SIX
Rigor and Relevance in Organizational Research
Experiences, Reflections, and a Look Ahead
“THERE IS NOTHING so practical as a good theory.” “You cannot understand a system until you try to change it.” These are the practical dictums about the relevance of knowledge and its rigorous development offered by Kurt Lewin, the father of social psychology. They represent what we believe and do: in the case of Lawler, as an “applied scholar,” and Mirvis, his onetime grad student and longtime friend, as a “scholarly practitioner.” Our understandings and pursuit of Lewin’s twin precepts about knowledge gathering and use have evolved during a combined 70-plus years studying individuals and organizations.
In this chapter we reflect on matters of rigor and relevance in our scholarship and research programs. The first part is autobiographical as we contend that a scholar’s interest in and skills for producing useful knowledge are to some extent a product of self-selection, socialization, and identity formation, all in turn shaped by career stages, twists, and turns. One theme is that the dynamic “fit” between who researchers are and what they study influences (and can transform) their stance on rigor versus relevance over time. Our personal interests and career paths have led us to construct research programs that increasingly stress relevance and that take us deeply into the workings of organizations and management practices.
A related theme is that the fit between a scholar’s research program and the environment also informs research opportunities and methodological choices pertaining to rigor versus relevance. Much has been said about how current academic incentives and promotional standards have driven out practical scholarship from the research programs of most business school professors. Rather than examine the reasons for this, we focus instead on what it takes to create practical scholarship that stands up to scientific scrutiny. Our respective choices of content and methods as well as our interpretations and presentations of findings have surely been influenced by where we have worked, what subjects we have investigated, and what was occurring in the organizations we have researched and in the economy/society. Our niche has been largely defined by the study of complex and dynamic phenomena, by the interests of those who have funded and hosted our research, and by our research mission to both humanize and improve organizational behavior.
Moving beyond our personal stories, the second part of this chapter focuses on how to identify and frame interesting and actionable subjects and on what types of research are best suited to building theory and improving practice. It presents a mix of ideas on ways that rigorously relevant research can be designed and executed to pass muster in today’s academic and organizational environments.
Two Careers
Few academics learn how to “manage” a useful research program in graduate school. We are not exceptions; hence our respective missteps and mastery in crafting research efforts conducive to our interests evolved through on-the-job training. In our careers, we both have sought out new or underexplored subject matter and aimed to promote innovations in organization practice and behavior. In this area, too, we had scant training in market scouting and creative problem finding. Instead, we learned about these things from engaging with innovative organizations and practitioners.
Career Stage 1: The Student Years
We will begin our exploration of what shapes a researcher’s bent with Lawler who, as an undergraduate at Brown University, majored in psychology, studied learning theory, and ran lab rats, but had no particular faculty mentor or calling to academia. Nearing graduation, he sought a human resources (HR) job, but interviews at AT&T and IBM did not pan out. He was told that to be an HR executive, he should earn a master’s degree. This advice along with his interest in psychology led to multiple applications to graduate programs in industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology that yielded two hits: one was an acceptance to Wayne State (based on his application being rejected by and then forwarded from the University of Michigan!); the other one led him to University of California, Berkeley.
Arriving at Berkeley in 1960, he discovered that they did not have a master’s program; rather master’s degrees were awarded to those individuals that did not make it in the PhD program. Not wanting a consolation prize, he decided to pursue a PhD. At this point, he certainly was not the scholarly type and did not see himself in a faculty job. He simply wanted to get a degree and a good job in business.
At Berkeley, lacking financial aid, he officiated volleyball and basketball games and graded papers in a course on child psychology taught by Professor Richard Alper, who partnered with Timothy Leary in LSD experiments, studied with spiritual teachers in India, and became known as Baba Ram Dass. Neither the mysticism nor the psychedelics figured into Lawler’s scholarly or life explorations. However, meeting up with Lyman Porter, a young assistant professor at the time, opened up new academic vistas.
Porter had launched a large study of managerial attitudes, which Lawler joined. To this point, most studies of workplace attitudes had focused on clerical or blue-collar workers. Porter’s work examined managers’ outlooks on the job and investigated the effects of organization size, management level, and such on managers’ job satisfaction and motivation. Porter was a classically trained researcher and meticulous when it came to research: Are you sure of the data? Are you going too far with that conclusion? This cautious and questioning attitude was drummed into his student by Porter.
Lawler’s PhD dissertation on the relationship between attitudes and performance was the basis for his book with Porter on motivation and satisfaction (Porter & Lawler, 1968). His dissertation study involved fieldwork. He talked with managers about the whys and wherefores of the study to solicit their participation and had discussions (e.g., debriefings) with them about what the findings might mean in practice. But this was not a foray into “participatory research,” nor was the intent to change the work situations of managers in the study. On the contrary, Lawler’s prime attention was to theoretical framing, hypothesis testing, methodological rigor, and of course, to not overstating the implications.
Lawler, like many of his contemporaries, was schooled and socialized in traditional social science research methods. Although that might seem rigid and limiting, there is something to be said for apprenticing in this way. Visual artists, for example, first learn to draw shapes and the human form before embarking on more abstract or multimedia creations. So, too, we would argue that those that choose to step away from traditional research methods are well served by first mastering them, internalizing what they do and do not offer in producing valid and useful knowledge, and then carrying that with them as they explore other methods.
Career Stage 2: Professoring at Yale
Nearing completion of his studies, Lawler was offered a job by Yale University in their Department of Industrial Administration, later called Administrative Sciences. No interview, no visits, just a job offer that he accepted. He spent his first years focused on teaching, writing scholarly articles for the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) and Organizational Behavior and Human Performance OBHP and his motivation book with Porter. Suffice it to say, he was following what was the traditional academic career model at the time.
