Bauer Researcher Advocates for Keeping Pace with Shifts in Organizations

Published on July 16, 2018

Chet Miller

Management Professor Chet Miller

As businesses struggle to reinvent themselves in a rapidly changing environment, the research from business schools has to shift, too.

Bauer College Management Professor Chet Miller has called attention to the need for academic research in the management field to find ways to keep pace with changes in contemporary organizations and the world at large.

Based on a review of traditional methods for tracking organizational control, “We show how control–outcome research has in fact reached a troublesome point in its evolution, particularly concerning quantitative research. Older frameworks, theories and issues seem to have limited theorizing that better fits today’s realities, and several empirical tactics appear to be negatively affecting quantitative work,” Miller wrote.

His paper, “An Aspirational View of Organizational Control Research: Re-invigorating Empirical Work to Better Meet the Challenges of 21st Century Organizations,” was named co-winner of the Academy of Management Annals Best Paper Award for Volume 11 (2017).

Working with organizations such as ABB, Bank of America, Krispy Kreme, La Farge and State Farm Insurance, Miller has worked with management development teams on change management, strategic visioning, and high-commitment/high-involvement approaches to managing people.

His research focuses on the functioning of management teams, the design of organizational structures and management systems and the design of strategic decision processes.