Epistemology

When I gave up practice to be an academic, I was prepared to start on a clean slate, and my practice experience would not enhance my academic life at all. It's as though 10 years of practice did not happen and in NUS, this was how it was. An academic did academic things i.e. publish, go to conferences etc.

As I grow into this job, I realise that this is wrong. An academic in a business school can choose to be living in his or her ivory tower, but a better life is a contribution to knowledge at both an academic and practice level - where one would learn from the other. Academics keep practice out because it serves them well to do so, since their power base belong in academia.

Confidence and maturity in the field now allows me to voice this. The epistemology of business and management is that of 'action', not merely the act of knowing. Academics and practitioners polarise themselves because of politics, not because of any other reason. There is no reason to feel that just because one is able to do research that is relevant to practice, that such research is not academic. Only the insecure would think that.

It does require a different skill set though, I have to admit. I am now happy that I have spent those 10 years in practice and that such a biography helps me in being a better academic.