exceptions that are accepted as classic examples of applied science: for example, the works on competitive strategy by Michael Porter (1980) or the literature concerning the core competencies approach (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). This article examines the characteristics of these rare instances of relevance. THE AQUEDUCT MODEL The topic of relevance does not belong to the explicit research issues of strategic management. Lyles (1995, p. 112) suspects that the issue of even questioning the research of business schools is seen as a threat, while other strategy scholars fear the topic in itself could be an example of academic quibbling (Gopinath and Hoffman, 1995, p. 98). As in many other applied disciplines (Stehr, 1992, p. 28) the topic is dealt with at best in an ad hoc fashion, e.g. at presentations, in editorials, special forums, etc. Contributions of this type are less research oriented but rather have more the character of an appeal to the scientic community (We should matter. We must matter!; Hambrick, 1994, p. 16). Hereby it can be deduced on which assumptions the respective scholars model of application is based. According to these appeals two main reasons for decient relevance to practitioners come into question. One possible cause is that scientic knowledge is not on a higher level than practical knowledge (e.g. Camerer, 1985). There is no gradient that causes the dissemination of scientic knowledge. The second, more frequently presumed cause is that something stops the knowledge ow, which means that barriers either linguistic, temporal, or micropolitical are responsible for the lack of transfer (e.g. Hambrick, 1994). Differences between scientic and practical communication are looked upon as unnecessary barriers to knowledge transfer (Meyer, 1991). Just as the old Romans transported the water by constructing impressive aqueducts over deep gorges, it is necessary to bridge (Marcus et al., 1995, p. 121) the differences between academia and practice. Especially in the toplevel scholarly journals a user friendly, application oriented language should be maintained (Buckley et al., 1998, p. 36). The semantic swamp of academic jargon should be drained (Charan et al., 1979, p. 505). More practitioners should be integrated into the screening process and the editorships of academic journals (Krogh et al., 1994, p. 66). Papers in practitioner journals such as Harvard Business Review should be encouraged (Bettis, 1991, p. 318). Or, research results should be translated into directly relevant conclusions (Shrivastava, 1987, p. 88). A lot of the measures for levelling the differences between science and practice can be subsumed under the term popularization (Whitley, 1985). The mainly implicit and pre-theoretical concept of application underlying these appeals can be described in a simplied manner as an aqueduct model. This picture expresses different assumptions.
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Academic knowledge is like water. According to Whitley (1984b) in management studies, in general, this idea of science which is borrowed from the natural sciences or engineering sciences, respectively, dominates. Scientic knowledge is ascribed a universal status of truth. It is nearly treated as something material which can be transferred independently from its social context. From this point of view knowledge transfer does not generate any fundamental problems. Whitley (1984b, p. 369) observes that in management studies, in general, the belief that science is essentially a method of producing and validating knowledge which can be applied in a straightforward way is widespread. The idea of knowledge as something independent of its social context corresponds to the tradition of strategic management to view social reality as tangible and measurable and as imposing itself on individuals in a more or less deterministic way (Daft and Buenger, 1990). Academic knowledge ows from top to bottom. A further supposition follows from the previous assumption; namely, that scientic knowledge is generally superior to practical knowledge (Barley et al., 1988). This is already implied in the universal claim for truth. The truth cannot be surpassed; alternative points of view can only be inferior. In fact, a most out-of-date and discredited father-knows-best version of knowledge dominates management studies, as Van Maanen (1995a, p. 133) points out. The superiority of scientic knowledge is not seriously doubted (ONeill et al., 1998). This implies the taken-for-granted assumption that the scientic innovations in management generally lead to an improvement in managerial practice. The assumption that in a free competition the best ideas nally win acceptance corresponds to the rational choice perspective that characterizes strategic management (Marcus et al., 1995). Academic knowledge moves by itself and spreads unidirectionally. The direction of the knowledge ow goes from science to practice (Whitley, 1985). The process of spreading the knowledge is a passive process. If the basic conditions are met, then knowledge ows by itself into practice. While this simplied model is not the object of explicit debate in strategic management, in the broader management discourse some explicit discussions about the nature of the transfer process have started (e.g. Hodgkinson et al., 2001; Pettigrew, 2001; Rynes et al., 2001). In this connection Gibbons et al.s (1994) claim that universities should shift from Mode 1 research to Mode 2 research gained some popularity. Mode 1 is theoretical and discipline based and basically the traditional scientic approach to knowledge creation. Mode 2 focuses on practical concerns, is problem-driven and transdisciplinary. Starkey and Madan (2001), for example, adopt this model in order to overcome the current state of management research. Under the title bridging the relevance gap they recommend measures to increase the swift and effective ow of knowledge (p. S10), for example, translate scholarly rhetoric into rhetoric t for public consumption (p. S21), form alliances with mass media editors (p. S21), write more comprehensible abstracts (p. S21), and create journals with the necessary rigour . . . that . . . reect the
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major concerns of practitioners (p. S22). In other words the same measures for levelling the differences are specied which have been demanded in strategic management for the past 20 years. It can be said that strategic management never intended to be anything else but an interdisciplinary mode 2-eld. While several authors state that a steady knowledge ow is hard to achieve and requires a more sophisticated bridging infrastructure, they do not reject the aqueduct model as a normative ideal. A possible trade-off between rigour and relevance is either ignored or assumed not to be a fundamental problem. Thus, the appeals for both rigour and relevant research are repeated with new labels, for example, meet the double hurdles (Pettigrew, 2001), pursue pragmatic science (Hodgkinson et al., 2001), or establish mode 1.5 research (Huff, 2000). In this view, appeals, better institutionalized academic-practitioners ties, or higher incentives to focus on practitioners concerns should be suitable to overcome the problem. The old and the new proponents of this approach leave the question open as to why the transfer barriers have not collapsed from the great pressure to produce applicable knowledge and why a continuous ow of academic knowledge does not already irrigate the lowlands of practice. PERSPECTIVE OF THE THEORY OF SELF-REFERENTIAL SYSTEMS The implicit aqueduct-model shows some similarities with some of the early theoretical models of application in various social sciences outside the strategic discourse, for example, the model of instrumentality (Luhmann, 1993), or the linear model of innovation (Bush, 1990). Although the linear ideas of academic knowledge utilization gained extensive governmental support in the USA and elsewhere, soon doubts were raised about their validity (Stokes, 1997). A lively debate has developed as to how the process of application in social sciences takes place. In the course of these discussions the idea that the application of knowledge functions according to the aqueduct model was discarded. Whitley states (1995, p. 102): The simple model of applied scientic knowledge generating high level, problem-solving skills which could directly be used to deal with complex practical problems is no longer tenable in such areas as engineering and medicine, let alone management. Lanson and Appignanesi (1989) pointed out the dependence of knowledge on social context and made a clear counterpoint to the materialistic concept of knowledge. Astley (1985) shows that the epistemological insight that realities are constructed has to be transferred to the sciences themselves. With this, the assumption
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of the universal truth status of scientic knowledge is no longer tenable (Stehr, 1995). Further, Whitley (1985) reveals in his studies that popularization is by far not only a translation or transfer process but a complex, interactive process with its own quality. In short, the research that deals explicitly with the process of application contrasts sharply with the implicit picture that prevails in strategic management. The most consistent theoretical framework that shares these revised assumptions about application-oriented social sciences stems from Niklas Luhmann (1995). According to Luhmann, self-reference is the necessary condition for the formation of modern science and the source for its capacity. Science is from this perspective a web of communication that reproduces, on the basis of scientic communication, further scientic communication in turn. The scientic publication as a sign of modern science accounts for this selfreferential mode of operation (Kieser, 2002). Publications, linked by citations, form the basic elements of the social system of science. This referral to the scientic network limits but also facilitates further research in a way that can be likened to how a dictionary works. Every word in the dictionary refers to other words in the dictionary. The dictionary is a self-referential system. In a similar fashion, science evolves as a self-referential system of meaning. Every scientic communication refers to another scientic communication. For example, the self-referential process cannot be interrupted by reference to a connection between a certain management concept and the companys performance enhancement. The effects of managerial action on organizational performance are far from obvious. Management scientists discuss intensively what external factors have to be considered, what performance measures should be used, or whether research with performance as a dependent variable is fruitful at all (March and Sutton, 1997). This means that the discussion about the technical efciency remains an interwoven part of the social system of science. The selfreferential modus is not discontinued. As Stehr et al. (1995, pp. 356) point out: Such communicative systems determine what constitutes adequate knowledge claims. This interpretative accomplishment is internally driven, that is, independent of the cultural accomplishment of other social systems and decoupled from its external consequences. In this way the social system of science gains history, and cumulative scientic advances are possible (March, 1999). This does not mean that science only circles tautologically around itself. External references are incorporated, but only in accordance with their own historically developed, self-referential systems logic (Bailey, 1997). This is not only valid for a relationship among different disciplines and subdisciplines but also for the relationship to the social systems of practice.

