Who Trains Researchers, and How do They Learn to Conduct Research?

We invite the academic community in administration and accounting to reflect on the training of researchers. This article addresses two guiding questions: Who trains researchers, and how do they learn to conduct research? We argue that the faculty’s research and teaching capacities are complementary, but that research production is prioritized at the expense of training new researchers. Thus, it is important to prepare faculty to train researchers for both academic and industry settings. Accordingly, this “Thinking Outside the Box” (TOB) article examines researcher training from two dimensions: the practice of scientific research and faculty development focused on researcher training. We do not claim that these dimensions represent the only possible approaches; rather, we seek to advance the debate between instruction-oriented and research-oriented teaching. In addition, we propose an agenda for future studies and contributions to institutional practices within graduate programs.

Keywords:
researcher training; faculty development and training; research in administration and accounting; learning of researchers and advisors