Academics and Practitioners Are Alike and Unlike

Abstract

In this essay we challenge standard approaches to the academic-practitioner gap that essentially pit sides against each other, treating them as dichotomous. Instead, we identify and suggest ways of working with such dichotomies to foster research and theory building. We delineate several tensions associated with the gap, including differing logics, time dimensions, communication styles, rigor and relevance, and interests and incentives, and show how such tensions are valuable themselves for research and theorizing. We show that the gap often reflects views of conflicting groups of academics, while practitioners' voices are not always incorporated; thus we add a practitioner's voice to the conversation. We describe the dialectical forces that foster the tensions associated with the gap, including initiatives of national governments, ranking systems, and special issues of journals. We then show how the tensions represent fundamental, unresolvable paradoxes that can be generative of new research and practice if appreciated as such. We suggest several implications for research that build on tensions, dialectics, and paradox. We conclude with a brief reflection about the tensions we experienced while writing this essay and what these might suggest about the importance of academic-practitioner relationships.

From a Politics of Dilemmas to a Politics of Paradoxes

“…The learning in our seminar drew on academic knowledge, as well as on the students' practical experience in their sites of activism. Bartunek and Rynes (2014) recently reviewed the paradoxical academic−practitioner relationship. Their review suggests that "academic−practitioner tensions are paradoxical, and thus, how these tensions are managed is important for effective action" (p. 26).…”

Teaching-practice as a critical bridge for narrowing the research-practice gap

“…In management education at present, the reverse seems to be happening. Parties pursue divergent goals and the common ground is shrinking (Bartunek & Rynes, 2014;Gosling & Mintzberg, 2004). The co-creation of value between research and practice is ironically often neglected by marketing and management academics.…”

“…In Brennan, Tzempelikos, and Wilson (2014) and Storbacka (2014), the word 'education' appears only in the bibliography, in journal titles. Bartunek and Rynes (2014) only mention 'education' five times. It is interesting that researchers and educators appear to abdicate responsibility for knowledge propagation.…”

Management Education in Turbulent Times

“…In a recent Special Issue on 'Impact and Management Research' in the British Journal of Management, MacIntosh et al (2017) argue that the field of management would make serious gains by seeking to explore and exploit the integrated nature of education, practice, research and scholarship, and that our field has much to learn from other disciplines such as art, education and nursing where practice, research and scholarship are more overtly interwoven. In the same SI, (Anderson, Ellwood and Coleman 2017) question the way the 'gap' between researchers and practitioners is understood and show how a more equal relationship (Bartunek and Rynes 2014) can be created through 'relational management education'. Their approach builds a community of inquirers by reassembling the various actors and activities in and associated with business schools: publication, researcher-educators, teachers of full-and part-time students, future and current practitioners, and executive educationalists and consultancies.…”