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In fact, it can be argued that a scientic system of strategic management only emerged in the 1980s. The origin of this discipline is the atheoretical business policy courses that were rst taught at Harvard at the beginning of the twentieth century (Bower, 1982). With this tradition, strategic management was designed to help students to bridge the gap to the real world by using business cases (Marcus et al., 1995, p. 121). In the 1970s the phase of consulting imperatives (Mintzberg, 1990a, p. 126) began. Consulting companies, such as the BCG, McKinsey, or ADL developed tools like the portfolio-analysis or the experience curve which ltered into the strategys textbooks. However, the Pittsburgh Conference of 1977, a landmark event (Hoskisson et al., 1999, p. 431) in the elds development, was gearing up to establish strategic management as a serious science. The rapid institutionalization with PhD programmes, professional scientic associations, chairs, academic journals etc. show that these efforts were successful (Schendel and Cool, 1988; Shrivastava, 1987). An independent academic discourse about strategic management with self-referential dynamics developed. Since that time, the complaints that scientic and practical communication are drifting apart have increased. The often quoted trade-off between rigour and relevance has a special validity for strategic management (Marcus et al., 1995; Shrivastava, 1987). While the aqueduct model was rejected in the social sciences debate because of the reasons mentioned as well as others, that is not the case in the mainstream of strategic management. The aqueduct model including the consequences for the professional self-image of the researcher, the peer review policy of the academic journals, and the opinion as to how to shape management education is being pursued at least implicitly in strategic management. The inuential stakeholders (e.g. funding bodies, MBA students, partners in industry, business press, government) had little reason to demand anything else from strategic management than the aqueduct model. A tension arises between the internal and external expectations from strategic management and the self-referential functioning of science. Therefore, those research works which despite this tension could gain scientic acceptance and relevance to the practitioner are even more interesting.

