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encouraging openness to diverse world views and methodological approaches. This deliberate diversity

in the content and direction of the reading program permits the necessary focus to emerge if and when

some topic area arouses ones curiosity or sparks questions (seeHopwood, 2008). Another solution is to

consider placing PhD students in research teams. Research in fields such as opposed to individual

researchers. While one student might focus on the effect of climate change on ocean currents, another

is looking at how the debate is being manufactured through online blogs. Team-based engagement that

enables cross-disciplinary conversations might yield quite different research insights.

In testing wether the emerging research topic is appropriate, I agree with Ohlson that the best

research questions derive from an acute sense of how the world works as opposed to more or less

stylized theories originating in academia. So if, as a PhD student you do not know how the world

works, spend some time finding out about it. Talk to practitioners, observe their activities, look at the

reports and data they use to enable them to act. If you are a management accountant, you might be

interested to know why budgets continue to be used in fast-moving industries; you might be curious as

to how joint ventures can be both tightly controlled and also built on high trust between partners. As an

audito, you might be interested to know how risk-based auditing has changed in the aftermath of the

global financial crisis and fears of unpredictable climate events. Or you might be curious as to how a

small list of journals publish by a media company can exert such influence on the activities of business

schools around the globe, and what this might mean about institusionalised forms of performance

management.

It will be obvious that there is a sleight of hand here: no empirical question is strictly empirical,

for the manner in which we ask and observe already begins to belie underlying theoretical ideas. The

world does not present itself and we ask about it from certain perspective. Hence, underlying the

questions listed above are conceptual issues about the management of collaborative corporate forms,

of the paradox of using static tools in highly dynamic environments, of the emergence of global

governance that exerts control over distant places in quite unintended ways, etc. Our theorization of

the world is clearly inevitable and we should try to be aware of our theoretical pre-judgments and

commitments, but if doctoral students were to engage early with the world of practice then there is an

opportunity for them (and the wider research community) to understand it better.

The model of innovation in the medical and physical sciences is also salutary. The invention of a

new medical vaccine, for example, take decades of slow, incremental progress. Tenacity does not equal

blind faith in ones methods or theories, but it does require researchers to develop a degree of self-

belief, backed by some evidence, in the pursuit of their world view. Interesting research comes not

necessarily from having eureka moments, but from long years of debate with diverse others in order to

develop and refine ones point of view. One does not give up simply because top journals does not take

a certain type of work; for it could well be the judgement of journal editors and reviewers that should be

in question.

Journals are but means to ends as opposed to ends in themselves. They are a communicative

medium; they enable conversations to occur in research communities. They are fallible media.

Occasionally, they publish work that ought not to have been accepted; and occasionally they do not

publish work that ought to be accepted. So, if one journal rejects our work take heart another

community may wish to listen to us; or we may consider different ways to make our research

persuasive, e.g. through a different theoretical framing or a more telling motivation.

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My final message is to those of us who are journal editors. Because communities have particular

modes of discourse, it is natural that journal communities often develop distinctive style of talking. It is

important for journal editors to be conscious of this, and to ensure that style does not end up being a

straitjacket that narrows entry of new and diverse entrants to research conversations. For researchers,

we do need to learn the language of a journal community in order for communication to occur but our

adaptation should be at the level of language, not at the level of conceptual framing. Playing strategic

theoretical games entails the risk of compromisingeven sacrificingour theoretical integrity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I encourage researchers to self-reflect on the kinds of successful projects that they wish to

engage in. There are numerous bodies of common knowledge; success is socially manufactured and

politics inevitable. So, what kind of choices make sense for us as individuals and communities of

scholars?

Live is very short, and my encouragement to PhD students and to researchers more generally is

that each of us conduct research on our own terms, and not wholly on the terms defined by others, no

matter how powerful. There is a tendency to view a PhD as a constrained choice but time is the key non-

renewable resource that we possess and it seems the height of irrational choice to not expand our

choice horizon and to choose our passion.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledgements the helpful comments of David Cooper and Salvador Carmona and the

meticulous research assistance of Sonia Powell.