2012 Bansal, Bertels, Ewart, MacConnachie, and O’Brien …aub.edu.lb/units/ehmu/Documents/bridging_the... · James O’Brien ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor in the Aubrey

S Y M P O S I U M

Bridging the Research–Practice Gapby Pratima Bansal, Stephanie Bertels, Tom Ewart, Peter MacConnachie, and James O’Brien

Executive OverviewManagement research often bears little resemblance to management practice. Although this research–practice gap is widely recognized and frequently lamented, there is little discussion about how it can bebridged. We partly remedy this problem in this paper by describing our experiences with the Network forBusiness Sustainability. Our experiences showed that the paradoxes underlying the relationship betweenresearch and practice make bridging this gap difficult. We argue that the reason why the research–practicegap endures is that bridging it is beyond the capabilities and scope of most individuals, and we call for thecreation of intermediary organizations like the Network for Business Sustainability. We close by outliningsome of the activities that can be undertaken by these boundary-spanning intermediary organizations, withthe hopes of better aligning management research and practice.

It is an article of faith that management researchintends to inform practice. In reality, however, itis an open secret that most of what most man-

agement researchers do utterly fails to resonatewith management practice. Even the captains ofour Academy of Management have featured thisconcern prominently in their outgoing presidentialaddresses (Hambrick, 1994; Mowday, 1997; Pearce,2004; Rousseau, 2006). They have described ourresearch as “arcane” (Walsh, Tushman, Kimberly,Starbuck, & Ashford, 2007) and its implications forpractice “ceremonial” (Bartunek & Rynes, 2010).Ghoshal (2005) even argued that the effect of man-agement theory on practice is potentially harmful.

The research–practice gap has motivated sev-eral special editions of journals1 and has also mademainstream news. The Financial Times (Schiller,2011, p. 13) reported that “with critics continuingto query the real-world value of research andteaching, relevance has remained an issue for[business] school administrators.” The Economist(2010) cited Bennis and O’Toole, who “criticis[e]MBA programmes for paying too much attentionto ‘scientific’ research and not enough to whatcurrent and future managers actually needed.”

Even though the research–practice gap is widely

We would like to thank Jean Bartunek, Denise Rousseau, Andy Van deVen, and Jim Walsh for their comments on previous drafts, and TimDevinney for his editorial guidance. We would also like to thank the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generousfunding. The authors are listed in alphabetical order.

1 Van de Ven and Johnson (2006) listed Academy of ManagementJournal (2001), Academy of Management Executive (2002), AdministrativeScience Quarterly (2002), British Journal of Management (2001), and theJournal of Management Inquiry (1997). This list could be extended toinclude Human Resources Management (2004) and the recently foundedjournal Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science andPractice, which “focuses on interactive exchanges on topics of importanceto science and practice in our field [emphasis added].”

Pratima (Tima) Bansal ([email protected]) is a Professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, and thefounder and Executive Director of the Network for Business Sustainability.Stephanie Bertels ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University.Tom Ewart ([email protected]) is the Managing Director of the Network for Business Sustainability, located at the Richard Ivey School ofBusiness, University of Western Ontario.Peter MacConnachie ([email protected]) is a Senior Sustainability Issues Manager at Suncor Energy Inc. in Calgary, Canada.James O’Brien ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor in the Aubrey Dan Program in Management and Organization Studies,University of Western Ontario.

2012 73Bansal, Bertels, Ewart, MacConnachie, and O’Brien

Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s express written permission.Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amp.2011.0140

recognized and discussed, it endures. Researchershave spent most of their energy lamenting the gapand attempting to account for why it exists. Theysuggest that differences in norms, rules, and goalsmake productive exchanges and interactions diffi-cult (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011). There is toolittle discussion, however, on how to close the gap,which we tackle in this article.

This article recounts our individual and collec-tive efforts to work in the midst of this gap througha unique and evolving organization called the Net-work for Business Sustainability (NBS). Founded in2005, NBS is a Canadian nonprofit organizationthat offers a space for sustainability researchers andpractitioners to interact meaningfully. Over the lastsix years, each of this article’s authors has played adifferent role in NBS (founder and executive direc-tor, researcher, managing director, practitioner, andacademic adviser). Here, we share our learnings withthe hope of advancing the discussion on how tobridge the research–practice gap.

We do so in four major sections. The firstidentifies three major schools of thought for clos-ing the research–practice gap. The second offersdetailed first-person narratives based on our expe-riences. The third section synthesizes our learn-ings and offers our thoughts on how to span thegap. The final section offers two provocations.First, we believe that the gap should be bridged,not closed. The business of research demands aperspective different from the business of practice;closing the gap puts researcher objectivity at risk.Second, intermediary organizations, not lone re-searchers, are better positioned to bridge the gapbecause of the inherent paradoxes between re-search and practice.

