From Consulting to Publication

Abstract

The objective of this Panel Symposium is to explore the challenges of engaging in consulting and research, with a goal of publishing in highly regarded academic journals. Part of the mission of the Academy of Management (AOM) is to ensure that our science-based knowledge is relevant and responsible, providing insights that make a valuable contribution to our society and its institutions. A core goal is to produce knowledge that is truly actionable—transcending purely scientific concerns and enabling organizations and their members to draw on these insights to make informed choices about practical problems and opportunities and to effectively implement solutions to these challenges. Consulting within organizations helps to uncover values for both research and practice – in essence, the foundation of the challenge of “bringing the manager back in management.” The panel will address a number of the challenges and opportunities in undertaking this dual effort of combining practice and scholarly research, including: • coping with the time pressures associated with consulting versus time of academic publication; • the challenge of capturing and disseminating data extracted from the field to both academics and practitioners; • the rigor-relevance debate in linking consulting and research; • our ongoing quest for actionable knowledge; • addressing critics from more traditional academic research methods; and • realizing the value of practitioner-scholar collaboration in our research.