APPLIED SCIENCE FICTION Denition The previous considerations have shown that the evolutionary drift (Van de Ven, 2000, p. 395) that repeatedly separates scientic and practical communication springs from the self-referential logic of the science system. This dynamic makes it improbable that a publication is connectable (Luhmann, 1994) to scientic discourse as well as to practice. The development of the strategy eld supports this

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view. The more academized it became, the more it separated from practical communication (Lampel and Shapira, 1995). Regardless of what is stated in the editorials of the core academic journals, scholars write more or less for each other (Luhmann, 1994, p. 625) even in strategic management (Gopinath and Hoffman, 1995). However, some parts of the strategy discourse are receiving considerable attention in practice. This is especially true for successful bestsellers in strategic management, such as Michael Porters Competitive Strategy (1980) or the so-called core competencies version of the resource-based view advanced by Hamel and Prahalad (1994). Some relevant journals for strategic management have received a lot of attention from practitioners as well. The Harvard Business Review wants to disseminate ideas with impact, the California Management Review describes itself as a bridge of communication between those who study management and those who practice it and the Sloan Management Review provides senior managers with the best current theory and practice. These journals do not really belong to the scientic core of the discipline, but they undoubtedly fall back on ideas from strategy theory. Also a large part of scientic literature about strategic management presents itself as if it were contributing to the realization of the aqueduct model. As a result, a lot of publications try to present the development, the testing and the application of a theory as a whole and in order to live up to the claim, conclude the article with a list of managerial implications (Montgomery et al., 1989). Obviously, the often cited gap between theory and practice is at least bridged in the structuring of the argumentation. At rst glance the cited examples insinuate that the aqueduct model is at least occasionally realized and question what systems theory would predict. Porters book about Competitive Strategy or a practice-oriented contribution in the Harvard Business Review seem to be successful examples for the popularization of scientic knowledge. The ofcial rhetoric presents the respective publications in just that sense. A more exact second look, however, shows that even those publications do not contradict the self-referential logic of the scientic system. Rather they are an expression of a phenomenon that emerges in the eld of conict between the ofcial rhetoric of applied science and the latent, splitting force of self-reference. This phenomenon can be called Applied Science Fiction (ASF). It emerges everywhere in strategic management where scientists and practitioners are simultaneously addressed, at least rhetorically. ASF is a form of hidden decoupling (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). It blurs the boundaries between scientic and practical communication and allows science to react to simplifying claims of application, without giving up its self-referential logic. In the scientic communication of strategic management, different forms of ASF creation have developed. Among its most important forms are retrotting, symbolic labels, reputation, and undisciplined eclecticism.
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With retrotting, certain managerial practices, perceived as effective, are taken as a point of departure. Ex post scientic ndings are retrotted around these managerial practices or success stories in such a way that these managerial practices seem to be the result of a scientic research process. Empirical evidence, pieces of theory, and citations are collected in a highly selective way to support the respective practice. Newell et al. (2001), for example, report on academic research promoted by funding bodies under the condition that direct industrial relevance results. These funding bodies demanded science from the researcher teams according to the aqueduct model. The case studies by Newell et al. (2001, p. 108), however, do not show any linear and unidirectional knowledge ow: Indeed, the need to produce commodied knowledge in the form of deliverables that could be widely disseminated meant that the research team developed the taxonomy [i.e. the deliverable] and started on the workbook before they had completed the data collection and conceptual analysis of their ndings. A normative decision rationality for doing what was purported to be scientically rigorous research appeared here to conate with an action rationality for producing and diffusing best practice deliverables. Thus, although it was assumed that the deliverables from the research would be based on a rational scientic approach to knowledge creation, the pressure to diffuse and disseminate simple and portable solutions actually appeared to shape the research process itself. The retrotting also functions in reverse. Existing success stories from practice are selectively reconstructed in such a way that they t existing academic approaches. Fincham (1995) compares these stories which are narrated around a solution to a problem with a television police show. In the end everything ts together and the clear-up rate is virtually 100 per cent. The most prominent example of this type of retrotting is the Honda story. Pascale (1984, 1996) presents two completely different versions of the success story. The rst version comes from the Boston Consulting Group. It explains the exceptional success that Honda had in the US-American motorcycle market in the 1960s with the experience curve concept. The BCG version remained the widely accepted and undisputed account for a long time. Pascale received a totally different explanation for the Honda success when he had, by chance, the opportunity in 1982 to question the managers in Japan who were responsible for the US-American business at that time. They told him about an incremental strategy process that was characterized by coincidence. Experience curve effects did not play a role. Later, numerous theories of academic origin were also substantiated with the Honda story (Mair, 1999). Different aspects of the story were sometimes
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emphasized, sometimes left out, or interpreted differently, or else other sources were used, etc. The most striking impression when reviewing these interpretations of Honda strategy is that they appear to contradict one another in their explanations and their implications (Mair, 1999, p. 34). Each version by itself seems to be a consistent theoretical working model from which certain management implications can be deduced whose efcacy is veried through an empirical case example. Symbolic Labels Symbolic labels are ambiguous keywords that are used collectively but have different meanings for different people (resp. systems) (Astley and Zammuto, 1992, p. 451). They are an important form of creating ASF. Management knowledge needs interpretation, depends on context, and is elusive. The application and dissemination of such knowledge cannot be easily observed (Benders and van Bijsterveld, 2000). Therefore researchers do not often focus on the knowledge itself, but instead on the labels that are used in practice. Empirical studies about disseminating scientic and consulting knowledge are conducted this way, for example (Marcus et al., 