LiteratureReview

The origins of the research–practice gap have beenwell laid out in the literature: Researchers preferproducing knowledge over translating and dis-

seminating it (Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006), re-searchers have an incentive to produce research(Khurana, 2007) rather than to engage with practi-tioners, researchers and practitioners represent infor-mation in different ways and use different languageand strategies (Kelemen & Bansal, 2002; Kieser &Leiner, 2009), and researchers and practitioners

have different epistemological stances (Rousseau,Manning, & Denyer, 2008; Shrivastava & Mitroff,1984). Moving beyond the origins of the gap, somescholars have offered ways to bridge the gap, includ-ing evidence-based management (Pfeffer & Sutton,2006), engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007),and relational scholarship (Bartunek, 2007). We de-scribe each below, as they have anchored and in-formed our experiences at NBS.

Evidence-based management (EBMgt, as it hascome to be known) aims to inspire practicethrough research knowledge. It assumes that “bet-ter, deeper logic and employing facts to the extentpossible permits leaders to do their jobs better”(Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006, p. 12) because betterevidence generates better decisions (Briner, Den-yer, & Rousseau, 2009). Specifically, EBMgtguides the process of reviewing and synthesizingresearch to inform practice, such as through sys-tematic reviews of prior research. Systematic re-views are a replicable methodology of reviewingand synthesizing the best available evidence in afield to better inform practice. Under EBMgt,management decisions are guided by a combina-tion of elements, including “practitioner expertiseand judgment, evidence from the local context, acritical evaluation of the best available researchevidence, and the perspectives of people whomight be affected by the decision” (Briner et al.,2009, p. 19). Ultimately, this approach aims tosynthesize research and render it more relevant topractitioners, while being sensitive to particularcontexts in which the evidence may be applied.

Engaged scholarship assumes that researchersand practitioners can investigate complex socialproblems by collaborating across the basic stagesof the research process, including formulatingproblems, building theory, designing research, andsolving problems. Rather than focusing on theevidence, as in the case of evidence-based man-agement, engaged scholarship focuses more on theproduction of research as a multistage process.Within this process, Van de Ven (2007) proposesa range of possible activities, such as solicitingadvice and feedback from practitioners during theresearch process, sharing power in collaborativeresearcher–practitioner teams, and evaluating pol-icies and programs. Some forms of this approach

74 FebruaryAcademy of Management Perspectives

also draw on action research, advocating for re-searchers to embed themselves in managementsettings (Lawler & Mohrman, this issue).

Relational scholarship shifts the primary focusfrom the research community to the interface ofresearch and practice (Bartunek, 2007). Througha democratic and mutually beneficial research en-terprise, relational scholarship preserves—evencelebrates—each community’s unique identitiesand methods. Bartunek’s (2007, p. 1324) vision of“a relational scholarship of integration” depictstwo solid, separate poles, representing the aca-demic and practice communities. Individuals be-gin to bridge the gap by taking tentative steps intothe liminal space between these poles, consciousof the risk this effort entails. This approach advo-cates for new structures to facilitate more imagi-native and useful research findings, implicationsfor practice, and approaches to topics informed bythe joint interests of both researchers and practi-tioners. Bartunek challenges us to imagine a futurein which academic–practitioner conversationshappen as a matter of course, enlivening bothresearch and practice, without either communitycasting its own world aside.

These three approaches to bridging the re-search–practice gap are consistent in their objec-tives. They all call for researchers to engage withpractitioners in the pursuit of knowledge. It was inthis spirit that the Network for Business Sustain-ability was formed. We were inspired by theseapproaches, but in the practice of bridging wefound their prescriptions incomplete. We learnedthat the terrain between research and practice wasrife with obstacles and pitfalls. Through our “do-ing” we advanced our “knowing.” We share ourexperiences in this paper, hoping to guide othersembarking on a similar journey.

Setting theContextNetwork forBusiness Sustainability

The Network for Business Sustainability wasfounded in 2005 to facilitate knowledge ex-change among a community of researchers and

practitioners in the area of business sustainability.By 2012, more than 900 researchers and 1,500practitioners had joined the network. About 70%

of its $450,000 annual budget was drawn primarilyfrom the Canadian government’s Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council of Canada(SSHRC). The remaining portion was drawn fromabout 20 industry and government partners. TheNBS Web site (www.nbs.net) contains a growingcollection of resources including eight differentsystematic reviews, about a hundred translatedresearch briefs, five primers, and a range of othermaterials on business sustainability topics.

