Many expert management researchers have learned intuitively how to follow the logic of enquiry in the social sciences, a form of detective-work that makes for rigorous and convincing investigations. Their critical frame of mind means that they are habitually inquisitive about their area of the management field, they ask searching questions and take no answers for granted, and they evaluate others’ arguments while developing their own position. This is what you are being encouraged to do through your academic work, applying the logic of enquiry to various management topics.

• you adopt a sceptical stance as the audience for others’ attempt to convince people through their argument about the social world, as expressed in the literature or in lectures, seminars or conferences. You evaluate any evidence from the literature or their own research that warrants their conclusion being accepted, to see how far their argument is convincing and so can inform your own enquiry
  
• you try to convince a sceptical audience (a tutor or supervisor or colleague academics) to accept the conclusion of your argument about some aspect of the management field, warranted by your evidence from the literature or from your own research

Developing your own convincing argument about an aspect of the management field therefore embraces the logic of enquiry through:

1.   asking questions informed by others’ accounts of their enquiries

2.   designing your literature-based, empirical or theoretical investigations to answer these questions

3.   reporting the answers obtained to warrant others’ acceptance of your conclusions

You develop your critical frame of mind by following the logic of enquiry as it applies to the field of management.