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Reframing Relevance as ‘Social Usefulness’: A Comment on Hodgkinson and Starkey's ‘Not Simply Returning to the Same Answer Over and Over Again’
Author(s) -
Willmott Hugh
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
british journal of management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.407
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1467-8551
pISSN - 1045-3172
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00839.x
Subject(s) - cognitive reframing , relevance (law) , critical realism (philosophy of perception) , emancipation , realism , sociology , public relations , epistemology , engineering ethics , political science , psychology , social psychology , law , politics , engineering , philosophy
This is a commentary on H odgkinson and S tarkey's ( British Journal of Management , 22 (2011), pp. 355–369) proposal to reframe the relevance of business and management research by combining design science with critical realism. Their proposal is welcomed for its advocacy of a ‘social usefulness’ agenda and for commending the insights of the social sciences, rather than emulating a professional (e.g. medical school) model. However, the advocacy of critical realism is not consistent with the commended conception of design science; and it also risks devaluing the contribution of other progressive, emancipation‐oriented approaches to research. Despite substituting ‘social usefulness’ for ‘relevance’, H odgkinson and S tarkey's proposal does not challenge the established, comparatively narrow, research agenda. The counterproposal prioritizes a conception of relevance/social usefulness that broadens what is studied by business school researchers as well as changing how established topics are researched.