In 2008, the NBS developed a process thatengaged practitioners and researchers. Each yearThe NBS Leadership Council, comprised of adiverse group of about 20 representatives fromcorporations, federal government departments,and nongovernmental organizations, identifiestheir 10 most pressing questions. Then, NBS con-tracts research teams to systematically review theresearch related to two of these questions, basedon EBMgt protocols (e.g., Briner & Denyer,2010). The research teams employ a rigorous pro-cess (available on the NBS Web site and from thecorresponding author) to identify the best knowl-edge sourced from academic and practitioner re-sources and synthesize the findings for a practition-er audience. A Guidance Committee, comprisedof four to six Leadership Council members (andan academic adviser since 2009), guides each sys-tematic review.

All five authors of this paper have played a role inthis process. Figure 1 provides a timeline of NBS, theauthors’ engagement with the organization, and thesystematic reviews that form its backbone.

TheCultureProject

This paper focuses on one particular systematicreview to illustrate our experiences in the re-search–practice space: the Culture Project2 (Ber-tels, Papania, & Papania, 2010). The CultureProject emerged out of 2009 findings by the Lead-ership Council that one of the most importantsustainability challenges faced by organizationswas “how to embed sustainability in organiza-tional culture.” NBS issued a call for proposals toconduct a systematic review and awarded the proj-

2 The full report for the Culture Project can be downloaded fromnbs.net.


ect to a research team led by Stephanie Bertels.The research team summarized and synthesizedrelevant knowledge as follows:

1. Scoped the study with the Guidance Commit-tee to refine the research questions and develop aresearch protocol.2. Identified 13,756 potentially relevant studiesfrom both the academic and practitioner literatures.3. Screened the total studies according to a set ofcriteria based on rigor and relevancy, reducing thenumber to 179 studies.4. Extracted 1,695 relevant quotations from thestudies.5. Critically appraised the data (indicating thelevel of empirical support for the findings).6. Synthesized the data and prepared a reportwith input from the Guidance Committee.

The resulting report features a framework de-picted as a wheel that groups 59 different prac-

tices that help build and support sustainabilityin organizations into four different quadrants(see Figure 2). The practices vary on two maindimensions that reflect the importance of simul-taneously attending to two different goals (ful-fillment and innovation) through two differentmeans (formal and informal) and the need todraw on a portfolio of practices from the result-ing four quadrants to embed sustainability inorganizational culture.

In the next section, we offer first-person narra-tive accounts of our individual experiences withthe Culture Project and NBS. We use this deviceto share our learnings and vividly illustrate thedifferent voices and tensions in bridging the re-search–practice gap. The roles played by the au-thors are as follows:

• Pratima (Tima) Bansal is the Founder andExecutive Director of NBS. In addition to this

Figure1Timeline for theNetwork forBusiness Sustainability


service role, she is also a professor at theRichard Ivey School of Business at the Uni-versity of Western Ontario, teaching strategyand sustainability.

• Tom Ewart is the full-time Managing Directorof NBS, overseeing its daily operations, includ-ing the systematic review process.

• Stephanie Bertels is the lead researcher forthe systematic review of the Culture Project.She is also an assistant professor at SimonFraser University in the Beedie School ofBusiness, teaching sustainability and sustain-able innovation.

• Peter MacConnachie is the practitioner whochaired the Culture Project’s Guidance Com-mittee. He has been a member of the Leader-ship Council for three years. His full-time job isSenior Sustainability Issues Manager for Sun-cor Energy, Inc.

• James O’Brien is the academic adviser on theCulture Project’s Guidance Committee. He isalso an assistant professor in the Aubrey DanProgram in Management and OrganizationStudies at the University of Western Ontario,teaching organizational behavior and humanresource management.

Figure2TheCultureWheel: APortfolio ofPractices for EmbeddingSustainability


OurExperiencesBridging theResearch–PracticeGap

TimaBansal: FounderandExecutiveDirectorofNBS

Soon after I received tenure, our national re-search council (SSHRC) offered a small grantprogram to assess the feasibility of advancing

their “knowledge mobilization” strategy throughthe use of “strategic research clusters.” I appliedbecause I believed that business sustainability wasone of the most significant issues confrontingbusiness and society, and it called for innovativeresearch and business applications. Such work wasbest accomplished by assembling disparatecommunities.

To assess the need for a business sustainabilityresearch cluster, I assembled focus groups involv-ing researchers, business managers, governmentpolicymakers, and nonprofit leaders. They clearlyarticulated a research–practice gap and the needto span it. Practitioners argued that business sus-tainability research was often inaccessible or irrel-evant, and both researchers and practitionerswanted more opportunities to interact. These in-sights seeded NBS.

