Staying home is too easy 2 travelling sharpens your wit! So goes an old Viking
saying, and in accordance with the saying the Vikings*even though they were based
in Scandinavia*travelled to discover distant worlds and to learn from them. First, it
seems to become more and more accepted that it was in fact the Vikings that "rst
reached America. Furthermore, around 1000 AD the Vikings ruled a minor empire
consisting of Denmark, Britain, and large parts of Germany and France. The last
Viking King of this empire, Canud the Great, ruled from London and allegedly never
set foot in his native Denmark. If the Vikings travelled to learn from other worlds, why
should not we?
In this paper, we will use the old Viking saying to inspire us to another discovery of
America, Britain, and Scandinavia*albeit our journey will be con"ned to the world
of operations management (OM) and be a journey of books and papers. In other
words, we will investigate the world of OM and attempt to "nd out what the
di!erences are between the US, UK and Scandinavian OM tradition, and * in the
spirit of the Vikings*attempt to see what the di!erent traditions can learn from each
other.
And, there are di!erent traditions in science in general. Kuhn (1962) has provided
a large part of the explanation for the phenomenon that certain groups of researchers
seem to think alike. In Kuhn's terminology, this shared thinking is because the
researchers share the same &¶digm'', i.e., the same basic assumptions about science,
the object of their science, etc. We will take this as our starting point, but also
subscribe to Lakatos (1968), who has suggested that several paradigms can coexist at
the same time within a discipline * there does not have to be one overall paradigm
guiding all research, even in times of relative ease in the scienti"c world of a certain
discipline (Andersen et al., 1990). In other words, a discipline can be divided into many
di!erent groups (some stronger than others) that each have their unique approach to
the discipline in question. In OM, Chris Voss has applied this way of thinking to the
discipline and attempted to describe di!erent paradigms within the OM area (Voss,
1995a).
In this paper, we will focus on the approaches to OM that can be found in our
respective originating countries and, hence, focus on the UK, the US, and Scandinavia.
There are, however, other good reasons for focusing on the UK, the US and
Scandinavia than that the authors of this paper originate in these three regions. There
are distinctively di!erent approaches to OM in the three regions*one can speculate
about demographic reasons (e.g. the US is much larger than Scandinavia), cultural
reasons (e.g. Scandinavian researchers feel very strongly that they must justify their
existence by &&solving'' problems for "rms/managers), historical reasons (e.g. the UK
has many traditions from her long imperial history), and many others. Another good
reason is that, despite the fact that the traditions are di!erent, they still have a lot to
o!er each other. We shall show this later in the paper. For now, the reader must take
our word for it.
The very purpose of this paper is, thus, to analyse three di!erent traditions within
OM in order to see in which ways they di!er and how they may bene"t each other.
Inherent in this purpose is the assumption that di!erent traditions within a given area
should not "ght each other, but instead try to create a dialogue. If the truth about, say,
OM is so complex that it is possible (or even necessary) to form di!erent assumptions
about it, and hence di!erent traditions to its study, then the truth is probably also so
complex that there is not just one tradition that possesses the entire truth. In other
words, each tradition * we assume in this paper * only holds part of the truth and
could bene"t from a dialogue with other traditions. Only by combining the perspectives
of di!erent traditions can we hope to get just a little closer to the truth about OM.
Creating this dialogue is not an easy task * far from it. Each tradition has its own
conferences, workshops, journals and other forums, but here are very few possibilities
for airing such cross-disciplinary work as this. However, we feel that it is worth a try and would like to aspire to a dialogue about OM rather than tell the ultimate story
of OM.
management and the approach to conducting research management used by North
American, British, and Scandinavian researchers di!er, yet are not incommensurate.
The Scandinavian and American traditions di!er the most * they take opposite
directions on research methods (case versus survey) and on generalisability (strong
emphasis on contingency versus none). The British tradition seems to be located
somewhere in the middle between the other two * with its emphasis on combining
research methods and on * more or less * general solutions.
The outlined di!erences are consistent with di!erences among the three approaches
across a much broader range of the production management literature (and indeed
perhaps a much wider range of social sciences research). Whilst the research engendered
under each paradigm will vary, each tradition has much to learn from the other,
and, conceivably, such cross-fertilisation would lead to major breakthroughs and
advances in our research "eld. This is so because of the very nature of (operations)
management research, where individual studies cannot hope to be as &&true'' as studies
within (parts of) the Natural Sciences. By &&true'' we refer to the elements in Jick's
model * true results are general, realistic and precise. In order to achieve this aim,
management research must engage in a dialogue between researchers from di!erent
traditions * in terms of Jick's model, North Americans, British, and Scandinavians
have much to learn from each other.
In a more practical sense, how can researchers in one tradition learn from each
other? One way is the physical exchange of researchers, which may be especially
e!ective in the early stages of one's career. Whilst one way of experiencing another
tradition is to do one's doctorate in another education, this is not the only way. For
example, James G. March's Scancor initiative at Stanford University has provided
the opportunity for dozens of Scandinavian researchers to spend a period of
time within the American system. Within Europe, the European Union is currently
sponsoring transfers of researchers among institutions through a number of di!erent
programmes, as well as funding collaborative research e!orts between researchers
in di!erent countries. Finally, sabbaticals and visiting professorships may be
useful at later stages of one's career. Another option is to use the possibilities for communication o!ered by the internet and new IT solutions to create a more open
(and open-minded) research community. This may prove to be a valuable supplement
to personal contacts between researchers, exchange of researchers, and so on. There
may be many other options, but to us the most important thing that must be done in
order to create and secure a dialogue of research in (operations) management is for
individual researchers to acknowledge and accept the limitations of their own work.
Only by doing so will their eyes and minds open for new impressions and alternative
interpretations.
