The Practitioner Scholar

“The Case program challenged us to work hard and work well. It wasn’t there to weed us out, but was not soft…. That’s the hallmark of a quality academic program. I was treated as a serious person.”

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The comedian, Steven Colbert, has a segment on his comedy show called “Word of the Day.” I would like to talk about a few words that came up this session that really had an impact for me.

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...why did you decide to pursue a doctorate at this point in your life? ... “I had a question that was making me itch and had to find a way to scratch it. I wanted to give structure and language to the process of generating answers to my questions”

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"Your dependent variables make no sense," he said.  

"Excuse me?" I asked, pivoting to look at the older gentleman who challenged the model I had just drawn on a makeshift board. Knowing that I couldn't count on a whiteboard or a projector, I had hand-carried to Montreal large sheets from a Post-it Easel Pad, together with colored markers, so that I could draw my model as I described my work and bring it to life.  

"Your dependent variables are arbitrary.  They represent accounting concepts and aren't very good measures of performance."  He spoke with firmness and certainty, with the confidence of someone who had no doubt of the veracity of his perspective.

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At the close of my second residency as a student in the Doctorate of Management program, just three weeks since the first, I barely see the person I was then. The train has left the station. Bon voyage, I say to myself!

So what is different? For one, my language is changing. Now, I can see what a theory looks like and understand its value. A simple statement perhaps yet now I know how to find them. They are gold.

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 I have begun the journey to earn a Doctorate of Management at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management and have just completed my first residency in Cleveland, Ohio.  It is difficult to find the words to express myself. If I were a poet I would be able to convey the range and intensity of my observations and feelings. Because I am not a poet I need to borrow a metaphor to convey what I feel.

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In simple terms,  even with a bachelors and two masters degrees under my belt, the availability of scholarly knowledge and theory that was made available to me was several orders of magnitude beyond anything I had previously experienced... not only have I developed the basic skills to create scholarly work, but more importantly, the ability to discern good scholarly work from bad and to confidently challenge works deemed inferior.

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