1995). The impression of knowledge ow arises when the same labels are used in science as well as in practice. In strategic management there are a lot of those ambiguous labels (Leontiades, 1987); examples include core competencies, competitive advantage, dynamic networks, as well as the term strategy itself. It is not clear which knowledge is connected to the labels, and the scientic association can also differ substantially from the practical association. But even if there were agreement on the talk level, it would not mean that it is the case on the action level (Brunsson, 1992). Thus, the same symbolic label can be simultaneously used in science and in practice but can have very different meanings. This produces ASF. Through the use of a consulting method rather than an academic one, Benders and van Bijsterveld (2000) show how the contents of a publication can detach itself entirely from practice. In their study they examine the dissemination of the symbolic label lean production in Germany. Under this heading, restructuring was implemented in many German companies. These measures, however, had virtually nothing to do with the concept that Womack et al. (1990) had originally published in their book. The connecting element that suggested that knowledge from their book was transferred was the symbolic label lean production, coined by Womack et al. Reputation A very important variety of symbolic labels with which ASF can be produced has to be mentioned separately. In this context, reference is made to the name of an
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academic management researcher including the institution with which he is associated. For practitioners the workshop of science is hardly transparent. It is confusing when only small excerpts out of the scientic network of mutual references are taken into consideration. A substitute orientation is therefore necessary, taken over by reputation. To the outside, science is perceptible through reputation that condenses (Luhmann, 1994) at names. Reputation only very generally reects the kind of scientic achievements it is based on (if they are in fact scientic). At most it informs about very general areas (e.g. experts for marketing, logistic or just strategy). This vagueness gives the academic management scientist scope in a practical context. The practice-oriented activities consulting, management education or publishing in practitioner-oriented journals are equipped with a general suggestion of scienticity. A direct connection in content to scientic activity does not have to exist. The personal union of scientist and practitioner causes the gap between science and practice to disappear. The fact that the academic practitioner possibly has a schizophrenic character (March and Sutton, 1997) is concealed through reputation. Thus, a reputable name hides the decoupling of the scientic language game from the practical. It is not necessary that academic gurus (Huczynski, 1993, p. 46) are directly supported by academic knowledge. Indeed, the success of the gurus cannot be explained in this way (Clark and Salaman, 1998). Undisciplined Eclecticism Strategic management is a fragmented adhocracy (Shrivastava and Lim, 1989; Whitley, 1984a). It is pluralistic, interdisciplinary and split. There is no general consensus about research standards. Regardless of whether this is applauded (e.g. Van Maanen, 1995a, 1995b) or criticized (e.g. Pfeffer, 1993, 1995), the fragmentation of the discipline paired with the growing publication output causes a certain amount of confusion. This confusion can turn into undisciplined eclecticism (Foss, 1996). Researchers opportunistically refer to excerpts from different theories that happen to t the current train of thought. A loose association of scientic statements emerges; they are only locally intertwined (sometimes only within a paragraph) but as a whole they are a rather colourful mixture of very different theoretical elements. In contrast to the disciplined eclecticism, the undisciplined eclectic procedure does not take into consideration the contradictory basic assumptions of the pieces of theory used. Undisciplined eclecticism contributes to the production of ASF. Practical knowledge can be smuggled into the scientic discourse using the same opportunistic procedure with which the incommensurable pieces of theory are accessed. In an otherwise scientically-oriented academic journal this can, for example, be a vaguely formulated managerial implication, a prominent practitioners quotation
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or an anecdote from the business press. The same can also happen the other way around: in the text of a practice-oriented journal some isolated theoretical elements can occasionally trickle in. It is important to note that the scientic and practical discourse, though intertwined, are still separate (Luhmann, 1994, p. 641). Undisciplined eclecticism produces, to use chemistry terminology, an emulsion but not a chemical compound. A good example of this is the classic study by Mulkay et al. (1987). The authors examined a number of publications from the area of Health Economics. The publications were written with the intention of making health economics accessible to practicing physicians. This led to a number of ad-hoc adjustments and use of the rhetoric of application. The analysis of the publications indicated that they had on the whole many inconsistencies. They contained two concealed programmes next to one another, each of them on its own relatively consistent. The weak programme oriented itself on the practices and values of doctors and the strong programme was obviously aimed at the scientic community of health economics. The combination of scientically accepted and practically relevant language games is therefore not an example of applied science but rather of ASF. In fact, the direction of inuence seems to move in uncontrolled, eclectic discourses more from practice to science and not the other way around (Barley et al., 1988). This is also evident in the discussion about the management fashions (e.g. Abrahamson, 1996; Benders and van Veen, 2001; Kieser, 1997). Although the techniques to produce ASF, which were introduced here, differ among each other, they all create a picture of successfully applied science in the sense of the aqueduct model. Usually these techniques are not used in an isolated way but in combination with each other. If, for example, undisciplined eclecticism is applied in combination with retrotting, an exact analysis of the publications and statements will be needed to uncover ASF. Generally only science operates with this high level of resolution. But as the practice-related side of ASF is rarely discussed and nearly never empirically investigated, it remains in most cases latent and therefore workable. ASF is no marginal phenomenon in the scientic discipline of strategic management. The whole discipline oscillates between self-referential scientic logic and the outwardly directed demand for relevance to the practitioner. Luhmann (1994, p. 623) uses the metaphor of fever to describe this condition of a discipline in that situation. Especially with the classic examples of applied strategic theory, ASF plays an important part. This should be claried by using the case of one of the most successful management publications with a scientic background, Michael Porters (1980) classic Competitive Strategy. According to The Economist (1994, p. 117) Porter is the one who formed a respectable science out of strategic management by infecting it with the economic theory. Also, large parts of the scientic commu Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004