As a first step, I assembled the LeadershipCouncil. One by one, I met prospective organiza-tions, asking them to commit to joining forthree years. They would be required to meet onceannually to identify important research and con-tribute CDN$10,000 each year. It was incrediblyrewarding, as most businesses I approached re-sponded positively. In the first year, I recruited10 corporations, three federal government de-partments, and two NGOs. In our first NBSLeadership Council meeting, we identified thepractitioners’ top 10 research priorities and se-lected the top two for systematic reviews.

At around this time, I came across the Evi-dence-Based Management Collaborative. Thisgroup, whose members were primarily academics,shared a common interest in improving manage-ment practice and education through the applica-tion of best available research evidence. I partic-ipated in a workshop hosted by Denise Rousseauat Carnegie Mellon University, and returned fromthe meeting excited about applying the EBMgt

protocol to the top two research priorities identi-fied by the Leadership Council. In the first year, Ilearned that the EBMgt protocol, which wasdrawn from the medical sciences, did not extendwell to the messy reality of business sustainabilityresearch, and that we were breaking new ground.For instance, we found that the protocol guidedresearchers to summarize, rather than synthesize,prior work. We had inadvertently generated tablesof “counts” of prior studies by topic, country, andauthors, but not the frameworks, analytic tools,and best practices that interested our LeadershipCouncil.

I also learned that practitioners were moreinterested in the authority that researchers pro-vided than they were in the content. Duringthis first year, we held a number of forums involv-ing presenters from research and practice. Thepractitioners in the audience most valued otherpractitioners’ presentations, which seemed to meto be rather thin on content and rigor. The aca-demics’ presentations were seen as lifeless andlacked context. The “research” being touted byconsultants was seen as equivalent and often su-perior to that presented by academics.

This preference for consultant-based researchpresented itself again when we engaged the Guid-ance Committee to select the research team tocomplete the systematic review. We found thatcommittee members would often advocate forconsultants to fill the role, once again seeingconsulting research as equivalent to academic re-search. Ultimately, I felt that we had to offerGuidance Committees more direction in selectingthe research teams, as it became clear that theydid not fully appreciate or value rigor.

We learned much over the next two years.Tom, NBS’s managing director, captured ourlearnings in a protocol that led to much betterreviews that summarized and synthesized knowl-edge (available on nbs.net and from the corre-sponding author on request). But there remainedconsiderable variance in the quality of the out-puts, as practitioners’ interests would be difficultfor some research teams to manage. In response,we added an academic adviser to the GuidanceCommittee. This role called for someone whocould protect the rigor of the systematic review


process while the practitioner members pushed forrelevance.

We also learned that summarizing and synthe-sizing research was not enough. We needed togenerate easy-to-grasp models and frameworks—going the extra mile that researchers often don’t.Stephanie’s Culture Project was the first system-atic review that took this huge leap forward. Thisframework was a product of the combined strug-gles of the Guidance Committee, the NBS team,and Stephanie’s research team to find meaning ina vast amount of information. The result, I be-lieve, is powerful because the framework reallydoes integrate research and practice. We haveheard from both audiences that the “culture wheel”is particularly powerful because it shows the fullrange of 59 different practices, and identifies thosepractices that are supported by rigorous research, sothey can contextualize their own work.

I sometimes question the importance of rigor torelevance. Practitioners don’t really seem to careabout rigor, and management theory keeps beingreshaped or overturned. But I have made peace withthe view that evidence doesn’t give us answers;rather, its purpose is to challenge deeply held doc-trines. If we were guided only by relevance, we wouldrisk finding merely what people wanted to hear.NBS’s role is not to find truths, but rather to chal-lenge what might be taken for granted.

Things have become steadily busier for me andfor NBS over the past five years. If I had antici-pated the long hard road ahead in 2005, Imight not have embarked on it. I sometimes la-ment the toll it’s taken on my own research. NBSdemands are urgent and seemingly incessant. Buthaving embarked on this journey and seeingwhere we have come, I have no regrets. I continueto believe that research-based practice and prac-tice-based research are important if we are tocrack the seemingly intractable challenges im-posed by business sustainability.

TomEwart:ManagingDirector ofNBS

I will never forget how a senior manager para-phrased my role as managing director of NBS:“You herd cats [researchers] and protect themfrom dogs [practitioners].” He understood per-fectly what I do.

Researchers and practitioners are indeed differ-ent. I get it; everyone gets it. This is why NBS wascreated. Still, in retrospect, I didn’t really get theextent of it until the first conference call I mod-erated in 2007. On the conference call, I had aresearcher leading a systematic review and severalpractitioners on the Guidance Committee. Theresearcher spoke slowly and precisely, talkingabout “coding” and “inter-rater reliability.” Thepractitioners, by contrast, were quick to respondwith requests for “guides” and “tools.” Instead offacilitating a productive exchange, I felt like I wasstruggling to make sense of what was being said.