The Ad Sci Department in the 1960s was led by Chris Argyris and housed a remarkably polyglot group of faculty, some of whom saw themselves developing a new paradigm for organizational research, identified later as action science (Argyris, Putnam, & Smith, 1985). In that camp with Argyris were Clay Alderfer, Fritz Steele, Roger Harrison, and others who kept up the Lewinian tradition and studied T-groups and participatory change processes. They were self-titled, to use Argryis’s language, as the “interpersonally competents” and did action research and consulting.
A second group of faculty that included Lawler, J. Richard Hackman, Gerrit Wolfe, Tim Hall, and Ben Schneider were less “touchy-feely” in their choice of subject matters, less apt to be involved in consulting and change work, and more inclined to conduct survey-based and quasi-experimental research. The department divided informally into IPC (ipcee) and IPI (ipee) clusters—the interpersonally competent and the interpersonally incompetent. Lawler was in the latter group.
Although the differences between the two groups could have driven an acrimonious wedge through the faculty (and students), Argyris managed to prevent it from happening by hosting productive discussions of methods and epistemology. The two camps vigorously debated the merits of their different research models. The IPCs advocated Lewin’s idea that changing a system was the best way to understand it; the IPIs wondered whether you could do “good science” as a change agent—for example, could you be objective about the results of any interventions you make?
For our purposes, two points about the configuration and operation of Yale’s Ad Sci group are significant—as career influencers and as teachable points in the management of researchers. First, the Yale case illustrates how researchers with particular theoretical, methodological, and epistemological preferences tend to self-identify and clan together (aided by the presence of an “out-group”!). Second, it demonstrates the value of peer debate and pluralism within a scholarly community. Whereas the former reinforces scholars’ prevailing beliefs and sentiments, the latter can open eyes and minds to alternative views and create respect for diversity.
During his years at Yale, Lawler undertook fieldwork that focused on the interface between person and organization. He studied the effects of organizational structures and practices, including pay, and wrote about the implications of his findings for practice. He and Hackman collected data to test their theory of the impact of job design on motivation (Hackman & Lawler, 1971). He also collected company data for his book on management development (Campbell et al., 1970). All of this research registers in the “relevance” column. At the same time, his self-questioning, his strong belief in the separation of research and intervention roles, and his conservatism in choosing methods and framing conclusions kept him solidly in the camp of the IPIs.
Lawler’s career at Yale ended when he was denied promotion by economists guarding scarce social science tenure slots. He was contacted by the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the psychology department at the University of Michigan and asked, “Have you ever raised research money before?” His answer: “No.” “Have you ever managed multiple research projects and researchers?” “No.” Undaunted, ISR offered him a job in 1972 and he took it. He saw it as a risky move to unfamiliar terrain but also as a chance to do large-scale field research and to learn from the “masters” how to do funded research.
Mirvis, mentored by Lawler through his PhD years in organizational psychology at the University of Michigan, got bitten by the organizational change bug as a Yale undergrad in the late 60s, where he was a psychology/ad sci major. He took a reading course under Hackman, did a traditional field study under Schneider, and met others in the IPI camp. He also participated in T-groups—three courses—to get some IPC credentials. He knew of but never met Lawler on the campus. His college years were marked by campus protest over the Vietnam War and civil rights issues. Many classes pointed out how scholars were part of the establishment; others highlighted their liberating potential. All of this presaged his personal and a larger institutional inquiry into the limitations of positivistic social science and its role in serving the interests of “power-elites” (Gouldner, 1962; Guskin & Chelser, 1973).
Career Stage 3: The Institute for Social Research
ISR was founded just after World War II to, appropriately enough, apply behavioral and social science knowledge to society’s conflicts and ills. In the 1970s, it housed research groups concerned with group dynamics, the public’s economic and social behavior, and a coterie of organizational scholars including Rensis Likert, Dave Bowers, Dan Katz, Bob Kahn, Stan Seashore, and others who had advanced theories of organizational behavior and studied them in the field, often through survey research.
Lawler was hired as a program director in the survey research center with the expectation that he would continue his studies of motivation, pay, job design, and organization design. He was also expected to obtain research funding, launch field studies, and support younger research faculty and doctoral students in the organizational psychology program, which Mirvis joined in 1973.
This new career stage presented Lawler with new challenges with respect to the rigor versus relevance dimensions of scholarly work. The teaching and university service dimensions of faculty life shrunk for Lawler, but his role expanded in three areas: (1) theorizing about human behavior in organizations; (2) devising multiple methods to study human behavior at work during and after planned changes; and (3) managing a program of change research involving a complex mix of institutions and actors. The options and choices made in each area revealed complexities within and trade-offs between traditional scientific rigor and relevance.
QWL program
There wasn’t a Quality of Worklife (QWL) program at Michigan when Lawler arrived. There was the Quality of Employment interview study and a body of research conceptualizing and studying organizations as social systems. Seashore joined Lawler to co-lead the QWL program group.
The need for a more encompassing and practice-oriented theory of QWL was urgent in the early 1970s. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had issued a report on Work in America (O’Toole, 1971) that pointed to growing worker alienation in factories (“blue collar blues”) and discontent among office staff (“white collar woes”). In turn, costly counter-productive behavior (absenteeism, turnover, and shoddy workmanship) seemed to be on the rise. The quality problems among U.S. automakers and the rise of Japan Inc. exemplified the consequences. Studies such as “Where have all the robots gone?” pointed to the mismatch between educated workers and dumber-than-ever jobs (Sheppard & Herrick, 1972).
