Is Management Interdisciplinary? The Evolution of Management as an Interdisciplinary Field of Research and Education in the Netherlands

Management research and education are often characterized as being interdisciplinary. However, most discussions on what interdisciplinarity in management studies means have bogged down in ideological fixations. In this paper we alternatively take a historical perspective and analyze the evolution of the interdisciplinarity concept in management studies during the last decades in the Netherlands. We distinguish between two opposite versions of interdisciplinarity: a synoptic (conceptual) and an instrumental (pragmatic) one. Both versions resulted from different knowledge strategies (boundary-wo... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Baalen, P.J. (Peter) van
Karsten, L. (Luchien)
Dokumenttyp: workingPaper
Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
Schlagwörter: Interdisciplinarity / disciplinarity / history of management education / management education / management science
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29615429
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://repub.eur.nl/pub/10537

Management research and education are often characterized as being interdisciplinary. However, most discussions on what interdisciplinarity in management studies means have bogged down in ideological fixations. In this paper we alternatively take a historical perspective and analyze the evolution of the interdisciplinarity concept in management studies during the last decades in the Netherlands. We distinguish between two opposite versions of interdisciplinarity: a synoptic (conceptual) and an instrumental (pragmatic) one. Both versions resulted from different knowledge strategies (boundary-work) of competing and cooperating disciplines. We conclude that in the Netherlands instrumental versions of interdisciplinarity in management research and education prevailed.