Engaging corporate partners to bridge the theory-practice gap

Journal of Supply Chain Management, Spring, 2008 by Michael D. Hutt

A substantial body of research suggests that managers do not turn to business school scholars or academic research findings in formulating business strategies and practices (e.g., Rynes, Bartunek and Daft 2001; Bennis and O'Toole 2005). In turn, researchers are often reluctant to turn to managers for inspiration in defining research questions or for insights in interpreting the implications of their research results. Over the past several years, the Center for Services Leadership (CSL) at Arizona State University has attempted to bridge this gap by engaging corporate partners in the research programs of our faculty and doctoral students. The CSL was formed 20 years ago by the Department of Marketing. More than 40 leading corporations are represented among CSL members, including Siemens, Honeywell, IBM, Marriot, Southwest Airlines, Cisco Systems, and Harley-Davidson. While the focus is on services marketing, the executives are interested in a broad array of issues such as research that links customer metrics to business performance and work on the interface between the customer and the organization. The board members who represent the member companies include general management, operations, supply chain, finance, and marketing executives. At Arizona State University and elsewhere, there are other notable centers that direct specialized attention to the supply chain management sphere of practice. As an aside, among the business school disciplines, I have always felt that supply chain scholars are the most effective in forging relationships with corporate partners. In this forum, Mentzer (2008) offers a valuable process model of marketing scholarship that explores the interactive environment in which supply chain management scholarship occurs. Consistent with this perspective, feedback from practitioners provides a trigger to scholarly thinking.

Drawing on reflections from our corporate research partnership program, I will explore the theory-practice gap and isolate the way in which a collaborative process can be used to more carefully frame research questions and enhance the value of the results for academics and practitioners alike. I will also highlight some of the special challenges that corporate partnerships present for researchers.

THEORY-PRACTICE GAP

The work of scholars and managers differ in context, process, and purpose (Van de Ven 2007). Connected to experience, managers develop an understanding of the problems and tasks that arise in particular situations and the means-ends activities that provide solutions. Mintzberg (1994), for example, offers an integrated view of managerial work that isolates the roles that managers perform at three levels: managing by information (communicating and controlling), managing through people (leading and linking), and managing action, each implemented inside and outside the unit. In many ways, business school scholars often portray managers as analytical decision makers and provide a rather narrow view of the managerial work that they perform. For example, by conceiving of managers as strategists or controllers, limited recognition is given to the much tougher work of managing across functions, reconciling diverse interests, securing required resources from senior management, and handling everyday implementation. Based on extensive field studies, Mintzberg concludes that managers devote a great deal of time to networking--building intricate coalitions of supporters inside and outside of the firm.

The management literature has long recognized that, even within the same organization, individuals representing different functional areas (e.g., marketing versus R & D) had trouble benefiting from each other's knowledge because of their different thought worlds (unique interpretive schemes). Such thought world differences become particularly pronounced between the research and practitioner communities. To this end, Mohrman, Gibson and Mohrman demonstrate that "if research is to be useful, attention must be paid to the relationship between researchers and practitioners, not simply to the content of the research" (2001, p. 370). Rather than treating organizations and their members as "subjects," they must consider the views of organizational members in designing research studies. So as in any exchange process, there are both content and relationship aspects of this process, as well as dialogue and bidirectional influence. This perspective is consistent with Van de Ven's (2007) concept of engaged scholarship that represents a participative form of research for obtaining the diverse perspectives of key stakeholders in studying complex problems.

FRAMING THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

"The action steps to resolve the old dichotomy of theory and practice were often portrayed with the minimalist request for management researchers to engage with practitioners through more accessible dissemination. But dissemination is too late if the wrong questions have been asked," (Pettigrew 2001, S61, S67). In her contribution, Flynn (2008) highlights the importance of framing research questions in a theoretically sound manner and choosing issues that raise important implications for academics and supply chain professionals alike. Consistent with an engaged scholarship perspective, a dialogue with practitioners can enrich the problem formulation process. I will draw on a recent research project to illustrate the value of securing practitioner input early in the research process.