Debating the Future of Management Research Julian Birkinshaw, Mark P. Healey, Roy Suddaby and Klaus Weber London Business School; Manchester Business School; University of Alberta; Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University ABSTRACT The Editors of JMS invited four leading scholars in research on management and organizations to have an open discussion on the current state and future prospects of management research. Our four contributors discuss, among other things, the growing influence of economics, psychology, and sociology on current management research, and the danger of an increasingly fetishistic and formulaic approach to management research that they believe may lead to stale and narrow contributions. Such an approach carries a risk in the long run of seriously dampening the intellectual vigour and impact of management research. Our contributors conclude their discussion with a number of recommendations for management researchers. These recommendations include asking bigger, better, and more challenging questions compared to the orthodoxy in our management research and engaging in modes of research that are not only intellectually challenging but that also have the potential of making a real impact on management practice. Keywords: management practice, management research, methods, theory EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Management Studies and its contribution to the discipline of management studies, we felt it appropriate to take stock of the discipline and to explore future directions and challenges. As such, in this Special Issue devoted to the 50 years of publishing in the Journal of Management Studies, we introduce a unique format for inquiry. In this article, we have four leading scholars debate and provide deep insight into an issue we consider core to the future trajectories of research on management and organizations. Our motive for initiating this debate is rooted in a simple but important observation. Whilst management research [1] has grown in size and significance over the past couple of decades, in tandem with the growing size and significance of business education around Address for reprints: Mark P. Healey, Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK (mark.healey@mbs.ac.uk). © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies Journal of Management Studies 51:1 January 2014 doi: 10.1111/joms.12061