The conference calls got easier over time as Igained the confidence and intuition to encourageboth sides to speak up when they didn’t under-stand. I took copious notes on these calls, whichhelped me guide the process through the twistsand turns. My notes also informed this narrative.I found this gem from one practitioner in mynotes: “I’m eager to apply your theory on asym-metrical interventions to what I do in practice,but I don’t know what it means.”

I recall a challenge I encountered in research-er–practitioner interactions in a systematic reviewbefore the Culture Project. It was the first confer-ence call, and the practitioners described, at myrequest, the outcomes they wanted. Their aspira-tions were ambitious, in part because each practi-tioner brought a different set of expectationsabout the project. The researcher uncovered over30,000 relevant articles, when normally the rangewould be 5,000 to 10,000. Clearly, the researchquestion had been scoped too broadly. Before Icould reassure the researcher that the projectwould be scoped down through dialogue with thepractitioners, the researcher pulled out of the proj-ect. I worried that this would negatively affectNBS’s reputation with the practitioners andfunders (not to mention my own reputation), andwould paint researchers as unreliable and flighty.Fortunately, a new researcher took up the projectand skillfully scoped it down in dialogue with theGuidance Committee.

Over time, it has been rewarding to see howsome practitioners have learned from such inci-dents and how they now drive their colleagues tonarrow project scopes and avoid “drowning” the


research teams. They’ve also started to better un-derstand how the research process works and howto scope research questions such that they can beanswered on time and on budget. They are askingquestions that imply more carefully and narrowlydefined objectives, interventions, and outcomesthan in previous years.

Another systematic review seemed to grow itsown legs and run away from me. The academicresearcher felt himself to be accountable to thepractitioners on the Guidance Committee ratherthan to me. As a result, he responded enthusias-tically to the practitioners’ guidance, ignoring myrequests to maintain methodological rigor. I didn’treally understand the full magnitude of the prob-lem until I saw the first draft of the report, whichwas missing the detailed tables of all the citationsand his coding process. When I asked where theywere, he responded, “I haven’t coded for thatbecause after we discussed it with the practitionercommittee, they said that would not be of valuefor [them].” The foundation of NBS’s mission is toamass credible rigorous knowledge, and the proj-ect did not demonstrate that rigor. It was after thisexperience that we decided to add an academicadviser to the Guidance Committee structure.

Although these challenging experiences of-fered some of the most important lessons, one ofthe most surprising, and positive, lessons camefrom the Culture Project. We saw lots of potentialin the framework the research team had devel-oped, so we hired a graphic designer to bring it tolife. After dozens of design iterations, tripling thedesign budget, and a month’s delay, we generatedthe Culture Wheel. Getting the visuals right washard and required collaborating closely with art-ists, researchers, and users. I was relieved to seethe business community react enthusiasticallyabout not just the content but also the design.Peter MacConnachie, the chair of GuidanceCommittee, was right when he said: “You need tospoon-feed business audiences the one to two keyvisual messages.”

I have lost many nights of sleep over the tensystematic reviews I have managed in the pastfour years. Some have seemed like duels, othersmore like dances. As I reminisce, my openingcomments to this narrative come back to me:

Researchers and practitioners really are different.But with thoughtful guidance, a good process, andmuch patience, they can work together to createsomething new, elegant, and truly meaningful.

StephanieBertels: The LeadResearcheron theCultureProject

I recall the first Guidance Committee meeting forthe Culture Project. On the line with me were theNBS managing director (Tom), the academic ad-viser (James), and four practitioners (Peter amongthem). We started by talking about the researchquestions: How do you build a culture of sustain-ability? What can be learned from other initia-tives? Was sustainability different from other or-ganizational change efforts?

The practitioners each had a very different ideaof how to define culture. On top of this, theyseemed to use words interchangeably or use mul-tiple phrases to describe similar things. Later,when we spoke privately, James described this asthe jingle and jangle problem, a term coined byBlock (1995). I remember thinking, “Well, atleast it’s not just me that finds this frustrating. It’seven got a name.”

During the call, I also sensed that the practi-tioners really weren’t that interested in the detailsof the literature search process. But when Tomasked them to talk about outputs, they were quickto jump in with requests to know what “works,”what doesn’t, and why it doesn’t. I started to worrythat academic work in this field couldn’t really tellus all that.

