Editorial 24/1: Electronic Markets and practice-orientation

Abstract

Dear readers of Electronic Markets, The last issue of Electronic Markets included a longitudinal review of research from contributions published at the Bled eConference since 1988. This paper observed an evolution of topics regarding the application of information technology (IT) to interorganizational processes. While the first phase from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s focused on applying electronic data interchange (EDI) technologies, the second from the mid1990s until the mid-2000s contributed to the more businessoriented development of electronic business and, finally, the third on the electronic interaction between organizations and also individuals on a more general level since the mid-2000s. Remarkably, the authors observe a gap between the topics discussed in the academic papers and the developments occurring in practice and note that “Given that there is a delay of 2–3 years before papers gain citations, the vast majority of the thousands of subsequent papers – even if they were written in a manner accessible to professionals, managers and/or executives – were published too late to have any useful impact on early adopters or even on the early majority.” (Clarke & Pucihar 2013, 276). We believe that this statement has three dimensions which are critical for academic research. First, it recognizes that academic publications are generally not written for readers in practice. The gap between academic and practice publications is not limited to the wording or the layout used in either format, but – more importantly – it is grounded in the predominant perspective of both audiences. While researchers aim at carefully developing and answering their research question(s) by applying a specific research methodology, individuals working in line functions (other than research) or who fill management positions are often only interested in the findings of a research article and their implications for practice. Contrary to academics who strive for the justification of their procedure and the generalization of their findings, the practice community is interested in results and recommendations which provide insight into problems for their particular (line) function or company in general. Thus, the dissemination of academic research into practice calls for formats that if necessary allow to trace back how results were obtained and places more detailed emphasis on the implications of the findings for practice. Second, the statement implies a latency of academic research compared to the application of a certain phenomenon in practice. For example, businesses might adopt new technologies before these are described, discussed or analyzed in academic conferences or journals. From the perspective of the popular hype cycle of Gartner (see Fenn & Raskino 2008, 65ff) shown in Fig. 1 this means that new technologies have already passed the first phase (“innovation trigger”) and presumably also the second phase (“peak of inflated expectations”). Under the assumption of the latency of academic discourse, publications would only become available when innovations have already entered their third phase (“trough of disillusionment”). Insights obtained in research that guide businesses in applying new technologies might be valuable for second movers, but emerge too late for first (or early) movers which strongly influence the development of innovations. This means that academic research not only needs to be published faster in physical and electronic forms, but also that researchers need to target emerging technologies in their work while these are still in their early stages of development (i.e. phases 1 and 2 in Fig. 1). R. Alt (*) University of Leipzig, Grimmaische Str. 12, 04109 Leipzig, Germany e-mail: rainer.alt@uni-leipzig.de