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nity considered the import of the economic theory as a long overdue scientication. The inductive case study related method made room for a deductive form of hypotheses-driven debate (Hoskisson et al., 1999, p. 425). Other studies support the statements on Porters success. For example, Davis et al. (1994) show that the idea of back to the basics can be attributed to Porter and has been implemented on a large scale. For these reasons the traditional Aqueduct Story about Porters success will be compared to the ASF Story which appears here.

CASE STUDY: COMPETITIVE STRATEGY The Aqueduct Story The Aqueduct Story can be told quickly. Michael Porter denitely falls into the category of academic guru. He has highly inuenced the scientic discourse with his contributions. At the same time he is a management consultant and his book Competitive Strategy (1980) is one of the most successful management bestsellers that has ever been written (Crainer, 1997, p. 32). In the perception of Montgomery et al. (1989, p. 194) it is a classic example of applied science: Long considered to be an area of application, strategy research, in our judgement, has had surprisingly little impact on practice. In fact, the inuence has tended to ow in the opposite direction, where practice invents, and teaching disseminates. A prominent exception to this pattern is Michael Porters very inuential work on competitive strategy (1980). Porters book is an outgrowth of extensive basic research, both theoretical and empirical. According to a count by Hambrick (1990), Competitive Strategy was by far the most cited work in the discipline of strategic management in the years from 1980 to 1985. Between 1986 and 1990 this book was quoted in almost every second article in the Strategic Management Journal (Miller and Dess, 1993). Marcus et al. (1995) asked top managers as well as management scientists about several strategy concepts. Respondents ranked the concepts according to rigour and relevance. In both groups the 5-Forces-framework out of Porters 1980 book achieved rst or second place each time. In short, within as well as outside the scientic world, through Competitive Strategy Porter was able to overcome the trade-off between rigour and relevance. The economists used the theoretical background of Industrial Organization (IO) and imported it into the teaching of strategy. Porter can be described as one of the pioneers of the economic turn in strategic management, who to this day has greatly inuenced the scientic discourse of strategic management (Rumelt et al., 1995a). Out of his IO-based strategy theory he deduced the strategic management implications. He promised there is gold to mine in applying IO-concepts to strat Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004

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Knowledge flow

Industrial Organization (e.g. Bain 1959)

The Contributions of Industrial Organization to Strategic Management Academy of Management Review (1981)

Competitive Strategy (1980) Harvard Business Review (1979) Consultancy Popularizing media Managerial practice Strategy-tools (e.g. 5-Forces) in practice

