Is Management Interdisciplinary? The Evolution of Management as an Interdisciplinary Field of Research and Education in the Netherlands

Peter van Baalen and Luchien Karsten

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Management research and education are often characterized as being interdisciplinary. However, most discussions on what interdisciplinarity in management studies means have bogged down in ideological fixations. In this paper we alternatively take a historical perspective and analyze the evolution of the interdisciplinarity concept in management studies during the last decades in the Netherlands. We distinguish between two opposite versions of interdisciplinarity: a synoptic (conceptual) and an instrumental (pragmatic) one. Both versions resulted from different knowledge strategies (boundary-work) of competing and cooperating disciplines. We conclude that in the Netherlands instrumental versions of interdisciplinarity in management research and education prevailed.

Keywords: Interdisciplinarity; disciplinarity; history of management education; management education; management science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L15 M O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-09-19
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