The Practitioner Scholar

There was no single factor that alumni offered for their decision to join the Weatherhead DM program.  Alumni typically offered a combination of reasons.... “I chose Case because of the reputation. Other programs were 'degree mills'... "I never made a monodisciplinary decision in my life" ... "[other] schools were focused on problems of theory - not practice!"

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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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 I just returned from the 2010 Academy of Management (AoM) Annual Meeting in Montreal, Canada. The Weatherhead School of Management's Doctor of Management (DM) alumni and students overall had 17 paper presentations and won 3 best paper awards in three different divisions. Their presentations were well received and deemed both rigorous and relevant--demonstrating that students of the DM Program span the boundaries of practice and academia and engage in management-related practitioner scholarship that is theory driven, uses  rigorous and credible research methods, and is at the same time well anchored to the problems and realities of management.  One of the best and most rewarding experiences for DM faculty who attended the meeting was the pride, confidence and enthusiasm that our students showed when they interacted with other management scholars and participated eagerly in the debates in symposia, paper sessions and design workshops at AoM.

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"I truly believe the DM Program, now with an associated PhD option, represents the future of doctoral education in management. It addresses the need for management education beyond the MBA..."

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On April 9^th and 10^th the Weatherhead Doctor of Management program hosted an Alumni Weekend and videos of the presentations from that event are now available on the following YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E833EB249DF928D9

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The DM program is a source of important research. As most scholars know, research in a field builds when a series of studies develop new insights about a theme.... Supporting, encouraging, and at times provoking each other, the DMs are building a literature that makes scholarly contributions AND has practical significance to leadership and organizational effectiveness.  We do it by getting folks to help each other and participate in study groups.

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Our practitioner scholars begin with a deeply human concern, arm themselves with a range of potentially relevant theories, collect and interpret raw data on the phenomenon, and are then in a position to make original and important contributions. Non-practitioner scholars, in contrast, are lucky if they can get beyond their theoretical framework to collect genuinely relevant data, and seldom produce truly interesting findings.

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"at a time when leaders are seeking new ideas to respond to complex challenges in many fields of management, scholarly knowledge has found little application.Lack of use is partially due to managerial ignorance of such knowledge and reliance on less rigorously-produced knowledge, and partially to the irrelevance of much scholarly knowledge to managers' practical problems. A premise of research in the DM and PhD in Management Programs is that the gap between scholarly knowledge and managerial practice can be closed ..."

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In January, 2010 twenty DM students submitted to the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting and the  results are just in ... 17 of these articles have been accepted - 8  quantitative papers and 9 qualitative papers. Overall our acceptance rate is over 85%, which is well beyond the average acceptance rate of roughly 40%.  The DM program presents the largest single group presenting research at the meeting.

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"The DM experience is essentially about transformative change...  In most cases DM graduates say that the program transformed how they see themselves as managers, colleagues, or citizens of the world... This idea of "transformation" informs the overall design of the program. We are engaged in transforming the idea of management scholarship. Instead of remaining mired in abstract theory removed from practice (as is common in doctoral programs), we are trailblazing a new path - one where research practice is intertwined with practical, actionable theory. "

by Kalle Lyytinen, Director of the DM Program

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