Trends in methodologies of published articles: Implications for management and business scholars

Abstract

In a global context of declining productivity growth and declining returns to research as well as to research and development, academic research methodologies are under increasing pressure to deliver societally important research outputs. Whereas most disciplines have a delimited, or generally circumscribed theory base that they draw on, management theory necessarily draws on multidisciplinary, or indeed transdisciplinary, frameworks. This paper seeks to identify the core debates in certain of the latest articles published at the forefront of the field of research innovation, from its leading journal. It seeks to build on the conversations in these articles, by juxtaposing their topics and methodologies against certain theoretical propositions derived from novel theory. In so doing, the conceptual distance of the front line of the field from the radical front line of theory in the field is quantified. Methodological implications are discussed and recommendations are made for business and management theory and practice.