Archive for 13 March 2008
Big Think in Management Research
| Peter Klein |
Greg Clark’s A Farewell to Alms has received a lot of attention in the econo-blogosphere. I haven’t read the book and don’t have much to say about it but you can read as much as you like from Cowen, McCloskey, DeLong, Caplan, Kling, and others. One of the most interesting reviews, to me, is this one by Robert Margo of Boston University. Margo admires the book but dislikes this genre, what he calls “Big Think.”
“Big Think” refers to the genre of economic history that asks The Big Question. Why England and not China? Do institutions “matter” or is it something else, or many things? Why is the United States rich and Bolivia poor?
Reviewers should be upfront about their ex ante biases. Here is one of mine: I do not care for Big Think. The Big Question per se is not the problem — in economics, there is nothing more important. For me, the problem with Big Think is that it is inherently Too Big. One cannot hope to answer The Big Question by tackling it head on. One must break The Big Question into a great many very tiny precisely posed questions, and get the answers to them right. In economic history we are still _very_ far from completing this task even for a country whose economic history is as well-worn as the United States. Big Think is a Big Distraction from our true purpose in life. (more…)
Reviewing Your Friends
| Nicolai Foss |
Sometime ago I received a request from the Academy of Management Review to review a paper that I immediately recognized, having read it in an earlier version. I informed the editor that I couldn’t do the review because I knew the identity of the authors. About a month later I met one of the authors. I told her that I had been asked to review one of her papers, but had declined, to which she replied: “You should have done the review! We would’ve liked to have that paper in the AMR.” I confess to being somewhat baffled by all the implicit assumptions in this reply (i.e., the paper was actually of good quality, I would have recommended it, etc.), but also by its flagrant disrespect for the principle or ideal of anonymity in reviewing. (more…)
Organizations and Markets 
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