Various fixes were being offered to aid American industry ranging from Volvo’s “team assembly” of automobiles to the participatory team system at the Topeka Dog Food plant of General Foods. Still, the usefulness of these practices was in question as labor unions generally opposed them, and others doubted their effectiveness.
Many researchers had theories of how redesigned work and organizational systems might address the morale and performance problems facing the nation. For instance, Likert (1967) and Bowers (1976) posited how organizations might feature participatory structures and processes that would promote intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction and capitalize on the ideas of workers. The sociotechnical school proposed that semi-autonomous work groups could function better than the hierarchical model. Richard Walton (1972) laid out principles for a better quality of work life and showed how moving organizational systems from control to commitment would reduce alienation.
But these and many other visions of a more humane and productive workplace were not clearly linked, conceptually or empirically, to scholarship on how organization structure, job designs, supervisory practices, and work group dynamics affect employee motivation, job satisfaction, and performance. The conceptual challenge was to pull these threads together into an overarching model of the quality of work life and link it to theorizing on organization effectiveness. The research challenge was to study these linkages and assess the impact of different ways to improve the quality of work life.
Rigorous methods
The research design for the QWL program was to introduce changes in work organizations that would be formulated and implemented by experts in organization development, sociotechnical systems, and labor-management cooperation. The Michigan QWL group would act as an “independent” assessor of the change process and results. This fit the “third party” assessment logic favored in evaluation research and was in keeping with Lawler’s belief that a separation of research and intervention roles was the best way to create credible unbiased results when an organizational intervention is studied.
Devising methods to track the impact of different kinds of interventions across multiple locales was mind stretching for the researchers involved. A job redesign, for example, could alter supervisory behavior, group dynamics, the mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, and the overall experience a jobholder might have. Altering authority patterns via participatory management or changing organizational arrangements via information and communication systems might change the full panoply of individual, group, and organizational behavior. To capture the impact of such broad-based and rippling changes in an organization, the QWL group needed multilevel, multidimensional theories, and multiple research methods, measures, and statistics.
A QWL survey covering the full range of organizational characteristics and individual attitudes was developed. In addition, methods for measuring work performance, absenteeism, and turnover in behavioral and financial terms were devised. Further, to capture features of each intervention and the more qualitative aspects of change, a method for workplace observation was developed. Taken together, these tools provided a way of recording and, in some cases, quantifying the impact of change on the quality of work life (Seashore et al., 1983).
Each of the QWL instruments had its own logic and methods. Pulling them into a coherent assessment meant observing the intervention closely, specifying “mini-models” of expected changes in attitudes and behavior, and testing the effects through repeated measures. To deal with all the factors that might impact conclusions about the results of changes in work systems, Lawler proposed the idea of “adaptive experiments” that included multiple methods and measures. Where feasible, a comparison group within the organization under study and on-site observation were used to yield a mosaic of evidence linking work system changes to all of the factors measured, observed, and recorded (Lawler, Nadler, & Cammann, 1980).
Factoring in relevance
In research of such a large scale and scope, there are multiple stakeholders to consider, many of which have interests that are practice oriented. As an example, the QWL studies were funded by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce and by the Ford Foundation. These sponsors were interested in theorizing and research that would identify “levers” for improving QWL in organizations. They also wanted to document what kinds of interventions would produce significant changes in human and organization behavior. Thus, many of the QWL projects were conceived of as “demonstration projects” to show how work redesign could improve employee attitudes and performance.
Many of the projects involved the creation of joint labor-management committees to sponsor and oversee the change programs. Launching a project involved complex negotiations with large firms and national unions to create a “shelter agreement” whereby interventions could be undertaken that did not conform to existing collective bargaining agreements. Naturally, questions were asked about research methods, standards of proof, and practical matters, such as how much time would be taken from production, who would have access to data, how intrusive the measurements would be, matters of confidentiality, and so on. In many instances, management and labor were not in full agreement about proposed changes nor the value of the research effort. Standard protocols needed to be modified in light of their concerns.
Furthermore, there was friction between interventionists and researchers. Who wants to be “evaluated” by an independent group, let alone one applying semi-standardized criteria and research methods to a unique intervention? In some cases, there was not agreement on the validity and relevance of particular measures and methods, nor on their capacity to capture the more nuanced aspects of organization change. There were concerns, too, that organization members might perceive them as “tests” or simply as unwelcome intrusions into organization life. Finally, there were concerns as to whether or not the researchers were biased and prone to fault finding in the guise of academic inquiry.
The diverse interests and concerns of all of the stakeholders challenged even the relaxed criteria of scientific research rigor. There was simply no way to “shelter” these research projects, as one would a laboratory study, from the complex sociopolitical environment that surrounded them. Nor was it desirable to do so: After all, this mix was part and parcel of the change process.
Managing a research program
The QWL research program illustrates how a scholar who is concerned with generating rigorous and relevant findings faces a plethora of conceptual, research, and operational challenges. In essence, a researcher has to learn how to manage a complex research program—soup to nuts. Factors including a research team, leadership, teamwork, planning, performance reviews, publicity, individual and collective learning, fund-raising, and so on need attention.
The competencies required go beyond the intellectual and scientific ones needed for theorizing and researching to include negotiation, relationship building, leadership, and communication. Adaptability and resilience are needed along with patience and persistence. The broad point is that scholars who aim to produce useful research through large-scale field research have to have some degree of managerial acumen and be “closet” or maybe academic entrepreneurs.
