Relevance Of Management Research Research Articles

Can they trust us? The relevance debate and the perceived trustworthiness of the management scholarly community

Concerns about the relevance of management research and its impact on management practice have been ongoing for decades. We propose a novel angle to explain this research vs practice gap: instead of focusing on the content and language of management papers as reasons for practitioners’ limited interest in the majority of our results, we focus on the role of trust. We propose that management research is often seen as irrelevant by practitioners because of the shape and direction of trustworthiness-building institutions. Unlike in other professions, such as medical doctors and lawyers, the trustworthiness-building institutions in our field are directed inwards rather than outwards. Institutional arrangements governing the area of management research ensure that scholars can trust results delivered by other scholars, but they do not cover the interaction between scholars and practitioners. Thus, practitioners have few reasons to trust and reach for our results. We conclude that the issue can be addressed, albeit only partially. This is because, unlike in the case of established professions, the well-being of our discipline is not highly dependent on practitioners, neither is practitioners’ well-being particularly dependent on our research.

The “research world café” as method of scientific enquiry: Combining rigor with relevance and speed

Next to rigor and relevance, this paper addresses speed as a third challenge of joint academic practitioner inquiries. Practitioners seek fast and actionable knowledge. However, traditional academic research takes a long time to execute. We propose a data collection method - the world café - with the potential to reduce this clock-speed challenge and to close the knowledge production and transfer gap. However, the traditional world café needs some amendments in order to be fully applicable as academic data collection method. This paper has the following five objectives: 1) include “speed” in the discussion of rigor and relevance in management research, 2) suggest the world café method as a technique to accelerate data collection in academic practitioner collaborative research, 3) introduce the “research world café” as an academically rigorous data collection method, 4) illustrate the use of the world café method with a small example 5) compare it to alternative methods such as expert interviews, focus group or Delphi. Results of a survey on the speed of group research methods is presented, evidencing that world café research is able to present practitioner results twice as fast as conventional research methods.

Having Nothing to Say But Saying It Anyway: Language and Practical Relevance in Management Research

This article investigates why management research which ostensibly embraces scientific protocols and is reported to be practically relevant is often not so. The implications for practice sections o...

Do business schools in India know the real business world Exploring some perspectives on academia-industry collaboration

The purpose of this paper is to explore academia-industry collaboration with reference to business schools in India. It attempts to explain the nature and extent of collaboration, challenges and issues in this regard, and strategies for improving the collaboration. Motivation for the study was found in the literature and the global and national debates at various forums on the training and preparedness of management graduates for industry jobs, relevance of management research for business, and the declining popularity of management courses; particularly in the Indian context. Interviews were conducted to gather qualitative data from 15 academicians and an equal number of industry experts selected using purposive sampling. Through these interviews, an enormous need to improve industry-academia interface emerged. The respondents discussed concerns, ideas and recommendations on various aspects of the collaboration which could be useful for business school administrators, faculty members as well as business managers in building synergies through teaching, research, consultancy and training.

Balancing Continuity and Novelty: Practical Relevance from the Practitioners' Perspective

Even though the literature on practical relevance of management research holds that practitioners actively construct practical relevance, the practitioners' perspective on relevance has yet receive...

Why is management research irrelevant?

At least since 1980, there has been a practically continuous, but somewhat fragmented discussion on the relevance of management research. This discussion has addressed practically all fields of management; here, besides general management, operations management, project management and construction management are examined in more detail. Although many different proposals have been made to rectify the situation, no definitive resolution has been found. In this paper, it is argued that prior analyses have not reached the root causes of the irrelevance problem. By an analysis of the recent history of management research, the following novel findings are reached. First, the root cause of the irrelevance is argued to lie in the 1959 reports on American business education, written by Pierson and Gordon & Howell. Second, while the proposed direction in the 1959 reports was deficient in several ways, the rejection of production as an integral part of organizations and management has been perhaps the most damaging feature of those reports. Third, current research on management suffers from a variety of immediate causes for irrelevance, insufficiently recognized by the scholarly community. It is suggested that reaching the root causes for irrelevance will facilitate finding suitable cures.

Is management research visible outside the academic community?

