Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen

Dr. Dennis Tourish - Torturing the Data Into Confessing

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 68

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Dr. Dennis Tourish is Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the editor of the journal Leadership, and the author of several books including The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership, published and Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research. He is a proponent of the Responsible Research of Business and Management Network an organization that envisions a world where business and management research is used in practice to improve the lives of people.

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Quotes From This Episode

  • "Too much of our research has driven around what statisticians call p-hacking, where you keep on running statistical analysis beyond the point of reason to torture the data into confessing."
  • "It’s entirely possible to have a satisfactory and interesting career without ever publishing an article in the Academy of Management Review. And very few academics will do it. So by that standard, we are all pretty much failures."
  • "I think it’s more important to have an enjoyable career, to do work that matters to us, and remain interested, focused, and curious, above all be curious, throughout our academic careers."
  • "The world is moving fast and our scholarship needs to reflect that in a more timely manner than it does. I don’t mean that we should cut corners on our work. But we can certainly offer interesting ideas in a more timely manner than we seem to have been doing in the past."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals with a keen interest in the study, practice, and teaching of leadership. Today, ILA is the largest worldwide community committed to leadership scholarship, development, and practice. 

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