Success Factor Research

Success factor studies seem to offer a way out of the rigor verses relevance dilemma: Researchers, in their attempts to identify factors that are causes of performance and can be manipulated by managers, apply sophisticated analyses in rigorous ways. As it turns out, however, the findings of performance analyses usually contradict each other, and practitioners are unable to follow and to evaluate the discussions between the researchers that are published in scientific journals. Thus, rather than a correspondence, as implied by performance studies, a trade-off between rigor and relevance is the overall outcome of this kind of research. On the basis of sociological concepts, the authors show that this effect is a consequence of the inner dynamics of science as a social system. This means that the potential of performance research to create actionable knowledge is limited.