To manage the QWL program, Lawler created a matrix structure where one axis was the individual project evaluation teams and the other housed methods specialists on QWL surveys, behavioral-economic assessments, observation methods, and so on. These slots were filled by study directors (akin to assistant professors) and graduate students who had their own research interests and project management aptitudes.1
To execute the change side of the QWL program, Lawler created a Washington, DC office. It was staffed with a director and several support individuals who were charged with finding receptive companies and unions and creating a match between a change agent and the project that was identified by the union and management. The Washington office only started projects that agreed to be studied by the assessment team at ISR. Ultimately, eight large-scale union-management projects were created and studied.
Mirvis as mentee
Mirvis came into the QWL program as a first-year graduate student in 1973. The year before Mirvis joined a Business and Employment Council in Ohio. At the council, Mirvis worked with Barry Macy to develop measures of the rate and costs of counter-productive behavior in organizations. When the agency folded, they went to Michigan/ISR as a PhD student and study director, respectively. Macy and Mirvis (1976) handled the behavioral-economic research axis and had evaluation responsibilities in one or more projects.
The doctoral student community at Michigan was very talented. Not surprisingly, it also divided into its own camps. One segment was more orthodox in its outlook on research rigor and roles and more apt to do dissertations based in establish niches of scholarship and methods. The other segment was more exploratory, more inclined toward qualitative studies, and more apt to be involved as interventionists in action research-type projects.
Career Transitions: Identity Shifts
The QWL community at Michigan was involved in a continuous dialogue on our research methods and on our findings. Given its diversity, there was often debate about the merits of “soft” versus “hard” methods and of quantitative versus qualitative measures of the changes introduced in the organizations studied. In many respects these conversations replicated the IPC versus IPI arguments at Yale but covered some new-to-the-field research questions:
Reductionism versus Holism. Many researchers drilled down into the specific variables to locate QWL changes in organizations, whereas others focused more on the big picture and data patterns. Whose conclusions were more valid?
Generalizability of Findings. Many of the individual projects yielded insights into organizational dynamics, confirmed hypotheses, and testified to the impact of QWL interventions. This sparked debate: Can n = 1 studies yield conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions or should caution limit their generalizability? Naturally, the change agents and sponsors had an interest in this debate as well.
Attitude Change—What Is Significant? Several studies found measurable changes (p > .01) over time in employee attitudes. Was this an alpha (a change in the attitude measured), beta (a change in the intensity of ratings of an attitude), or gamma change (changes in intensity and the meaning of what is being measured)? And, what if survey data said something different than the “smell of the place”?
The QWL researchers argued about the validity of what we could count (such as physical changes in work arrangements) versus what we could sense (such as psychosocial changes in work relationships); about the role of explicit versus tacit explicit knowledge in interpreting what was going on and drawing conclusions; and naturally, over the use of the “self” as a research instrument. All of these matters were, in turn, framed in larger debates within the social sciences at the time, occasioned by the emergence of symbolic, interpretive, and postmodern theorizing and research methodologies.
We mention these debates for three reasons. First, they reveal the nuances and complexity behind any discussion of rigor versus relevance. The univariate continuum between rigor and relevance exploded into multidimensional space in our researgch group with traditionalists sometimes allying with action researchers and postpositivists occasionally crying out for more objectivity. Second, although these scrums did not resolve the questions at issue, they evidence the value of dialogue, diversity, and reflective practice. Lawler had experienced this at Yale with Argyris; Mirvis experienced this at Michigan with Lawler and Seashore. Finally, these reflections and the praxis of the QWL program also influenced how we developed as researchers.
Lawler as “action researcher”
While studying the QWL projects, Lawler became fascinated with new plant start-ups at TRW, Procter & Gamble, General Foods, Honda, and other corporations. The “greenfield” status of these plants gave companies an opportunity to immediately create a highly participative team-based system without having to go through a change process. This opportunity provided an ideal research setting in which to test his theoretical work concerning motivation, employee involvement, and organizational effectiveness.
Working with the new plants, Lawler fell into the role of being both consultant and researcher. As a result of these projects and his work on gain-sharing plans, he became more interested in creating change in organizations. As much as he “hated” to admit it, he was doing Argyris-type action research. Still, in keeping with his scholarly traditions, he collected survey and performance data over time in these projects.
It may be post hoc justification, but Lawler now feels that he has learned the most about how organizations function and change from projects where he has combined the evaluation and change roles. Among other things, he has learned about the difficulties, challenges, and tough decisions that have to be made when one is trying to guide a change project. Apparently Kurt Lewin was correct on this count!
Mirvis as “reflective practitioner.”
Mirvis and Lawler also worked on some “one-off” research projects at ISR. One involved an investigation of the financial impact of employee attitudes (Mirvis & Lawler, 1977). By the mid-1970s, Lawler was increasingly interested in more “levers” for effecting change in organizations. He saw the possibility of producing a company integrative report on QWL and making the information known to investors through a firm’s annual report. He and Mirvis included a report on QWL in Graphic Controls Corporation for its 1977 Annual Report and, in a subsequent survey of investors, documented its relevance as a new form of social accounting (Lawler & Mirvis, 1981). The work gained some national visibility and earned us the moniker of “meddlers” in business.
Mirvis also became reflective on the research process. He opened up to more “artful” methods of assessment in his dissertation under the guidance of another mentor, Don Michael (Mirvis, 1980). Working with Seashore, he began to think about doing organization research responsibly in a complex social context (Mirvis & Seashore, 1979). This collaboration led to protocols for negotiating research regimens mindful of the interests of and risks to the full range of stakeholders implicated in a study. And, at the urgings of fellow student David Berg, he examined the role of social construction and his own psyche in shaping research findings (Mirvis & Louis, 1985). These reflections, in turn, have shaped his work as an interventionist.
