From gaps to tangles: A relational framework for the future of the theory-practice debate

Abstract

The article contributes to a better understanding of the relation between management theory and managerial practice by providing an integrative and historically contextualized review of the theory-practice debate among management scholars, and by proposing a new integrative position which we call entanglement. The integrative review reveals that since its origins in the 1950s up to the last decade, positions in the debate have shifted according to a rigor-relevance pendulum, portraying academics and practitioners as members of distinct, closed communities. To advance this debate, we propose an entanglement position which re-conceptualizes relations between academics and practitioners as trans-epistemic networks of interest within which knowledge can travel via three different boundary spanning strategies: legitimation, mobilization, and enactment. By showing the different degrees of relational intensity (i.e. required boundary spanning effort) of these strategies, we reconcile and integrate contrasting findings in the theory-practice debate. We advance the debate by proposing new research directions in relation to each strategy.