On the Virtues of Practising Scholarship

This essay provides some reflections about the idea and ideal of scholarship in Management and Organization Studies and celebrates the life and works of Chris Argyris as a scholar. Unlike most of the accounts and tributes to his work, this essay seeks to draw attention not only to the practice of his scholarship but also to the ethos with which he practises his scholarship. I argue that it is in the latter one can understand better what practising scholarship entails by tapping into the virtues of scholarship. In Chris Argyris, one can identify virtues like integrity, courage and humility. In these virtues one also discovers that ultimately scholarship is personal and at its core it entails a journey of self-discovery. In acknowledging Argyris’s many contributions particularly in the field of organizational learning (OL) I seek to draw attention to some of the lessons that emerge when we reflect on the standards that his scholarship sets for future research in OL and for OL researchers in particular. Perhaps the most powerful message of his scholarship is to take learning seriously not only as a phenomenon to be studied, but as a way of living.