Actionable Knowledge and Scholar-Practitioners: A Process Model of Theory-Practice Linkages

Abstract

This inductive study relies on activity theory as the guiding framework to interpret the theory-practice linkages found in organizational projects that scholar-practitioners considered successful in delivering business results and furthering academic knowledge. These projects that delivered both business and academic results involved certain components of theory and practice as “tools of mediation” to inform action and the creation of distinct linkages between them. Six basic forms of linkages were evident in all projects that further tended to serve four predominant functions: as framing devices, influencing and legitimizing devices, sensemaking devices, and demonstrative devices. Two dominant strategies, turns and scaffolding, from theory to practice, and practice to theory, were used to create these linkages. The temporal sequence involved in this process is described in the paper; and the agential role of the scholar-practitioner in creating these theory-practice linkages is highlighted. The significance of this model is in moving beyond general descriptions of the usefulness of theory-practice integration, to provide a more specific description of the process of how such integration is achieved by the scholar-practitioner that she/he further uses to generate theoretical contributions and business results.