Basic Research

Strategic Management as Applied Science

Figure 1. Competitive Strategy according to the aqueduct model

egy formulation (Porter, 1981, p. 617). In his book, in practitioners journals and also in his consulting role (Porter is founder of the internationally active consulting agency named Monitor) he popularizes his scientic ndings. The academic knowledge owed into practice and was applied there this is at least the Aqueduct Story, which is shown graphically in Figure 1. The ASF Story Even from the ASF perspective the book Competitive Strategy is an absolute exception, but not because the aqueduct model was realized here. Instead, the success of the book and with it Porters can be explained by its simultaneous presence in different communication systems in which contradictory demands prevail. The argument in the book and in the Harvard Business Review article (1979), in which the 5-Forces-framework appeared for the rst time, is inductive, caseoriented and anecdotal. The term Industrial Organization does not play an important part in these publications. But at least in the rst pages of the book the industrial economic Structure-Conduct-Performance-Paradigm (Bain, 1959) can be recognized. Porter (1981) himself admitted that some barriers had to be overcome in order for IO to be transferred to strategic management. More precisely, he has made fundamental changes. Among other things, for instance, the object of analysis has to be changed from industry to the individual company; the structural determinism, diametrically opposed to strategy thought, has to be overcome; and the complete theory-perspective has to become more dynamic. Foss (1996) states that the development of Porters work is less a transfer of IO than the permanent task of closing the gaps that are left by this theoretical tradition. Porter (1981) discusses the changes only in an academic context, in the Academy of Management Review. The article is of a programmatic nature and does not contain
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managerial implications for strategy development. In order to obtain a method for deriving prescriptions Porter (1981) suggests turning the IO prescriptions upside down. The aws of this ploy have often been criticized (e.g. Spender, 1992, p. 20; Black and Boal, 1994). A closer look reveals that the IO inspired parts of Porters work contain at most an ex-post explanation for a competitive advantage, by no means an ex ante, normative perspective (Rumelt et al., 1995b, p. 551). Nevertheless there are explicit instructional parts in Competitive Strategy. This is especially true in connection with the other central concept of the book, the Ushape that establishes a connection between ROI and market share. The stuck in the middle hypothesis and the concept of the three generic strategies lead obviously to non-tautological managerial prescriptions. But these concepts do not have an IO or other academic background. Indeed, according to Crainer (1997, p. 32) the U-shape in Competitive Strategy was added later to the book and only appeared in the publications for practitioners. Competitive Strategy is far from deducing prescriptions from economic theory. By no means did Porter transform the managerial task of strategy development into a constrained optimization problem as his academic teacher Richard Caves (1980, p. 88) had in mind. Langlois (2000, p. 7) makes a similar point: [M]uch of the action in his [Porters] framework actually comes from the eclectic outer core both his own and that of the Harvard School rather than from anything owing directly from the logic of neoclassical industrial organization. To be fair it has to be said that Porter gave the analysis aspect special emphasis in his 1980s book. However, by advancing in his later books into the prescriptive area of strategy formulation, Porter departed from his academic roots. Foss (1996) talks about an escape from economic theory. So the trade-off between rigour and relevance is also clearly recognizable in the development of Porters works, yet Competitive Strategy is regarded as an outgrowth of basic research that helps to solve problems of practical strategy formulation. This attribution could spread because Competitive Strategy is interspersed with all varieties of ASF: Retrotting. Porters Book draws on many illustrative case examples, e.g. to demonstrate the validity of the U-shape. These examples create in their selectivity a clearly retrotted picture of an industry. Different connections could have been easily illustrated in the same way (Parnell, 1997). Other illustrative examples in Competitive Strategy focus on the critical success factor market power. Porter follower Ghemawat (1991, p. 5) demonstrates with the Wal-Mart example how easily a success story can be retrotted to this factor. Many other factors including the supporting theories could just as easily have been made responsible ex post for the success (and they have been). In fact, there is a long tradition in economics to retrot empirical phenomena to market power. Coase (1972, cited after Langlois 2000,
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p. 6) long ago noted that if an economist nds something a business practice of one sort or another that he does not understand, he looks for a monopoly explanation. Symbolic labels. In Competitive Strategy, Porter coined some terms that undoubtedly have been disseminated both in science and in practice. This applies for terms like competitive advantage or 5-Forces. Several authors criticized the terminological vagueness and the inconsistent use of these labels (Foss, 1996; Powell, 2001). Knights (1992, pp. 5258) reports, for example, about a bank that persistently justied its strategies with Porters labels although they did not t the given situation. The ambiguity of Porters labels also becomes evident in the academic discourse. For example, what is dened as a barrier to mobility or barrier to entry can also be interpreted as a rent-creating resource in the sense of the resourcebased view. This applies for patents, name brands, specialized human resources, informal networks, etc. (Barney, 1991). Yet, the resource-based view is considered a counter concept to Porters IO view. Reputation. As a professor at Harvard Business School Porter was equipped with a high reputation from the beginning. In strategic management at that time there was no clearly developed scientic infrastructure or internal mechanisms for distributing reputation. The discipline vied for acceptance in the early 1980s. The Strategic Management Journal was founded in 1980 and only began establishing itself as a central publication in the eld (MacMillan, 1991). Economic theory was, in contrast to strategic management, highly accepted and supported by an established scientic community. Between the disciplines there was a reputation incline that Porter could take advantage of. Further, the rapid growth of business schools led to a lack of teachers. This gap was partly closed by the economists. These researchers, externally less distracted through the nancially attractive possibility to work as a consultant, drew their reputation internally from science with the help of publications in economic journals. Thus new standards of evaluation were established, which again supported the succession of other economists (Rumelt et al., 1995b). This facilitated the inner-scientic, enduring success of Competitive Strategy. Undisciplined eclecticism. Competitive Strategy is a book that is interspersed with undisciplined eclecticism (Foss, 1996). Later Porter himself (1990) designated this nonfalsiable procedure, which is totally different from the modelling of economic theory, frameworking. He integrated consulting tools like the experience curve or the portfolio-analysis or he drew on ideas of industrial evolution that do not correspond with the IO paradigm. Concerning the characteristic style Competitive Strategy is interspersed with the rhetoric of application (Mulkay et al., 1987). In the introduction it vaguely referred to the support of the Harvard Business School, to the work of doctoral candidates and to numerous discussions with other scientists, and his own empirical studies. If closely analysed, in fact, a strong pro-

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Competitive Strategy as scientific publication with relevance

Stream of practice-oriented communication (managerial communication, consultancy, business press, etc.)