Rather than become mired in these issues, Idecided to start the search process. NBS recom-mended that I use the Cochrane review process,which calls for effect sizes—a measure of thestrength of the relationship between the variablesunder study. Its systematic orientation meshednicely with my engineering and quality assurancebackground and I jumped right in, prepared tocode, count, and document my decisions. Butalmost immediately, we ran into problems.

The vast majority of the studies we identifiedwere qualitative case studies and didn’t report aneffect size. What’s more, researchers also had thejingle and jangle problem: They used the samelabel for different things, and different terms to


describe the same thing. It started with the mul-tiple meanings of sustainability, but there werealso issues with how researchers defined terms likeframing or championing or what they meant byincentives or training. Not only were there prob-lems with construct clarity, there were also prob-lems with their statement of claim—the recom-mendations made by researchers weren’t alwayssupported by data. On top of this, NBS requiredthat I review not only academic work, but alsopractitioner knowledge. But the Cochrane processhad no provision for dealing with practitionerreports or even theoretical academic papers. Icalled James again and we agreed that I wouldneed to deviate from the Cochrane protocol.

This is when the original overarching conceptof “practice” that I had used as a frame in myproposal actually came in handy. Instead of tryingto summarize the results of each study, my re-search team coded what organizations were “do-ing.” In retrospect, I see that this was the pointwhere we migrated away from a pure Cochrane-style systematic review into something that resem-bled more of a content analysis. To deal with theissues around statement of claim, we developedseparate codes for empirically tested practices and“proposed” practices—those practices recom-mended by researchers but not rigorously tested.These two categories opened the door to codingthe practitioner reports.

Combining these two types of data proved tobe very powerful. If we hadn’t included theproposed practices, our framework would have in-cluded only about 13 empirically supported prac-tices instead of 59. It wouldn’t have been as ro-bust, and it wouldn’t have resonated as much withpractitioners because it wouldn’t have reflectedtheir reality.

Throughout the process, I checked in regularlywith the Guidance Committee, updating them onwhat I was finding and sharing the framework as itwas evolving. We were all determined to producesomething that would go beyond a laundry listof what companies were doing and whether ornot the practices were working. These conversa-tions gave me insights into the language the prac-titioners were using in their work.

As the framework evolved, it was interesting to

see how the Guidance Committee interpreted andreframed it. For instance, when I first describedone of the axes of the framework as a tensionbetween innovation and implementation, theypushed back. They thought that implementationshould underlie the whole framework, whichforced me to rethink the categories. Ultimately,we relabeled the axes “innovation” and “fulfill-ment.” The Guidance Committee also pushed meto demonstrate what they could do with my find-ings. Academic papers often make sweeping state-ments about the implications for practitioners; thepractitioners wanted something that was concreteand actionable.

As we neared the end of the project, we neededto write an easily digestible executive summarywith sound bites that could be used to promote thework. I was always comfortable writing for practi-tioners, but I had not anticipated what was tocome. The NBS took my draft and stripped out allof my statements of claim and reduced my work tocatchy sound bites. It was unnerving. But I seenow that if I had qualified those sound bites (as Iso desperately wanted to), the work wouldn’t haveresonated as much as it did with practitioners.

In fact, I was surprised by the attention thereport received. I was bombarded with requests totalk to the media and present at conferences andindustry events. At first, I worried that businessesmight use the framework to do more than assesstheir culture; the engineer in me was coming out,and I was afraid my tool would be inappropriatelyapplied. Those feelings subsided as I realized thatcompanies were using the tool in interesting andunanticipated ways. Within a few months of thereport’s release, several large companies sent metheir own adaptations of the Culture Wheel.Within six months, about a dozen organizations,including companies and a few municipalities, hadshared versions that they had adapted to suit theircontext or needs. I was also invited into strategicconversations about embedding sustainabilitywith some very senior people in these organiza-tions. Clearly, this presents a great opportunity forfollow-up research. Even as I’m writing this arti-cle, I’m working with NBS to assemble a workinggroup of companies to refine and test the frame-work. We hope to build a micro-community of


practitioners and researchers interested in embed-ding sustainability into culture, to build on thefindings of the systematic review.

Ironically, the more relevant I became to prac-titioners, the more I worried that I would be seenas irrelevant by researchers. I’m still a junior un-tenured scholar, and I sometimes worry that myactions will be viewed as self-serving, attention-seeking, or just “not serious.” Some of my seniorcolleagues are saying that engaged scholarship ishigh-risk and best left for after tenure. Others aresupportive because I’m having impact. I’ve de-cided to trust the process, as I truly want to dorigorous academic work that affects practice. Ul-timately, I believe I will be doing better researchand can’t imagine doing it any other way.

