In times of growing institutional pressures for publication, looking at the socialization process leading to membership in the business academic community provides the opportunity to reflect on the set of dominant values and practices being advocated to and inculcated by emerging scholars. This essay focuses on the changing role of the doctoral rite of passage which tends, under certain conditions, to construct the doctoral apprenticeship primarily as a technicist path toward professional writing, and less as an empowering and reflexive social inquiry undertaking. Faced with shifting standards, we need to recognize conditions of possibility for emancipation and change, which will hopefully support and sustain scholarly debate through more creative, socially relevant and eclectic research.