ASF
Competitive Strategy as relevant advice-giving literature with scientific acceptance

Stream of scientific publications

Self-referential system of science

Social systems of practice

Figure 2. Competitive Strategy as Applied Science Fiction

gramme that presents connectable communication offers for the scientic discourse can be discovered in the rst parts of the book. Retrotting, symbolic labels, reputation and undisciplined eclecticism in combination create an ASF that allows the simultaneous presence in two conicting social contexts. In addition, a self-reinforcing process is set in motion (see Figure 2). According to the aqueduct model, practical dissemination gives a reference for the scientic validity of Competitive Strategy. It is the result of the superiority of scientic knowledge. Until today some strategy researchers argue that the spread of a tool proves its problem-solving capacity and therefore it should also serve as an intellectual foundation for the academic discourse (Powell, 2001, p. 886). Thus, practical dissemination speeds up scientic resonance. To quote Porter was almost a ritual, as the previously mentioned analysis shows. With increasing scientic resonance the image of the academic rigorous guru has grown stronger. Critical comments of the academic discussions are hardly discernible in practice (Luhmann, 1994, p. 248). To the outside world Porters reputation signals scientic credibility. This again has promoted the dissemination success in practice. Academic reputation and attention in practice mutually help one another to cross the ctitious bridge of the aqueduct model. If all the previously mentioned factors are summed up, a century bestseller like Competitive Strategy emerges. CONCLUSIONS Examples of applied management science are in short supply. All the more important are the few examples that seem to disprove the trade-off between rigour and relevance and support the view that a straightforward application is possible if

