Four Cornerstone Practices for Management Scholars

Interdisciplinary research is widely promoted as essential for advancing understanding of complex managerial and organizational phenomena. Yet, while often celebrated rhetorically, authors keep facing significant challenges when they seek to integrate insights from other disciplines into management scholarship. To that effect, we outline four research-informed cornerstone practices to help management scholars craft interdisciplinary research. Employing a narrative-integrative review approach, we inductively develop an Interdisciplinarity Diffusion Framework that maps interdisciplinary research according to the proximity of the source discipline to management (proximal–distal) and the primary mode of diffusion (theory, methods, or phenomena). Drawing on exemplary studies to illustrate our points, we show how different positions within this framework create distinct opportunities and barriers for authors. We draw on these findings, as well as on our own scholarly experience to detail four cornerstone practices, which serve as practical guidance for authors interested in advancing management theory with interdisciplinary research. Finally, we shift attention to the responsibilities of reviewers, editors, and institutions in shaping an environment where interdisciplinarity can flourish. We argue that supporting interdisciplinary research should be a rich and shared endeavour, central to the future intellectual vitality and societal relevance of management studies.