Career Stage 4: Establishing and Managing CEO
Lawler’s move to the University of Southern California in 1978 led to the further evolution of Lawler’s interest in combining research rigor and relevance. He arrived with the thought that he would take on a regular senior faculty role. He soon realized he had been spoiled by his years at ISR. He was addicted to a setting that was designed to support field research, one that provided data analysts, administrative support, flexible use of time and contacts with research sites and funding sources. When he arrived at USC, none of these existed. Once he realized this, he decided to create a research center that would do the kind of useful research he valued. At this point, we will just briefly discuss CEO as it is covered in Chapter 3.
Running a corporate membership organization
Around the time Lawler moved to USC, the federal government more or less ceased funding in the QWL arena, and private foundations shifted their monies toward social needs. Realizing he could not replicate ISR, he decided to organize CEO as a corporate member research organization where companies would come together to share knowledge about organizational issues and practices and participate in CEO research studies. The corporate members were funders, co-shapers, and consumers of CEO research. Early sponsors included GE, Honeywell, TRW, and Digital. Their influence helped to push Lawler further toward applicable scholarship.
Most scholars and students in the QWL group at ISR were trained in organization psychology. At CEO, Lawler developed a team of scholars trained in multiple disciplines who were oriented toward improving organizational practice. Indeed, the Center has as its purpose improving how effectively organizations are managed. Over the 32 years of the Center’s operation, its researchers have had interests and expertise in organization structures and systems, leadership practices, labor economics, business strategy, organization development, and human resource management.2 With these more “macro” interests and core competencies, theorizing and studies at CEO have tended to focus on how different organizational arrangements impact the financial effectiveness of enterprise as well as the welfare of their employees.
At USC, Lawler’s interests increasingly focused on systemic rather than individual or team behavior. Much of his pre-USC research looked at the impact of select organizational attributes, such as compensation systems, on people and organization behavior. At USC he has extended his work to studies of information flows and coordination, the impact of high-involvement management systems, talent management strategies, senior management teaming, and the workings of corporate boards. Scholarship based on theories of human motivation has taken a back seat to studies framed in terms of system functioning. To an extent, this focus can be traced to corporate priorities and funding and to the proclivities of the CEO research team. Generating knowledge about these organizational features, it was reasoned, would give practitioners a better understanding of high-impact management changes and access to bigger levers for organizational improvement.
Finally, as the USC research program unfolded, Lawler shed his preference for separating intervention and research roles. He and the CEO team examine and opine on change management and do studies that combined research and change. In one respect, this is a necessity, as CEO has been self-funded at USC. The team has had to find projects that corporations, the government, and foundations are willing to support. Lawler has found that although there is still some funding for “pure research,” there is more interest in research projects that aim to improve organizational effectiveness.
Mirvis’s Career Directions
Mirvis left Michigan/ISR in 1980, a newly minted PhD, to look for work as a researcher/study director. He took a hybrid academic appointment at Boston University, teaching in the management school and working at the Center for Applied Social Science alongside psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists, his own mini-ISR. At BU, he modified the QWL survey for use as an employee survey in companies. He also began to study a broad portfolio of levers for change, including the introduction of computer technology in offices and factories, the launch of work-family programs and flextime in companies, and the impact of an acquisition on an enterprise. This latter study also moved him into an action role when Michael Blumenthal, learning of his work on the human side of acquisitions, asked Mirvis and a former ISR colleague, Mitchell Marks, to assist him in effecting the then-largest takeover in U.S. history (Burroughs and Sperry-Unisys).
When Mirvis lost his tenure case at BU in a political brouhaha, he threw up a shingle and fashioned a career in scholarly practice. The “action” side was emphasized through the 80s and 90s in further mergers and acquisitions (M&A) consultations and involvement with a socially responsible business in building its human organization. His research continued through this period, including a study with Lawler and others on human capital investments in companies. His scholarship became more organic, and his writings featured an anecdotal mix of ideas, case material, and thoughts on practice (cf, Mirvis & Marks, 1991).
Learning and Future Directions
In this part of the chapter, we consider where organizational research is and should be going. We begin the discussion with some observations about what determines the type of research organizational scholars choose to do. Not surprisingly, our observations are very much the product of our career experiences.
Matching the Person and Research (P-R Fit)
One theme emerging from the exploration of our respective scholarly lives is the fit between who we are as people and our research. Although every researcher’s journey is unique, a researcher typically changes during his or her career. Lawler’s journey matches that of many other senior organizational behavior scholars who “end up” doing useful research. Lawler was socialized early on as a mainstream scientific researcher: exploring core psychological phenomena with traditional methods and tools. His early career experiences at Yale opened him up to other methodological perspectives and the exigencies of running a research shop at Michigan and later USC pulled him to more action-oriented scholarship and research.
Later career writings turned from JAP to HBR and from books aimed at scholars and students to those aimed at practicing managers. As for personenvironment fit, his scholarly identity changed from Yale to Michigan to USC. As for his own motives for turning toward useful research, Lawler, when pressed, explained his outlook, “I get a kick out of doing work that makes people more effective and satisfied. It is rewarding to me. I’d rather do that than solve a crossword puzzle or deal with some statistical issue.”
He never has seen himself as a scholar or intellectual. Thus, his progression from A-journal research to a focus on useful research expresses his identity as a doer. What has remained constant for Lawler is his focus on gathering data. He began his career with collecting data on rats, and he continues to collect data on topics ranging from corporate board member behavior to the impact of outsourcing HR processes. Data provide the basis for his writing and are key to his focus on doing research that informs theory and practice.
