Harvard Business Review says our elite research is irrelevant: why “soft science” is the key to regaining leadership in 40 knowledge

In this paper the authors present an argument for academic marketing to shift away from a purely positivistic approach to its ‘top journal ’ research and towards a critical realist approach that better accounts for the ontological reality of the discipline. We argue that this debate matters because, at present, ‘top quality ’ research is, wrongly in our view, regarded as that which is based on marketing as a science. However we are not arguing for a radical shift into purely interpretive or social constructionist perspectives. We debate some different areas within the discipline of marketing and conclude that some areas may still respond well to scientific approaches, while others may benefit from a relaxation into interpretive approaches