(by Mats Alvesson, Yiannis Gabriel, and Roland Paulsen, 2017, Oxford University Press).
I am not very good at writing book reviews, so I thought to share some quotes from this thought-provoking book. Here are some I related to and found very relevant to the current context of higher education, scholarship and research:
“The current proliferation of academic publishing in social science, far from enhancing human knowledge, is creating a vacuum of meaning” (p. 12) “[…] the age of mass research and mass publication has led to a perverse relationship between authors wanting to write and publish, and a shortage of readers” (p. 110)
“There are many different ways of being a scholar. […] Being a scholar as an identity and a mode of working means reading and thinking more than managing data. It means arguing and engaging with the ideas of other scholars in written texts but also in conferences, seminars, and informal discussions. It means intervening in public debates, […]. It means being a committed teacher, concerned about the education of future generations of citizens and also future scholars”. (p. 88)
And finally:
“Being a scholar also means making a contribution to the different scientific communities and institutions as a socially involved citizen. Research is part of what it means to be a scholar, but the latter cannot be reduced to doing research, let alone having journal hits” (p. 88)