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management scholars only try hard enough. With reference to that kind of showpiece research some authors maintain this view even today (Starkey and Madan, 2001). Although Michael Porters Competitive Strategy is an exceptionally successful example for this type of research, it is not the only one. Starkey and Madan (2001, p. S13), for example, refer to the core competency approach from Prahalad and Hamel (1990) in their eyes a successful example of the popularization of Wernerfelts (1984) resource-based view. While this view is quite popular, there is no evidence for this aqueduct story. Prahalad and Hamel (1990) did not refer to any economic reasoning, in fact they did not even cite Wernerfelt (1984). Mintzberg et al. (1998) assign each approach to a different school of thought, whereas they determined that the resource-based view is attractive to academics while the core competency approach appeals to consultants and managers. Hamel (1997, p. 30) himself admits: The dirty little secret of the strategy industry is that it doesnt have any theory of strategy creation. Starkey and Madan (2001, p. S12) give another example that should guide the future research efforts: [M]uch of the popular work of authors such as Tom Peters has its origins in models . . . of academia. In Peters case, the 7-S model of organization that informs the analysis of In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982) arose out of collaboration with Richard Pascale and between McKinsey and Standfords business faculty. This version is supported by Waterman (Bogner, 2002, p. 45) who attributes the books success to the authors ability to popularize: A . . . big, big factor was our grounding the book in solid theory. . . . We immersed ourselves in organizational theory and the research. But we then tried to write the book in terms that were accessible to just about everybody. However, this is just part of the ofcial story as the other author, Peters (2001, pp. 7981), points out 20 years after writing the book: Usually when I tell that version of the story, I try to use my imitation voice-ofGod way of speaking to convey the impression that what we set out to do was Very Important. Which is completely wrong. . . . There was no theory that I was out to prove. . . . If you want to go nd smart people who are doing cool stuff . . . , then do what we did with Search: Start by using common sense, by trusting your instincts, and by soliciting the views of strange (that is, nonconventional) people. You can always worry about proving the facts later. A further example are studies using performance as a causally dependent variable. According to Dan Schendel (1995), editor-in-chief of the Strategic Management Journal, this kind of research is valid to the scientist and at the same time offers
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valuable advice for practitioners. March and Sutton (1997, p. 703) state on the contrary that the questionable status of studies in which organizational performance appears as a dependent variable is very well-known but in the name of relevance scholars produce a schizophrenic tour de force: Organizational researchers live in two worlds. The rst demands and rewards speculations about how to improve performance. The second demands and rewards adherence to rigorous standards of scholarship. In its efforts to satisfy these often conicting demands, the organizational research community sometimes responds by saying that inference about the causes of performance cannot be made from the data available, and simultaneously goes ahead to make such inferences. It seems that even the showpiece-research that is selected out of the vast bulk of research that is undoubtedly not read by practitioners is not popularized theoretical insight. Rather, it seems to have the kind of interpretative duality (Mulkay et al., 1987, p. 253) that fulls the special communicative demands prevailing in the area of tension between science and practice. Strategic management may be more vulnerable to ASF than other management disciplines. The emergence of the business policy and strategy discourse is closely connected to the development of the multi-divisional rms in largely oligopolistic industries in the USA (Chandler, 1962) and the growing separation between ownership and control in the inter-war period. An increasing number of managers could no longer justify entrepreneurial decisions by their personal characteristics, e.g. foresight, genius or intuition, as the owner-manager did. They had to articulate the corporations objectives in a systematic and rational way to external audiences. A discursive space (Knights and Morgan, 1991) opened up which was colonized by corporate strategy. With the strong connection to managerialism the need for academic credentializing of practically-oriented skills may be greater in strategic management than in other disciplines. Furthermore, strategic management is a young discipline. Its academization process only started in the early 1980s. At that time the consulting-companies were still very inuential and an academic body of strategy knowledge was not yet available. A young discipline tends to subordinate accuracy to cohesion (Weick, 1983, p. 259). It must rst become a stable social system that persists long enough to gather accurate academic knowledge. It can be argued that underdeveloped academic standards broaden the scope for ASF. At the same time the scientic status of the knowledge helps academic institutions to exert jurisdictional control and functions as a barrier to entry (Whitley, 1995, p. 100). This is especially important in a situation in which inuential non-academic professional lites create their own standards as to what constitutes appropriate managerial skills. It should be noted, though, that scienticity is not the sole base of legitimacy for advice-giving in
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management. This is especially true in the light of the erosion of authority which the social sciences experienced in the past 20 years (Luhmann, 1994, pp. 62732; Stehr, 1992, p. ix). Charisma, experience, or consultant rhetoric, for example, can be functional equivalents to ASF (Fincham, 2002). Although strategy specic circumstances in the USA may have promoted the production of ASF, there is the danger that the increasing pressure to produce direct applicable knowledge leads to comparable consequences in other management disciplines. Even countries like Germany that have a very academic tradition of higher management education state agencies and other external stakeholders increasingly accuse management researchers of being able to popularize their ndings (Kipping, 1998). This development could promote ASF. Whitley (1995), for example, observes that the spread of MBA programmes according to the US model to many European countries indicates that managerial skills become increasingly academically credentialized but not necessarily more research-based. The creation of ASF is not necessarily to be understood as a deliberate act of deception. Each observation is theoryladen (Mahoney, 1993) and that is why the scientic perception of relevant practice is always conditioned by the researchers explicit or implicit theories. Additionally, ASF is often not the product of a single researcher. It arises out of the communication dynamics of the scientic publication network that is characterized by application pressure. The emergent drift of this social system does not follow the intentions of individual researchers. It is not argued here either that practical concepts, which are based on ASF are to be atly rejected. Michael Porters 5-Forces-framework can be of great value for business practice. It only has be questioned whether this tool is applied science. However, the techniques with which this ction is generated are, in fact, detrimental for strategic management and other disciplines for various reasons: ASF leads to mutual deformation rather than information between science and practice. In this process practice is harder than science, which means that science is more deformed by practice than vice versa. The studies from Newell et al. (2001, p. 117) show, for instance: The outcome is that funding bodies may actually be encouraging the creation and diffusion of, at worst, ill-founded management fads, or, at best, unsettled or contentious management concepts. The short-lived management fashions are not a good orientation for science. Even today complaints about the inuence of consulting concepts and the resulting lack of cumulative progress in science can be heard (De Meyer and Kim, 1996). ASF is dangerous. Strategy development is a responsible task. Charging undoubtedly useful management tools with scientic authority mysties these concepts unnecessarily. The belief that, ideally, the strategic management of companies can be conducted as applied science creates the attitude of a pseudo-professional manager. This type of manager thinks, independently of the respective industry,
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that he can execute the laws of strategic success. This belief is, as Hayes and Abernathy (1980) determined, a dangerous ideology. Mintzberg (1990b) criticizes in a similar fashion that just this attitude is being taught in a lot of MBA courses. Case studies that are adapted to existing academic strategy concepts via retrotting support this tendency very clearly. ASF paradoxically leads to practical irrelevance. By sustaining the belief in the aqueduct model with ASF, a constructive debate about the concept of application of strategic management is prevented. In fact, management studies are only relevant when cumulative progress in science is attained (March, 1999). Strategic management hardly shows such progress just because of the application orientation. Daft and Buenger (1990) meant just that when they described the discipline as a fast train to nowhere. The pressure to be immediately relevant resulted in practical irrelevance. Systems theoretical analysis suggests that the problem of the utilization of scientic knowledge can be resolved if the focus is no longer directed at the obstacles for a transfer, but rather at the questionable concept of the relationship between management science and practice. After analysing the consequences of simplifying claims for relevance by research funders, Shove and Rip (2000, p. 182) come to a similar conclusion: [T]he challenge is to understand better the process of use even if that means abandoning the comforting fairy-tale of the research user. It can be doubted that the main goal of an applied science is to give immediate managerial advice that can easily be consumed by practitioners (Grey, 2001). Weick (2001, p. S74) points out: The bridge that spans the relevance gap successfully may not be built of universities that look and sound like the people who recruit their students. The academic description of practice is, and has to be, different from the self-description of practice. This includes the denition of problems as well as the conception of relevance itself (Weick, 2001). These differences do not impede utilization (Beyer and Trice, 1982, p. 608) but are a feature of functional differentiation (Luhmann, 1982) and as such a precondition for the development of modern science. This does not imply less involvement with practical concerns but other terms of involvement which do not aim at a scientication of practice (Kieser, 2002, p. 220). As a difference producing programme (Luhmann, 1994, p. 645) management science allows scholars to have an alternative, non-arbitrary and complex description of the situation at hand that does not rely on the pre-dened language, problems, hidden assumptions, or alternatives. Science protects the practically-oriented academic from getting absorbed by the social systems of practice (Luhmann, 1994, p. 645). This view emphasizes the interactive and creative nature of the applications process (Beck and Bon, 1989; Shove and Rip, 2000). Application can be described as successful when the differences between scientic and practical knowledge construction lead to a dialogue which produces new opportunities for action. Respect Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004

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ing the self-referential nature of science will serve such a dialog better than demanding an identity that cannot exist. NOTE
*I wish to thank Alfred Kieser, James March and John Van Maanen for their comments and contributions to this paper. This study was supported by funding from Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

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