Problematizing the Relation Between Management Research and Practice

Abstract

The epistemological question of how management research can impact management practice is of central concern to management scholars. This question has been the subject of a long-standing discussion about the status of management studies as an applied science, the so-called relevance debate. In this chapter, we discuss the relation between management research and practice from the perspective of the “descriptive” stream of the practical relevance literature, analyzing the forms and conditions of practical relevance in epistemological terms. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s sociology of science, we start with a characterization of research as self-referential communication and discuss its most fundamental implication for the question of practical relevance: the impossibility of a linear transfer of research results to practice. Based on this, we discuss the ways in which management research can impact management practice and indicate a number of implications for the relation between research and practice.KeywordsPractical relevanceManagement researchSociology of scienceTransferabilityResonanceNiklas Luhmann