An economist conversant with management: Clem A. Tisdell

Throughout his illustrious career Professor Clem Tisdell has displayed a holistic sense of scholarship rare amongst contemporary economists. Tisdell has been prepared to look both within and beyond his discipline and maintain a critical but balanced assessment of the shortcomings of mainstream microeconomic theory and the offerings of rival research programs on a broad range of economic issues, not the least of which includes the focus of this paper, business management. Having a penchant for Marshallian, “fieldwork‐driven” industrial economics and practical application of micro theory, Tisdell has traversed a range of topics of interest to management scholars including management motivation, R&D effort, business strategy, and institutional arrangements making for positive externalities and technology transfer. It is argued that this makes for a better “conversation” or dialogue between economists and management analysts, particularly strategy scholars, as both essentially have at heart a similar explanandum: the nature and causes of value and wealth creation conceived both in micro and in macroeconomic contexts.