Martine Durier-Copp: Management is an Art

Since 2009, Martine Durier-Copp has been the Director for the Centre for Advanced Management Education in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University, where she continues to engage in her passion of continuous learning and capacity development.

In a recent interview with CFAME Connection, Martine shared her insights into the art of management.

Management is an art, but also a science, and as any science, it is informed by knowledge. Knowledge develops and grows, as we conduct more research.

The way we teach management also evolves, and is based on current best practices, as informed by ongoing research.

Researchers at Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management study and investigate all facets of management – from finance, operations management, strategy, marketing, etc. Our students also help to build this base of knowledge – all student projects contribute to this exercise.

At CFAME, we are particularly interested in e-learning – that means, how students learn on line, and how that is different from how they learn in traditional classrooms. That knowledge helps to inform the way we teach on line. So, how do we conduct research?

One always begins with an analysis or review of the literature. What have other researchers found? We examine their studies for relevance, context, and of course, methodological rigour. From there, we can move on to extract important themes and issues, which can help us to develop a research framework – the lens or perspective from which we shall conduct our own analysis.

We then frame our research question, being a precise as possible; select our research method – and justify that method.

Without doubt, research in academia is demanding.  A great deal of reading, synthesizing, reviewing, checking and rechecking goes into a research project. This becomes clear to all who enter an MBA program.   In business, strategy is based on documented research that flows from academic efforts.  This is the critical link between the two entities.  And who best to facilitate that link – graduates of CFAME’s MBA programs.