Pioneering Process Research: Andrew Pettigrew's Contribution to Management Scholarship, 1962–2014

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12063
• Author: Harry Sminia
• Date: 01 April 2016
• Published date: 01 April 2016

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 18, 111–132 (2016)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12063

Pioneering Process Research: Andrew

Pettigrew’s Contribution to Management

Scholarship, 1962–2014

Harry Sminia

Strathclyde Business School, Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow, G1 1XH, 0141-5536006

Corresponding author email: harry.sminia@strath.ac.uk

This paper assesses Andrew Pettigrew’s contribution to management scholarship. This

review addresses the process, content, and context of his research career. Chronologi-

cally, the process will be subdivided into three distinct phases: the period leading up

to the establishment of the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change, Pettigrew’s

time with the Centre, and Pettigrew’s research since leaving the Centre. The content

of Pettigrew’s research focussed on big problems and emerging phenomena such as

decision-making, organisational culture, organisation development, strategic change,

human resource management, competitiveness, new public management, boards of

directors, innovative forms of organising, high-performing research teams, and busi-

ness schools. His contextualist methodology for process research will be explicated.

Pettigrew’s contribution will be contextualised by comparing it with contemporary re-

search. The paper concludes that there is still a need not only to examine big problems

and emerging phenomena but also to provide a processual understanding of manage-

ment reality.There is a need to further develop process research methodologies such as

Pettigrew’s contextualism, especially with respect to process research methods.

Introduction

Andrew Pettigrew describes his quest as attempting

to catch reality in flight (Pettigrew 1998). His career

has been varied, developing from organisational

behaviour lecturer to strategy and organisation

professor, establishing and directing the Centre

for Corporate Strategy and Change (CCSC) along

the way. Pettigrew’s contextualist methodology for

conducting process research developed as a common

thread. His combination of a new methodology

and the generation of new theory, together with his

generally co-operative style of operation, made him a

highly influential management scholar.Consequently,

he is recognised as a leading process researcher (e.g.,

Langley 2009; Sminia and de Rond 2012). Addition-

ally,he has been instrumental in building the manage-

ment and organisation research community in the UK

in many ways, for instance, as co-founder and first

chairman of the British Academy of Management. He

has also received many honours, including his elec-

tion as a Distinguished Scholar of the (US) Academy

of Management: he is the first and only non-North

American who has received this accolade. Pettigrew

received an OBE for services to Higher Education

in 2009.

Throughout his research career, Andrew Pettigrew

attempted to understand phenomena that are com-

plex, that are a challenge to investigate, and that are

difficult to capture with quantitative methods and sta-

tistical techniques. He pursued organisational prob-

lems that were ignored bymost management scholars.

Pettigrew’s contextualist methodology increased the

legitimacy of qualitative research: his career began at

a time when quantification and the variance approach

were the norm. His process scholarship helped lay the

foundations for more sociological and qualitatively

orientated management and organisation research, in-

cluding, for instance, the current strategy-as-practice

movement.

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112 H. Sminia

The paper will cover the content, process, and con-

text of Pettigrew’s contributions to management and

organisation research. There are three distinguishable

phases to Pettigrew’s life as a management scholar,

which are reflected in this paper’s structure. The re-

view begins by reviewing the years leading up to the

establishment of CCSC. It continues by reviewingthe

research that Pettigrew conducted under the CCSC

umbrella, and then moves to the post-CCSC period.

A separate section discusses the context in which this

process took place. CCSC has been a profoundly

important part of Pettigrew’s career. In addition, it

was instrumental in establishing Warwick Business

School as a centre for research excellence. More-

over, it boosted the careers of many researchers who

have participated in it. The conclusion and discussion

takes stock of Andrew Pettigrew’s contributions—did

he catch reality in flight?—to suggest how the quest

might continue. Pettigrew has been a highly success-

ful management scholar who went against the grain

and,in doing so, undertook remarkably large and risky

research projects.

The Pre-CCSC Years: 1962–1985

Andrew Pettigrew’s first degree is in sociology1;

he read the subject at the undergraduate level at

the University of Liverpool from 1962 to 1965.

This experience was not his first encounter with the

social sciences. While still at school, he was given

the opportunity to participate in an anthropological

expedition to Uganda to chart cultural change among

the Musopisiek people of the Sebei (with the findings

published in Thomas 1963). After graduating, he

remained in Liverpool for another year to study for

a postgraduate diploma in industrial administration.

In 1966, Pettigrew moved with Enid Mumford—his

postgraduate research supervisor—to the Manchester

Business School to take up a job as a research fellow.

Beginning in 1969, Pettigrew spent two years as a

visiting assistant professor at Yale University in the

US, at the invitation of Chris Argyris. On his return to

England in 1971, Pettigrew became an organisational

behaviour lecturer at the London Business School.

In 1976, he moved to what was then the School of

1Biographical data are derived both from Pettigrew (1998)

and from a detailed CV that Andrew Pettigrew kindly pro-

vided. In addition, the author had a lengthy conversationwith

Andrew Pettigrew about his work and life as a researcher.

However, the content of this review is the sole responsibility

of the author.

Industrial and Business Studies at the University of

Warwick to accept a position as Professor of Organ-

isational Behaviour. (The School of Industrial and

Business Studies would become Warwick Business

School in 1988.) At Warwick, Pettigrewfounded and

became the first director of CCSC in 1985.

These first 19 years of Pettigrew’s academic

career—progressing from undergraduate student to

director of a research institute—generated three re-

search milestones. Together, those milestones laid

the foundation for Pettigrew’s distinct processual ap-

proach to management and organisational research.

The three milestones are as follows: (1) Pettigrew’s

doctoral dissertation on the politics of organisa-

tional decision-making (Pettigrew 1970), which was

later published as a research monograph (Pettigrew

1973; reprinted in Pettigrew 2001b); (2) a case study

on the creation of organisational culture (Pettigrew

1979); and (3) his massive investigation of continu-

ity and change at ICI (Pettigrew 1985a; reprinted in

Pettigrew 2011a).

Andrew Pettigrew’s first publication reported on a

research project that represented a portion of the re-

quirements for his diploma in industrial administra-

tion at the University of Liverpool (Pettigrew 1968).

That project is an investigation into the “strains and

conflicts”of“innovating specialists” (p. 216), in this

case, operational researchers. Pettigrew would revisit

the category of ‘innovating specialists’ again in some

of the later research projects. More importantly, the

phenomenon of organisational politics, as indicated

by the ‘strains and conflicts’ would become a recur-

rent theme in almost all of his work. Chris Argyris

picked up that particular article, which prompted his

decision to invite the young Pettigrew to Yale—a

unique opportunity for a young management scholar

at a time when transatlantic associations were rela-

tively uncommon.

What would become the Pettigrew brand of man-

agement research was first included in his doctoral

dissertation (Pettigrew 1970), which was developed

from Enid Mumford’s research grant project, on

which Pettigrew was employed as a research fellow.

However, it was the stimulating intellectual envi-

ronment at Yale that enabled Pettigrew to articulate

his brand of management research well enough to

persuade a publisher to accept it (Pettigrew 1973).

Pettigrew’s dissertation reports on a case study of

innovative decision-making. More specifically, it

investigates a succession of decisions to replace a

computer system at Littlewoods, a furniture and

clothing retailer.

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