Mirvis opened up to diverse methodologies earlier in his career. Much of his later scholarship involves case studies drawn from his active intervention in organizations, augmented by interviews and shared reflections from organization members. The output of this participatory research is often storytelling. In essence, he, too, has created action-and-research settings congenial to his purposes.
Personal preferences pushed Lawler and Mirvis toward practical ends, but there was also a certain pull to the “job” of doing applied research that has intrinsic appeal. Consider the job design of, say, a traditional versus more practice-oriented researcher. When it comes to “motivating characteristics,” both can score well on autonomy, challenge, and even “task completeness.” But which type of job offers more variety? And which offers more interaction and deeper social relations? And which scores highest on social significance? On these metrics, at least, more applied research and interaction with practitioners make for more stimulating and enjoyable work (at least for us!).
Matching the Research and Environment (R-E Fit)
Organizational studies are messy. People’s attitudes and behaviors may vary for a host of nonintervention and nonwork reasons. And many variables, not necessarily measured or controlled for in a study, may impinge on outcomes like job motivation, satisfaction, and performance. Throw in an intervention and you get Hawthorne effects, plus other unintended and second-order consequences that make it difficult to get a fix on what is theoretically and actually happening to the people and organizations that are being studied.
Most organizational researchers who venture into the field try to steer around these complications by conducting pre- and post-intervention surveys that test discrete hypotheses and ignore all the other things that might be going on. In classical positivist tradition, they presume that a “control group” can be found that is somehow unaffected by all of the varied things that go on in organizations. That was Lawler’s modus operandi in his early career studies of managerial attitudes, pay, and job design. A more organic, “hands on” research model was used in the adaptive experiments at Michigan.
Lawler’s scholarly thrust at ISR and USC has been toward more complex theorizing about organizational dynamics and more intensive measurement of phenomenon in motion. To some extent, this orientation is a function of the “supply side” of research: a combination of scholarly interests and ambitions, the competencies of researchers involved, and the institutional missions and capabilities of university-based research centers. But, the “demand side” also figures in. The study of large-scale organizational activity and change poses complex theoretical, methodological, and operational challenges. To connect to it requires requisite variety in the research gene pool of theoretical know-how and the capacity to theorize in the face of complex change processes.
This shift in one’s research focus, process, and organization is, in generic form, a matter of organization-environment fit. Lawler needs a complex research organization to match the complexity of what and whom he is studying. This is essential to meet the demanding standards of his diverse stakeholders for rigor and relevance. It is why he founded and continues to direct CEO, which provides an environment that makes useful research possible.
Obviously a group of very competent colleagues is key to Lawler being able to do useful research. At all three of his job stops (USC, Michigan, and Yale), Lawler has worked with great groups of researchers. Because of them, complex problems could be looked at from multiple points of view, projects got started that he would never have considered, and there was support for larger-scale, longer-term research. This kind of collegiality, we believe, is the most important environmental determinant of research directions and achievement. We also think it is more important in doing useful field studies than in doing most other kinds of organizational research. Useful research requires research teams to embrace multiple research logics and methods; and its success hinges on encouragement, constructive conflict, and lots of social support.
Though not regularly based in a research shop, Mirvis’s research arrangements also call for flexibility, adaptability, entrepreneurship, and real-time learning. He, too, undertakes studies involving a shifting team of scholars, from universities and research organizations, often crossing multiple continents. He engages organization members in collecting and analyzing data and in creating learning histories about their change programs, in one case covering a period of ten years (Mirvis, Ayas, & Roth, 2003).
Engaged Scholarship: What Enables Useful Research?
What can researchers do to help assure that their research is useful? Highly beneficial is openly engaging with organizations as co-creators of knowledge. Consider some ways co-creation translates into useful research.
Foresight. In our research, we have sought out new topics and tried to study innovative, often untested organizational practices. Some foresight in spotting emerging managerial and social issues and a willingness to take risks help in this. More important is our exposure to and involvement with fellow researchers who have different interests and points of view. But, the real gold mine has been our engagement with diverse organizations and creative practitioners. In many areas, practice in the best companies is ahead of theorizing. Scouting what they are doing and considering new organization practices can provide a rich roster of interesting and researchable topics.
Self-as-instrument. Close contact with practitioners in field studies, and their active engagement in the research process, often yields a sense of affinity and empathy across the research-practice divide. This more interactive and participatory process thrusts the scholar into the organizational system and, in traditional scientific terms, risks objectivity as the researcher “goes native.” At the same time, we find that deep engagement gives scholars a fuller and richer feel for the subject matter and people under study. In the process, the “self” becomes a research instrument that can stimulate insights into what is going on and provoke more grounded theorizing.
Managing a research organization. Another source of connection to practitioners and insights concerning practice comes from reflecting on how we operate our own research organizations. We each manage “mini” research shops, with budgets, employees, deadlines, and the like, and thus experience some of the challenges of management. In his large-scale studies, for instance, Lawler’s dealings with multiple funders, organizations, and stakeholders have helped him gain a feel for how to unfreeze and create forward movement in companies—critical for identifying high-impact levers and understanding how change can reverberate through companies. Mirvis has had to learn about multiorganizational dynamics in his consulting and action research with Noel Tichy, the Global Research and Education Network, and others. By comparison, most university professors are well-versed in the literature but are comparatively clueless about how organizations work—see how faculty meetings operate!
Adaptive scholarship. It may seem that we have sacrificed theory-building scholarship and traditional scientific research in service to our respective versions of P-R and R-E fits. But, it happens that our early academic socialization and personal interests in ideas have not faded. On the contrary, we are both animated by theorizing about human and organization behavior and continue to learn about things we think we know a lot about.
