The Role of Research in Management Decision Making

Introduction The last decade or so has seen an immense growth in the amount of research carried out in a wide range of management aspects. Currently, the position is one of continuing growth, as a review of the many journals of management, organisation and allied subjects will testify. Not only has research become more widespread, it has also become much more sophisticated. A look at those same journals in the early 1960s will reveal methods of reporting very different from those of today. Now the use of statistical methods for data testing—especially multi‐variate techniques—is commonplace, if not always intelligible to the layman or even fellow academics and research workers. Research designs have become more elaborate, and the topics of research often elevated to such a level of academic sophistication as to seem irrelevant to the manager. While it would be unfair to suggest that all research in management takes this form, there is sufficient to make the manager ask what it all has to do with him, as Bennett et al and Gee make clear.