Glick, Miller, and Cardinal (this issue)
have extensively updated, expanded, and added their own empirical documentation to the extensive literature on the effects of the level of paradigm development on people and their careers. Their own empirical analyses provide specificity to the more general claims I made more than a decade ago about the wasted effort and career difficulties confronted by scholars and doctoral students in fields characterized by a low level of paradigm development (see, for instance, Zammuto & Connolly, 1984, for a discussion of the problems confronting doctoral students). Their estimates of the proportion of people who have graduated from top tier schools who have left the field within 2 decades of receiving their degree are truly shocking, given that these are graduates of the more highly rated programs and the generally beneficent job market that has characterized business schools over the period of their study. I could not agree more with the picture they have painted using both their own data as well as the research of others. Life in fields with low paradigm development is not always pleasant. How could it be, when faced with profound and irremediable technical uncertaintyuncertainty and randomness in the connection between people's decisions and actions and their consequences-individuals must nonetheless make decisions and devise actions to manage their own careers?
Two other aspects of their paper warrant some comment. First, it is interesting but not unexpected that some of their colleagues did not 'embrace' their paper, finding its mustering of data and its conclusions 'dark.' It is clearly the case that in organizations, hearing bad news is unpleasant and delivering bad news can be difficult and dangerous. This desire to avoid facing the 'hard facts' (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006) can lead people to avoid talking about the truth. Rosen and Tesser (1970) described this as the 'Mum effect,' and it seems pervasive in organizations. Sussman and Sproull (1999: 151) have noted that 'people distort negative information in a positive direction in order to reduce its negative tone. . .delay or delegate the delivery of bad news. . .and are more likely to pass on good news than bad news.' Glick, et al. should be commended for their courage in providing the data and confronting the reality about the difficulties of operating in a low paradigm field.
Nonetheless, it is depressing to contemplate the fact that it takes an act of courage to tell the truth, even in academia and even in the research literature where the search for truth should be an overriding objective. Accurate information is obviously crucial 'for performance improvement and organizational learning' (Sussman & Sproull, 1999: 150). We should be concerned about the growing politicization of organization studies and the intrusion of personal preference and ideology into how and what we write about. Also the field of organization studies ought to be much more watchful for the tendency, even in