The Essay as an Endangered Species: Should We Care?

• Author: Yiannis Gabriel
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12176
• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Date: 01 March 2016

The Essay as an Endangered Species: Should We

Care?

Yiannis Gabriel

University of Bath and University of Lund

The essay as a literary genre has, over the centuries, delivered profound insights into a

wide range of topics and even contributed to social and political change. As part of aca-

demic apprenticeship, the essay has served to develop students’ intellectual and reflective

qualities and to assess their mastery of many different disciplines. Yet, in recent times, the

essay has lost some of its allure, arguably becoming an endangered species both in its politi-

cal and academic uses. Politics and public debates are increasingly dominated by gladiato-

rial spectacles, punditry, sound bites and an overt commercialization of political

campaigning. Academic research in the social sciences, for its part, has come to rely

increasingly on a genre of scientific writing, the ‘research paper’, which has become institu-

tionalized and has moved increasingly away from the qualities of the essay. For the purpose

of student assessment, essay-writing is rapidly replaced by other types of academic work

such as projects, case studies, portfolios, tests, and indeed ‘papers’. In this essay, I argue

that while the genre of the essay is neither the only nor the major means of developing and

disseminating knowledge in management and organizational disciplines it retains an impor-

tant role in today’s fast-moving, complex and commercialized environment. The essay

gives a voice to an author’s creative imagination, enabling him or her to critique assump-

tions that are rarely questioned and explore new possibilities for intellectual and social

change. As such it can still make a useful contribution both in academic and political fields.

Here are some essays that have influenced or inspired me in one way or another:

Michel de Montaigne, Essais, c. 1600 [In particular, ‘On solitude’; ‘On the canni-

bals’; ‘On educating children’]

Walter Benjamin. 1929. ‘The Storyteller’.

Sigmund Freud. 1933. Why War?

Address for reprints: Yiannis Gabriel, University of Bath and University of Lund, School of Management,

University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK (y.gabriel@bath.ac.uk).

For your comments about this discussion, please visit http://www.socadms.org.uk/the-essay-as-an-

endangered-species/.

V

C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 53:2 March 2016

doi: 10.1111/joms.12176