Finding a balance. Our simple message is that scholars need to work hard to find the “right balance” among ideals and interests in their research. Most organizations are not particularly sympathetic to cries for rigor when this means intrusive measurement and double-blind experiments. As a result, even the skilled researcher can only press so far when it comes to adding scientific rigor to his or her research agenda. But, in our experience, practitioners are sensitive to the importance of valid data and are open to give-and-take about the design of a credible study. There is no “formula” for finding the right balance between rigor and relevance; much depends on the topic being studied and the history of research in that area. However, we do feel strongly that when doing and evaluating research, if the relevance is high then less rigor should be accepted as a natural trade-off, just as when rigor is high some willingness to sacrifice relevance is appropriate.
Worrisome Trends
The last 50 years have seen an enormous change in the kind and amount of organizational research that is done. It has become a big business outside of universities and a major activity at leading business schools. There is no question that the field has progressed and that a great deal has been learned about organizations and people at work. But there are worrisome trends today that promise to take the field further away from research that informs both theory and practice.
Rigor over Relevance
Many of today’s organizational researchers in business schools have been trained, groomed, and rewarded for doing carefully controlled, theoretically driven research studies. New PhDs are expected to have made professional presentations and have one or more A-journal publications under review. These expectations put students’ emphases during graduate school on lab studies, secondary data analyses, and literature reviews. Field studies and action-research are simply too time consuming and practice driven to fit the resume-building stratagems of most graduate students. The same is true for junior faculty members in business schools who are expected to have five or more A-journal publications in order to get tenure.
Nowhere is this traditional approach more evident than in organizational behavior where today’s young scholars concentrate on laboratory research and simulations. Often they are trained in experimental social psychology (absent its historical connections to Lewinian action research). They are interested in studying social interaction, conflict resolution, and antisocial behavior such as lying and prejudice. These topics are surely relevant to how people are and should be managed. But the contrived situations that they put people in for very short periods of time—often involving deception and doing trivial tasks—have little resemblance to the reality of an organizational setting. In some cases, the research does not even involve human beings; instead, computer simulations are developed to measure the effects of things such as lying or negotiation strategies. The end result is that this type of research scores high on internal but low on external validity.
Are the findings from most of the research that is done today in business schools something that can guide practice? We do not think they can or should. It is simply too big a leap from the laboratory and computer to the situations that actually exist in organizations. Many of the scholars state that they intend eventually to validate their ideas in field settings, but we don’t see it happening: The academic environment simply doesn’t support it. Missing is the open dialogue about the merits of different methodologies that we found in our years at Yale and Michigan. What is also often missing in business schools is the preference for subject matter and methodological diversity in faculty staffing and promotion. Indeed, because of the way business schools operate today, there is little support and encouragement for younger faculty members to make the transition to fieldwork and applicable research; and it is not clear that it fits their skills or personalities.
Relevance over Rigor
Until recently knowledge production about organization behavior was primarily the province of the universities. Today, by contrast, think tanks and training companies (such as the Hudson Institute and the Center for Creative Leadership), consulting firms, and professional associations (such as the Society for Human Resource Management and American Society for Training and Development) are actively in the research game.
They churn out technical reports, conduct internet-based surveys, and offer insights about almost everything we in academia study. They are quicker to market and do not hesitate to say how the results should drive management practice. Often the details concerning sample construction, measurement properties, and the evidence behind insights are tucked into the back of their reports, if present at all. In many instances, the research doesn’t stand up to critical research design scrutiny, but that doesn’t seem to matter to practitioners, who often are not aware of the problems.
At one time companies, including AT&T, GE, and IBM, had internal research shops that worked on human resource management and organizational effectiveness. Professionals in these companies would periodically sponsor university studies or partner with university-based researchers. Most of these in-house research programs are gone. So, in many instances, is the idea that a business should support research to advance developments in theory and practice for the benefit of the “field.” Linkages between practitioners and universities still exist at a few places, such as CEO, that feature peer learning and knowledge exchange, but even there, support for original research seems to be waning.
What Do Organizations Want?
When buying research in the marketplace, firms have a choice: partner with a scholar to get a study done or with a consulting firm that will do a diagnostic study, recommend interventions, and implement them with a large complement of trained staff to support the change. Most firms opt for consulting firms and one-stop shopping. (Of course, there is always the suspicion that consultants find what they are looking for when doing research—problems that fit their areas of specialization. But at least they have the expertise to take action.) This trend toward “packaged” research-and-intervention is particularly pronounced in HR, where there seems to be little willingness to launch exploratory research or to study “untested” interventions and little interest in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. In response, academics are urging practitioners to adopt “evidence-based” management; but is there any evidence that we scholars can turn out evidence that is timely and compelling?
There was a time when operating managers read research-based books, such as McGregor’s The Human Side of Enterprise (1960) or Likert’s New Patterns of Management (1961), where scholarship was their key selling point. Today most managers and MBA students are clueless about theory, the nuances of research design and significance levels. With short attention spans and in need of a quick fix, they turn to e-clipping and digest services that offer USA Today–style summaries of research findings most germane to management, no matter their source or scientific status. The Harvard Business Review, once academics’ prime outlet for scholarly work aimed at practice, is today uncluttered with data and research results and seemingly unconcerned with the evidence base of what it presents. Needless to say, all of this works against academics who strive to balance relevance with rigor in their studies. Still, there are potential ways forward.
Future Directions
Following the principle “if you can’t beat them, join them,” one option is to develop more university-based research programs specifically aimed at practice. Research centers such as CEO include traditional and applied researchers as well as scholarly practitioners. University research shops that offer “theory-to-practice” services, including intervention, are especially appealing to companies that want a comprehensive “package.”