We address the question of the visibility of management research for practitioners by measuring scientific journal citations in nonscientific publications. While the social and economic relevance of research in management has been largely commented, it has been more rarely measured. This is due to the fact that management research is mostly aimed at the production of knowledge rather than at giving direct prescriptions for actions. Consequently, the relevance of management research is often of a conceptual, rather than instrumental, nature. While conceptual relevance is not easily measurable, the visibility of management research in managerial publications might give some insight into the perceived interest of management research to managers. We estimate the yearly number of citations in the press of a panel of 63 top-ranked journals in all fields of management over a 15-years period. Our results show that the visibility of academic journals in the press is very modest, and mostly restricted to top-ranking ( “world elite”) journals. The visibility of management research seems to have, on average, significantly increased over the period 2000-2014. We also report strong field specificities. In particular, the visibility of World Elite Journals in Marketing has increased dramatically over the last decade, while the visibility of Accounting journals has decreased.

Reconsidering the rigour-relevance gap: the need for contextualised research in risk societies

Abstract This paper addresses the debate on rigour and relevance in management research to identify barriers to progress and identify the challenges and opportunities in moving forward. We identify strong calls from both North American and European literatures for a move to close this gap. It has, however, been 20 years since Hambrick asked scholars ‘What if the academy actually mattered?’ during his Presidential address to the Academy of Management. Despite both the time and the consistency of calls, there has been only modest progress in closing this rigour-relevance gap. We argue that this is not because of any lack of willingness or capacity but is shaped by systemic issues. We find the narrative of the business school framed as either professional or social sciences a core issue. Each brings with them a tradition of different ontological perspectives and epistemological processes, protected by gatekeepers, which supports, even if unintentionally, the maintenance of the gap. We go on to discuss the challenge of management education and research in a postmodern context, the need to examine our conception of rigour, and to challenge the definition of management as a profession given its strategic win-lose orientation. We conclude with a discussion on the relationship between society and business and lay out the challenges ahead for richly contextualised scholarly work that may be defined as both rigorous and relevant.

The practical relevance of management research from the practitioners' perspective (WITHDRAWN)

Even though the literature on practical relevance holds that practical relevance is actively constructed by practitioners who make academic knowledge relevant according to their organizational cont...

Exploring managerial talk through metaphor: An opportunity to bridge rigour and relevance?

In this article, we elucidate that exploring managerial talk through the lens of metaphor might offer an opportunity to bridge the often acclaimed gap between rigour and relevance in management research and education. Building on an interpretative research approach and a qualitative field study among managers from the Netherlands, Poland and the United States, we reveal that managers view their day-to-day interactions in relationships with suppliers and clients as if they perform acts, play games and fight battles. These findings corroborate extant research, but they also show that combining (a) the use of metaphor as an analytical tool with (b) a focus on managers’ perceptions of their own and others’ micro-level behaviours offers substantial potential for synthesising theory with practice. More specifically, we argue that the layered nature of metaphors – on a primary level helping us imbue meaning to raw observations, and on a theoretical level drawing our attention to potentially interesting constructs – propels confrontation and symbiosis between research and practice. Simultaneously, a focus on micro-level behaviours enhances recognisability for practitioners, while facilitating the emergence of fine-mazed patterns underlying emerging constructs on a theoretical level.

Is the Problem Only Ours? A Question of Relevance in Management Research

Academics do not turn to managers for inspiration for their research and managers do not consult academics on theories to develop models and strategies. The resulting issue of the non‐relevance of research in this field is so controversial that it could limit the development of management studies. The problem, however, cannot be eliminated by simply calling for research on more relevant topics or hoping for greater collaboration between researchers and managers. The absence of a solution to this problem is not due to the unwillingness or lack of intelligence of researchers, but because science must be closed to external demands and therefore also to the managerial world. In this paper, I argue that the solution is not in opposing this closure, but incorporating it within a research and practice eco‐system that sets out from the fact that non‐relevance is not only a problem of the scientific community, but also of the managerial world: they have a problem too.

Enriching Public Sector with Strategic Management

Although scholars question the relevance of management research to the public sector, evidence shows that the United States federal government is committed to improving decision-making and public m...

