Academic Practitioner Collaboration Research Articles

Achieving successful academic-practitioner research collaborations

The potential for academic-NGO collaboration is enormous, but such collaboration is far more difficult than it appears on the surface, even when collaborators share a commitment to, and values that support, a particular cause or issue. This paper looks at some of the factors that derail academic-practitioner collaboration. It then identifies five different models of collaboration and makes recommendations that, if observed, should eliminate some of the tensions in collaborative efforts, while at the same time providing a foundation for ongoing learning.

Formulating the Nature of Management Research

Despite significant successes and numerous exemplars of academic-practitioner collaboration, in recent times management research has been argued to have succumbed to a serious problem of relevance. Addressing this has become an important issue for both the academic and practitioner communities, and extensive debate is occurring on both sides of the Atlantic. Discussions have focused on the nature of management research itself, its key purposes and goals, the scope of the field, its boundaries and relations with other adjacent disciplines. Novel methods for the promotion of management research have also been part of the discussions. The possibility of developing a knowledge production system for management research based on the ‘mode 2’ ideas of Michael Gibbons et al. [Gibbons, M., Limoges, C. et al. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge: the Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Sage, London] has attracted considerable attention. This paper outlines the background and current debates as introduction to the main studies in this special issue, which illustrate some of the experimentation being undertaken in creating innovative forms of management research.

Academic-Practitioner Collaboration in Management Research: A Case of Cross-Profession Collaboration

We present a case of academic-practitioner research collaboration to illuminate three potential determinants of the success of such cross-profession collaborations: collaborative team characteristi...

An Implementation Revolution as a Strategy for Fulfilling the Democratic Promise of University-Community Partnerships: Penn-West Philadelphia as an Experiment in Progress

In this article, the authors argue that the academic-practitioner divide is largely a product of the Platonic false dualism between “superior” pure theory and “inferior” applied practice. The authors call for a Dewey-inspired implementation revolution to build local democratic neighborly communities as a means for advancing academic-practitioner collaboration, fulfilling America’s democratic promise, and overcoming the influence of Plato’s aristocratic philosophy on American higher education. The authors describe the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Community Partnerships’work with public schools as an experiment in progress designed to advance academic-practitioner collaboration and a “democratic devolution revolution.” Academically based community service learning and research and communal participatory action research are highlighted as particularly useful approaches for improving scholarship and communities and forging democratic, mutually beneficial, and mutually respectful university-school-community partnerships.