60th Anniversary Essay: Ruminations on How We Became a Mystery House and How We Might Get Out

This essay responds to, largely concurs with, and extends the concerns Jerry Davis expressed in his June 2015 editorial essay in ASQ about the state of research in organizational theory. In particular, it discusses the reasons novelty has become such a valued commodity in organizational theory and its unintended consequences. Fault lies with the way students are trained, the reward system that most universities implicitly or explicitly use to promote faculty, and the role that editors and reviewers play in wittingly or unwittingly rewarding the quest for novelty in the peer-review process. One way to revitalize organization theory while also addressing such problems would be for the researchers to begin to focus on the myriad ways that organizations shape our society and for organizational theorists to begin to collaborate with engineers and researchers in schools of public policy who are more aware of and interested in addressing problems that organizations, especially profit-making firms, create as they seek to shape their own environments.