CLF Seminar by Professor Matthew Cronin (George Mason University)

The Knowledge Production System

Abstract

Many bemoan the limited influence that management science has on management practice. Many have offered reasons for this state, and solutions to those issues. Yet these address symptoms, not root causes. The problem is the fields’ perspective on how knowledge is produced and disseminated. We treat scholarly activities as portfolio of loosely coupled functions as opposed to a production system. Reinterpreting the field as a production system that should be specialized and coordinated makes it easier to identify who does what, and more importantly how these activities come together to produce and disseminate what is new, true, and important. This means re-thinking many fundamental beliefs about what constitutes impact, and what constitutes translation. In the end, field could use this as a model to better integrate research as well as more fairly evaluate its people.

About Professor Cronin

Matthew A. Cronin is a professor of management at George Mason University. He received his PhD in organizational behavior from Carnegie Mellon University.

Cronin's research seeks to understand how collaboration can help produce creative ideas, and what it takes to then bring these ideas to fruition. Innovation begins with a creative idea or notion, and so one stream of Cronin's research focuses on the generation of creative ideas, especially how people come to discover useful interactions. Once produced, creative ideas require instantiation in the task environment. Thus the second stream of Cronin's research explores the process by which innovative ideas are accepted and implemented by others.