Educating Rita
本文借电影《教育丽塔》探讨学科标准如何同化新人的见解，并分析同行评审过程对学术知识的社会建构作用，对关注学术评审与出版的研究者具有启发意义。
This article examines the relation between the motion picture Educating Rita and the study of management. Educating Rita is, among other things, a cautionary tale about how disciplinary standards can homogenize and sterilize newcomers’ insight, precisely what Art Bedeian’s analysis of the peer review process asserts. Peer review is also among the most powerful socializing devices exercised by business schools, and is thus central in educating the professoriate. Bedeian, always the provocateur, follows a simple logic to make a profound point. To begin with, knowledge is socially constructed. Although the relevant literature is admirably reviewed here, this is not a new proposition. But, it takes on special poignancy when peer review is considered because the process is undeniably social in nature. The negotiations among authors, referees, and editors most certainly result in tailored knowledge claims. To be sure, peer review protects broadly accepted standards. But four or fewer arbitrators do not make for a representative sample, and the likelihood of idiosyncratic interests seeping in is enormous. Bedeian claims that the result is all too often the violation of authorial voice, that what authors set out to say is compromised, sometimes beyond recognition. Bedeian concludes with ten rectifying recommendations, such as greater use of footnotes, publishing referee comments, and a meaningful formal appeal procedure, all of which could be reasonably instituted by any journal.