Evaluating Truth and Believability in Management Research

Introduction: Truth and the Information Explosion

As John Kmetz implies, the information explosion and its concomitant technological developments have had widespread implications for believability in research. Research has become both easier and more difficult as a result of the Internet. While many sources are now more easily accessible, the fact that Internet publication has become widely available to the general public often makes it difficult to find serious, valid research resources. The question of truth has therefore become central to research in any field, and an increasing body of literature now addresses the issue of validity and truth in research.

In addressing this issue, it is also important to consider how significant the truth question really is in research. After all, research itself is focused on studying questions and uncertainties rather than settled answers. Furthermore, the research findings of yesterday are more often than not either proved untrue by current research or become new questions as a result of fresh findings. Perhaps, then, the question is one of appropriateness rather than absolute truth.

These issues are addressed by various authors, two of whom are John Kmetz and Tony Oulton. Their different approaches to assessing research sources provide the researcher with valuable insight into the process of finding and selecting the most appropriate sources in the management field.

Kmetz's Categories of Management Literature

Kmetz emphasizes that there are several fields within management, each with its own targeted literature. The important focus for researchers is therefore to find the source most appropriate for the field and purpose of their research. In addressing this, Kmetz identifies five different categories of management literature, considering the strengths and weaknesses of each. Each source type also carries a different level of believability according to its nature and target audience.

The first category is the popular press. Kmetz includes Internet sources in this category. The major strength of this category is that it provides the reader with the most current information on a given topic. While many have criticized the Internet for its lack of credible sources, Kmetz notes that sources targeted toward academic specialties such as management tend to be based on accurate and credible reporting. In terms of believability, however, the reader should distinguish between sources whose sole purpose is to provide information and those that also advocate a particular cause. Regardless of its role, writing in popular publications is done in a very readable manner and is therefore easy to understand and use for research purposes.

Beyond the possible lack of credibility in popular press information is the issue of currency. The high level of currency in the popular press can make for incomplete or fragmentary information. While this does not necessarily undermine believability outright, it is hampered by the incompleteness of the data and the possibility that currency may reflect bias. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the information provided is inherently untrue.

The second source type identified by Kmetz is practitioner books and compendia — popular books in the field of management. Assessing the truth of these is difficult, as there is such a wide variety of sources in this category.

Evaluating Sources: Timeliness, Bias, and the MAGIC Framework

Academic journals, books, and compendia provide the researcher with greater scientific rigor than the popular press, while also being more consistent in the validity of their content than popular books. The availability of academic books and compendia may, however, be somewhat limited. In terms of truth in research, these sources are of the highest quality, though somewhat academic in language and expression. Academic literature tends to be conservative in terms of currency and position, but is nonetheless the most trustworthy in terms of truth.

Kmetz suggests various ways of interpreting the above types of management literature in order to determine their level of truth and usefulness. The first evaluation criterion is time and timeliness. Kmetz makes the point that timeliness is often jeopardized by scientific rigor: scientific and empirical research takes time, and therefore detracts from the timeliness of the findings. However, the truth level in such research is higher than in research that takes less time and is therefore more current. The author also points out that publication purpose should be kept in mind when assessing the quality of a work. A persuasive piece of literature will therefore exhibit a lower level of absolute truth than a piece that addresses more than one side of an issue without bias.

Increasing access to sources such as the Internet provides the researcher with a valuable tool for assessing believability. Materials can be broadly investigated and cross-checked against others for consistency in content regarding a specific issue.

Another valuable tool, according to Kmetz, is represented by the acronym MAGIC. The five elements include magnitude, articulation, generality, interestingness, and credibility. Of these, the elements most directly related to truth are generality and credibility. Generality relates to the unbiased focus of the publication, while credibility refers to the empirical research upon which it is based. This framework gives researchers a structured method for evaluating information quality across different source types.

Conclusion

Literature that focuses on current events to a greater extent than on empirical research might therefore be more valid for the business world of today. The truths advocated by such publications are not only incomplete, but also flexible. These characteristics make them the most relevant to contemporary business. For this reason, their believability level is arguably the highest, even though the "truth" as such may not be established at a very high empirical level. The emphasis today is on change rather than stability, and the same principle applies to the concept of truth in management research.