Research-to-practice gaps-barriers between the scientific knowledge researchers are producing and the information professionals are receiving-plague many fields, including health, education, and business. Management and organization scholars have been pointing to a research-practice gap since the late 1990s.
That's bad news for managers and business leaders, who are missing out on evidence-based knowledge that could be helping them advance their organizations, their employees' performances, and their own careers.
"Concern regarding the science-practice gap is not new and has been a matter of discomfort in the Academy of Management (AOM) for some time. In fact, several former AOM presidents have referred to this gap in their presidential addresses," according to an Academy of Management Learning & Education article, "A Pluralist Conceptualization of Scholarly Impact in Management Education: Students as Stakeholders."
"Today, corporate executives often blame the science-practice gap they find in their new employees, graduating bachelor's and master's students, on academics who overemphasize research at the expense of practical experience in the classroom," said James R. Bailey of George Washington University. Bailey is one of the authors of the article with Herman Aguinis of George Washington University, Ravi S. Ramani of Purdue University Northwest, Nawaf Alabduljader of Kuwait University, and Joowon Lee of George Washington University.
Aguinis added, "Right now, the majority of universities reward faculty just based on number of articles published in these so-called A journals. Those A journals clearly make contributions to theory, but aren't very practitioner-friendly because they're very technical."
But the authors' findings represent a bright spot in the management research-practice gap. It turns out that undergraduate courses include an effective balance of academic and popular press source material.
The authors analyzed data from 33,719 articles and book chapters from 7,445 journals and books, among undergraduate-level textbooks on organizational behavior, human resource management, strategic management, and general management.
"Results based on the top-50 most frequently cited sources in textbooks showed that the percentage of non-academic sources is about 46% in general management and human resource management textbooks, 27% in organizational behavior textbooks, and 25% in strategic management textbooks," the authors wrote. They found that the most-cited sources include Academy of Management Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, HR Magazine, Journal of Applied Psychology, Strategic Management Journal, and the Wall Street Journal.
"Managers should be happy that their employees completed undergraduate business courses because the textbooks include a healthy combination of popular press and magazines, and rigorous, highly technical scientific sources," Aguinis said. "That is good news."
Aguinis explained that the management research-practice gap "hasn't been measured before our study in terms of the gap in how the knowledge researchers create has an impact on undergraduate education. What we looked at in our paper is what knowledge is transmitted to undergraduates, and what is the impact of our scholarship on undergraduates. For the first time, we measured the kind of knowledge that is transmitted to undergraduates through the textbooks they read."
"What we found is that this is actually good news about science-practice gap in terms of the knowledge undergrads are getting," he said. "The concerns about the science-practice gap have typically emphasized what researchers do. In the sense that, for example, junior faculty are told, 'Do not write anything for business people, you need to make sure that you write papers for other researchers so you can get tenure. If you spend too much time writing for the Wall Street Journal or HR Magazine, or writing a textbook, you're not going to get tenure. You need to first write for other researchers and show that you're a scholar.' That's the gap that people have been looking at. The gap, we think, probably develops later in people's careers. Our results show that undergrads are not negatively affected by the gap right now."
Aguinis said business school faculty "need to publish in the top academic journals and almost all of the rewards for research are based on that, and relevance is not that important anymore. That's the gap, that researchers are publishing almost exclusively for other researchers, and not for businesspeople, not for students, because the rewards system, the ranking system, means what is valued the most is that you publish in top journals. What's happening now is that universities are recalibrating and trying to reach that sweet spot between relevance and rigor."
"It looks like undergrads are getting good, updated, research-based knowledge, because the textbooks have a good mix of knowledge from practical business sources and knowledge from scholarly sources," he said.
Bailey said their findings show that "textbook authors take a broader view and skip the esoteric. They cite popular research in current magazines and publications, contemporizing knowledge for students. That prompts questions of relevancy. If the work found in academic journals rarely finds its way to textbooks, and the textbook author is communicating directly to the student, the vast majority of what is published in scholarly journals becomes irrelevant to students and real-world managers. Yet, textbook citations are not the central building blocks of academic performance metrics, despite their prominence in conveying knowledge to students. Instead, university performance-management systems rely on citation metrics in top-tier journals to determine tenure, promotions, and financial rewards."
To shrink the research-practice gap, Bailey said, "We need systemic change spanning culture, incentives, and research in higher education. Only then can we encourage scholars who create knowledge that is practical, solution-oriented and amply rewarded.
"Outward-facing professors able to connect their research to contemporary management will increase impact and engagement for students. Institutions that support that process with reputational and financial incentives based on real-life measures will increase their relevance within the business community," he said. "Most importantly, the graduating students, our managers in training, will enter the workforce better prepared to meet the demands of their corporate employers and armed with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed in the real world."
Aguinis added, "We have so much research being produced, and such a small portion of that research is being delivered to those who can use it. What a wasted opportunity. Imagine all the great things that could be done with the vast amount of research, to improve organizations, the well-being of employees, and society in general."
Aguinis noted that their article is a follow-up to the 2015 AMLE article, "Scholarly Impact: A Pluralist Conceptualization," by Aguinis, Debra L. Shapiro of the University of Maryland, Elena P. Antonacopoulou Gnosis of the University of Liverpool, and Thomas G. Cummings of the University of Southern California.
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Herman Aguinis, Ph.D.
Vice President & Program Chair, Academy of Management
Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management
The George Washington University School of Business
Washington, DC
http://hermanaguinis.com/------------------------------