We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Find out more

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $52.50

Format:
Paperback
344 pp.
Numerous figures and tables, 156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199226306

Publication date:
June 2007

Imprint: OUP UK


Engaged Scholarship

A Guide for Organizational and Social Research

Andrew H. Van de Ven

The relationship between theory and practice, research and action, is fundamental to all fields of applied social science. Should research findings and knowledge be useful for science, practice, and policy? If so, how should such research be designed, carried out and disseminated to achieve the twin goals of rigor and relevance?

These challenges are particularly relevant in the applied areas of management and organization studies where there is a distinct responsibility for researchers to engage with the 'real world'. In this carefully crafted and thoughtful book, leading management researcher Andrew Van de Ven both presents the broad intellectual challenge of 'engaged scholarship', and also sets out a clear framework and guidelines for carrying out soundly based and useful research for advancing both science and practice.

At a time when some may question the value and status of academic knowledge; and others, contrastingly, urge a closer relationship between researchers and research users - be they businesses, governments or other institutions - the challenge of engaged scholarship is as relevant as ever, and there is a real need for the thoughtful and considered approach offered by Van de Ven.

The book both provides a manifesto for engaged scholarship in the social sciences, and clear framework for research design and methodology. It will be an invaluable reference point and guide for academics, researchers and graduate students across the social sciences concerned with rigorous and relevant research in the contemporary world.

Readership : Relevant for anyone undertaking or learning social science research: Graduate and doctoral students, researchers and academics, and other research professionals.

Reviews

  • `Without both rigor and relevance, business schools and their faculty will loose institutional legitimacy. Engaged Scholarship is a call to action and clear pathway for scholars. Van de Ven provides an insightful set of ideas where scholars can learn from the phenomena in service of insightful research that, in turn, affects practice. This co-production of knowledge opens up fundamentally new way for scholars in professional schools to conduct their research. This book is a wonderful and important contribution
    '
    Michael L. Tushman, Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
  • `Professor Andy Van de Vens (2007) tour de force provides a method of engaged scholarship for studying complex social problems that often exceed our individual skills to examine on our own. Engaged Scholarship is a participative form of research... Van de Ven (2007) is a landmark publication that offers potential for a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1970) moving from reductionism (Pfeffer, 1993) and towards theoretical and methodological pluralism. It persuasively offers engaged scholarship as a better way than the current status quo of creating knowledge for social science and practice.'
    Joseph T. Mahoney

1. Engaged Scholarship in a Professional School
2. Philosophy of Science Underlying Engaged Scholarship
3. Formulating the Research Problem
4. Building a Theory
5. Process and Variance Models
6. Designing Variance Studies
7. Designing Process Studies
8. Communicating and Using Research Knowledge
9. Practicing Engaged Scholarship

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Andrew H. Van de Ven is Vernon H. Heath Professor of Organizational Innovation and Change in the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1972, and taught at Kent State University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before his present appointment. He is co-author of Group Techniques for Program Planning (Scott Foresman, 1975), Measuring and Assessing Organizations (Wiley, 1980), Perspectives on Organization Design and Behavior (Wiley, 1981), and The Innovation Journey (1999), Organizational Change and Innovation Processes: Theory and Methods for Research (2000), and Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation (2004), all by Oxford University Press. Van de Ven was 2000-2001 President of the Academy of Management and is a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

There are no related titles available at this time.

Special Features

  • Provides chapter-length treatments of philosophy of science, problem formulation, theory building, and problem solving
  • Breaks research studies into four basic steps, providing an integrated view, and advice, on these
  • Includes useful worksheets to design process and variance models for designing studies
  • Emphasizes the social nature of the research process
  • Ideal for graduate courses on research methods
  • Major contribution to the broader movement of 'engaged scholarship'