Another stratagem is for researchers to partner with consulting firms that value research and thought leadership. Mirvis, for instance, has partnered with McKinsey and the Reputation Institute on global studies. CEO has partnered with Booz and Company, Mercer, Towers Watson, Heidrick and Struggles, and Korn/Ferry. With their global reach, skilled staff, and practical smarts, these consulting firms bring more than their (fair) share to the partnership.
Applied researchers in universities can also “productize” some of their tools and frameworks. This approach can open doors to new research ventures and, as cash cows, can help fund more exploratory research. Our point is that researchers who want to do useful research need to be more managerially and commercially minded or at least hire someone to better manage their research practices.
Competitive practices can also be used. Efforts can be made, via blogs and popular books, to educate managers on the value of rigorous research and the importance of evidence-based management. Fuller exposition of counterintuitive theories and research findings can pique interests. Stronger debasement of pseudoscientific work may also help. Unfortunately, the odds are not high on this front: Twenty-five years ago journalists pointed out that many of the “excellent” companies cited by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman (In Search of Excellence, 1982) had become unprofitable. Recently Peters confessed that he hadn’t collected systematic data to support his choice of excellent companies. Good-to-Great firms cited by Jim Collins (2001), such as Circuit City and Fannie Mae, don’t look so great in hindsight either. Despite this, their work remains very respected by practitioners.
A final option, and the one we favor, is for academics to look ahead to the “new, new” things and do useful research in areas of high impact. Prahalad’s work (2004) on the “base of the pyramid” and the work of many of the other contributors to this book exemplify what can be done at the leading edge of theory and practice. This is the kind of scholarship that keeps us looking ahead, offers personal satisfaction, and is of interest to forward-looking companies that want to venture into new territory with a research partner.
REFERENCES
Argyris, C., Putnam, R., & Smith, D. (1985). Action science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bowers, D. (1976). Systems of organization: Management of the human resource. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research.
Campbell, J. P., Dunnette, M. D., Lawler, E. E., & Weick, K. E. (1970). Managerial behavior, performance, and effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap—and others don’t. New York: HarperBusiness.
Gouldner, A. W. (1962). Anti-minotaur: The myth of a valuefree sociology. Social Problems, 9, 199–213.
Guskin, A. E., & Chesler, M. A. (1973). Partisan diagnosis of social problems. In G. Zaltman (Ed.), Processes and phenomena of social change. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hackman, J. R., & Lawler, E. E. (1971). Employee reaction to job characteristics. Journal of Applied Psychology, 55, 259–286.
Lawler, E. E., & Mirvis, P. H. (1981). Measuring the quality of work life: How Graphic Controls assesses the human side of the corporation. Management Review, 70(10), 54–63.
Lawler, E., Nadler, D., & Cammann, C. (Eds.). (1980). Organizational assessment. New York: Wiley.
Likert, R. (1961). New patterns of management. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Likert, R. (1967). The human organization: Its management and value. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Macy, B. A., & P. H. Mirvis. (1976). A methodology for assessment of quality of work and organizational effectiveness in behavioral-economic terms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 212–226.
McGregor, D. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Mirvis, P. H. (1980). The art of assessing the quality of work life. In E. Lawler, D. Nadler, & C. Cammann (Eds.), Organizational assessment (pp. 471–489). New York: Wiley.
Mirvis, P. H., Ayas, K., & Roth, G. (2003). To the desert and back: The story of one of the most dramatic business transformations on record. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mirvis, P. H., & Lawler, E. E., (1977). Measuring the financial impact of employee attitudes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 1–8.
Mirvis, P. H., & Louis, M. R. (1985). Self-full research: Working through the self as instrument in organizational research. In D. N. Berg & K. K. Smith (Eds.), Exploring clinical methods for social research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Mirvis, P. H., & Marks, M. A. (1991). Managing the merger. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. (Republished in 2003 by Beard Books, Frederick, MD).
Mirvis, P. H., & Seashore, S. E. (1979). Being ethical in organizational research. American Psychologist, 34, 766–780.
O’Toole, J. (1971). Work in America: Report of a special task force to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H., Jr. (1982). In search of excellence. New York: HarperCollins.
Porter, L. W., & Lawler, E. E. (1968). Managerial attitudes and performance. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
Prahalad, C. K. (2004). The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Seashore, S. L., Lawler, E. E., Mirvis, P. H., & Cammann, C. (Eds.). (1983). Assessing organizational change: A guide to methods, measures, and practices. New York: Wiley Interscience.
Sheppard, H., & Herrick, N. (1972). Where have all the robots gone? New York: Free Press.
Walton, R. E. (1972). How to counter alienation in the plant. Harvard Business Review, 50(6), 70–81.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Philip Mirvis is an organizational psychologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Corporate Citizenship. His studies and private practice concerns large-scale organizational change, the character of the workforce and workplace, and business leadership in society. He has authored ten books on his studies including The Cynical Americans (social trends), Building the Competitive Workforce (human capital), Joining Forces, second edition (the human dynamics of mergers), and To the Desert and Back (a business transformation case). His most recent is Beyond Good Company: Next Generation Corporate Citizenship.
Edward E. Lawler III is Distinguished Professor of Business and Director of the Center for Effective Organizations in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He has been honored as a top contributor to the fields of organizational development, human resources management, organizational behavior, and compensation. He is the author of over 350 articles and 43 books. His most recent books include Achieving Strategic Excellence: An Assessment of Human Resource Organizations (2006), Built to Change (2006), The New American Workplace (2006), America at Work (2006), Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage (2008), and Achieving Excellence in Human Resource Management (2009). For more information, visit http://www.edwardlawler.com and http://ceo.usc.edu.