PeterMacConnachie:GuidanceCommitteeChairfor theCultureProject and LeadershipCouncilMember

I had heard very little about NBS when my vicepresident of sustainability sent me to a meeting inToronto in 2008. I had been given a page with thetop 15 to 25 questions that sustainability peoplewere asking about and was asked to come with thetop three or four for my company and for theenergy industry in general. I didn’t know what toexpect from the meeting.

At that meeting, I volunteered to join my firstGuidance Committee. I was very much engaged inthe process and felt a strong sense of responsibilityto read the researchers’ drafts and help “keep itreal” for industry. I knew that some researcherscan become embroiled in the academic debateover ideas, but I understood that the point of NBSwas to make research relevant.

These projects always start with a discussion ofwhat we hope the end product will look like—butonly to an extent because systematic reviews seemmore focused on the process than the outcomes.After the initial discussion, the research teamseems to race around with their handful of re-search assistants—sort of like Google on steroids,yet much slower. There’s almost a formula withNBS systematic reviews where the researcher ex-plains the kind of search nets they’re throwing outin the water and the wide range of literaturethey’re exploring.

During conference calls, especially during dis-cussions about the literature search methodology,I’m sure there are a lot of puzzled expressions andlifted eyebrows at the end of the phone lines. Iexpect most of us are thinking, “Well, you’re theresearcher, you know how best to gather the data.”It usually isn’t until our third or fourth meetingthat the nuggets started popping into the nets.Until then, we are suspending judgment, thinking“I’m not sure where this is going, but let’s go downthis path anyway and see if we get it right.” Wenever quite know what the outcome is going to bewhen we start, or where the research will take us,but there is always this “aha” moment of discoverywhere things start to gel, where there is actuallysome nice bit of structure behind all the research.But you don’t know that until that magicalmoment.

Researchers tend to use words and phrases thatjust aren’t used in industry. I rarely use the word“cognitive.” I have never used the word “codify.”The researchers are really good at capturing ideas,but not great at summarizing them succinctly. Theability to summarize is really important for indus-try. We’re either lazy or overwhelmed—we don’twant to read a 200-page document! We’ll read a10-page document. There are a lot of other doc-uments competing for our eyeballs. As well, theinformation has to be somewhat visually appeal-ing and digestible. We need the researcher to takethe thousands of papers and tell us what should goon the one-pager that a businessperson puts on thebulletin board. We need the T-shirt phrase or amotto, like when the safety movement created“Journey to Zero” and “Take Two for Safety.” Ithink my job is to help translate the research sothat if I send the research to a colleague she willwant to read it, and not say, “What the heck isthis thing in my e-mail box?!”

The Culture Project started much like previousprojects, until we got to the synthesis stage. I wasstill feeling really fuzzy about the project. Tomreally pushed all of us out of our comfort zonesinto a different space. We challenged Stephaniequite a bit, and she challenged us on where wethought the project should go. There was a lot ofdiscovery going on.

I recall a particular discussion about synthesiz-


ing what she found in her review. By the third orfourth conference call she’d gone through thou-sands of different references and had started cat-egorizing things. Over the phone she started de-scribing how the project was shaping up. I wassitting there doodling on a piece of paper. Shesuggested one way to synthesize the findings intoa two-by-two matrix—typical of a business schoolresearcher. I piped in and we had this great debateover whether or not the model should be a cube,a tetrahedron, or something else.

At that point, the data seemed to be forminginto a structure. Stephanie gave us a picture thatrepresented the evidence she was finding. Shedidn’t seem to choose the structure; it kind ofpresented itself to her through the discussion.Once I heard her describe that structure, I felt Icould then describe it to other people. That wasmy aha moment, and I felt that I could share herresearch with others and show its value.

But still I worried that she didn’t make manyconcrete recommendations—maybe because shethought they were self-evident, or maybe becausethey extended beyond the hard evidence. Aca-demics seem reluctant to recommend anythingunless they know the definitive answer. People inindustry want to know what has or hasn’t workedelsewhere. We look for a range of options. In foodterms, researchers want to eat a la carte, but in-dustry wants a buffet to pick and choose the bitsand pieces we like. There’s no one absolute answerthat’s going to fit all companies, so we need tounderstand the range of options that could work.Tell us what you think and we’ll decide if any ofthe ideas are worth pursuing. In the end, theCulture Project gave me a great tool that I coulduse to discuss sustainability at Suncor.

As I reflect on my experiences with NBS andits Leadership Council, it strikes me that we’vecreated a network of unlikely collaborators. Re-searchers seem most interested in advancing re-search rather than improving practices. The Lead-ership Council comes up with questions and givesresearchers great access to us. The NBS sits in themiddle and helps researchers create useful re-sources from this access. NBS is unique and pow-erful in that it equips us with quality informationto inform our thinking and action.

