Abstract
Despite continuous recognition of the need for research that matters for practice, most of our research makes negligible impact on practice. We suggest a need to change the way we perceive practical impact and outline a definition of what research that matters for practice is. We develop an agenda for conducting research that meets our definition, assigning explicit roles for the academic scholars that produce research and the institutional environment that oversees their research, referring to academic institutions, journals, and academic associations. We call for scholars to change the way they view academic research and its role in society.
Highlights
Many of the research insights that international business (IB) scholars generate seldom leave the academic world and make little difference outside of this domain
The world of practice grapples with real-life phenomena that we are well equipped to address. This situation creates a mismatch between the supply and demand for knowledge and represents an inefficient use of the intellectual capital we collectively have to offer evidence-based insight into practice. This oversight is troubling throughout management disciplines, but it is disturbing in international business, given the complexity of the issues associated with these activities – e.g., the relationships between international investors and governments – and the challenges of addressing them (Eden & Nielsen, 2020)
Calls for practical relevance have proliferated throughout IB (Fainshmidt, Haensel, & Andrews, 2021; Fayerweather, 1986; Van Assche, 2022; Wickert, Post, Doh, Prescott, & Prencipe, 2021), as well as management and strategy, for decades (Bartunek & Rynes, 2014; Hoffman, 2021; Van de Ven, 2007), but little progress has been made in closing the relevance gap
Summary
AIBUNCTAD vant – research we seek to promote derives its transformative power from the rigor of the scholarship on which it is based and the scientific robustness of its findings. We argue that joint efforts are required by two constituencies to produce research that meets our definition of research that matters for practice: scholars who produce research, and academic institutions – universities and business schools, journals, associations – whose reward systems have the power to shape scholars’ incentives and the nature and orientation of their scholarship and foster its visibility to practice. The tenure process evaluates junior faculty predominantly based on research skills, which we put at the heart of practice-oriented research (the sine qua non condition). Successful passage of this stage demonstrates faculty capabilities to conduct high-quality scientific research. Pursuing these steps will help IB journals to move towards a new emphasis on relevance
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