Crossing the sea from They to We? The unfolding of knowing and practising in collaborative research

This article addresses how knowing and practising unfolds in collaborative research amongst practitioners from a large consulting and business services group and academics from a UK School of Management. Dialogue enabled actors to cross between theory and practice by providing a ‘space’ for support, challenge, exchange and experimentation. However, this ‘space’ was fragile and the insensitive actions of one individual, driven by institutional pressure to exploit the project for competitive advantage, resulted in withdrawal and the re-establishment of traditional divisions. Our view is that collaborative research is not necessarily an exercise in producing, transferring and implementing research findings but is better thought of as knowledge integration through a dialogue of theory and practice. The article contributes to the ongoing debate about the relevance of management research and the theoretical development of knowledge co-production.

Consortium benchmarking: Collaborative academic–practitioner case study research

Consortium benchmarking is a scholar–practitioner collaborative case study approach joining rigor and relevance in management research. In consortium benchmarking practitioners and academic researchers form a consortium and together benchmark best-practices. Consortium benchmarking includes practitioners as co-researchers, facilitating research relevant for both academics and practitioners. Rigorous research informs the entire process since consortium benchmarking collects evidence from multiple sources and uses various comparison techniques. This paper introduces the concept of consortium benchmarking and then illustrates its application with a case study that identifies the nature of innovative suppliers. The study shows how consortium benchmarking supports the production of relevant knowledge for both academics and practitioners in a rigorous way. In order to evaluate these contributions, the study develops criteria for assessing rigor as well as theoretical and practical relevance. Finally, the study compares consortium benchmarking with multi-case research and presents five aspects either not accounted for or neglected in “traditional” multi-case research.

A foundationalist perspective for management research: a European trend and experience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss, among alternative European currents, a “foundationalist perspective for management research” (FPM) which redefines the identity, rigor and relevance of management research.

Research in UK Business Schools or management research in the UK?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper takes an overview of the history of both the funding and the assessment of research within Business Schools in the wider context of social science research which examines the practice of management.Design/methodology/approachHistorical archives and current statistical data are both considered in the context of various writings on the nature of management and business school research.FindingsMany of the issues are deep seated but overall it is particularly important to emphasise the importance of “translation” in both engagement and interaction and also better links through intermediaries.Originality/valueThe paper adds to the on‐going debate about the relevance of management research as well as the role of business school.

Impacts, rigour and relevance of management research

Impacts, rigour and relevance of management research

Beyond Rigour and Relevance: The Underlying Nature of Both Business Schools and Management Research

This paper aims to develop further the common distinction that is made between rigour and relevance in management research. The debates around this issue have also been closely linked with the critique of Business Schools and in particular the nature of both their students and their teaching. A more critical look at not only the history of these issues but also the institutional nature of the Schools suggests that the underlying tensions are both more complex and also more intractable. The range of challenges to management research not only in terms of relevance, but also in terms of interdisciplinarity and the nature of disciplinary rigour combine with additional issues about the nature of managerial knowledge and expertise and a wide range of stakeholders to produce a complex environment in which neither market forces nor institutional incentives will necessarily produce the desired outcomes. However, a wider appreciation of the importance of overall engagement with the range of stakeholder groups and the continued importance of codification and teaching if combined with less of an overall focus on any single set of incentives and objectives is much more likely to aid the further development of management research.

The Consolations of Organization Theory

The call for greater relevance in management research leads us to examine the remedies offered by organization theory to organizational problems. In contrast to Starkey and Madan (2001), we argue that research engagement with other academic disciplines helps produce broadly useful knowledge. Installing practitioners in central places in the research process may focus research on short‐run rather than deep‐seated processes. We illustrate the relevance of organization theory through two examples of how apparently esoteric knowledge (produced through cross‐disciplinary collaboration) can have surprising application. First we show how the social network perspective proved useful in rescuing a manager from the perils of unpopularity. Second, we show how deconstruction can uncover the institutionalized routines that disempower managers and workers. Neither the management training centers nor the web‐based learning initiatives admired by Starkey and Madan are likely to deliver insights that address deep‐seated processes of change within society. Collaboration with academics across the university can further our goals of research relevant to practitioners.