My current concern with Stephanie’s project,now that it’s over, is how do I—how do we, all ofus—keep the conversation alive? I think research-ers need to move the dialogue along because theindustry people often are happy when we can takewhat we need. But there are many companies thatmay not even know about sustainability issues orhow to approach them. It’s easy for NBS to talk toits member companies; talking to those who aren’tNBS members is the next fertile ground for NBSto till. NBS member companies should be openingdoors for researchers and fanning out the researchto their own respective industries. Doing so willhelp deepen the engagement and impact that re-searchers and industry have on each other andsociety.

I find that a lot of academic papers hit the nailsideways. The topic can be really good, but thenthey approach it differently than I expected. It isclear that NBS is hoping to hit the nail a bit moreon the head.

JamesO’Brien:GuidanceCommittee’sAcademicAdvisor for theCultureProject

After some prodding, I accepted Tima’s request toserve as an academic adviser for an NBS system-atic review. She was persistent, and assured methat the work was not onerous. She said shewanted me to serve in this capacity because of myinvolvement in the Evidence-Based ManagementCollaborative and my knowledge of organizationalculture.

This was the first year in which NBS usedacademic advisers, so the role had not yet beencompletely defined. At the outset, I asked myselfhow I could best contribute. I anticipated that themain tensions were likely to be among the prac-titioners’ demands for practical solutions, the re-sulting scope creep, and the need for researchersto ensure the methodological quality of any find-ings. After I got over my initial hesitations, I wasexcited about finding a fresh approach to theoften-adversarial exchanges between researchersand academic reviewers.

During the first conference call with the re-search team and practitioners, the role of theacademic adviser came sharply into focus throughthe image of a midwife. I would be someone who


would help the researcher deliver a strong andcompelling review, while balancing the demandsand concerns of the practitioners against those ofthe research team. The role called for being more ofa sounding board and support system than a criticfor Stephanie, as she balanced the practitionerdemands against the constraints of availablemethods and the current state of the literature.

Over the course of the calls, it became veryclear that some quite thoughtful and well-inten-tioned suggestions from practitioners had the po-tential to utterly derail the project, or to introduceunwelcome complexity. For example, the practi-tioners’ descriptions of organizational culture in-cluded “anything that endures within the organi-zation over time”; a value system; a set ofidentifiable practices in organizational structure,decision making, or leadership; and somethingthat was likely fragmented into subcultures. Itseemed that contending with these ideas couldhave consumed all the project’s resources withoutdelivering something useful to practitioners.Stephanie clearly tried to navigate scope creep,but she had to tread a fine line between beingopen to recommendations and losing control ofthe project. As the academic adviser, however, Icould step in and provide perspective on why itwas important to bound the project.

After the conference calls, Stephanie and Iwould chat online to interpret, vent, reassure, andstrategize. Together, we worked to validate partic-ular decisions and develop paths around obstacles.I was able to steer her to academic work onstrength of claim and construct clarity. We alsotalked through the inherent tensions in the proj-ect, such as setting the bar so low that everythingwould be included in the review or setting it sohigh that there was nothing to talk about. Thisrelationship with an academic adviser seemed tobe a useful buffer for her; it validated her positionor gave her opportunities to think about her ap-proach to the work.

I was ultimately glad to have accepted Tima’sinvitation. This project became an opportunity toparticipate in an alternative and innovative ap-proach to management research. From my per-spective, I believe evidence-based managementcan and should be done. There is value in it as a

general approach to research—translating re-search, advising, and influencing practice. Thechallenge is in how it should be done. We need toinvest in adapting existing evidence-based tech-niques, which have largely been developed inhealthcare settings, to the particular demands ofthe management context, where problems aren’tso neatly defined. And, when we try to answerrelevant questions, we must appreciate that ouranswers can compete with existing ways of know-ing. The practitioners weren’t interested in beingtold to adopt a specific practice because of therigor with which it had been investigated. Theywanted to know the scope of possibilities. We canprovide this by engaging in dialogue with practi-tioners that reflects the intellectual power of ourapproaches and is mindful of their knowledge ofthe things we study. The “middle ground” of re-search and practice needs to be explored andmapped out in order for evidence-based manage-ment to thrive and succeed.

Bridging theResearch–PracticeGap

In retrospect, our experiences yield some usefullearnings, which bring the research–practice gapinto sharper focus and illuminate a way forward.

TheResearch–PracticeParadox

With the many calls to bridge the research–prac-tice gap, the question is why it endures. Based onthe experiences we illustrated in the narrativesabove, we believe the gap endures because of theinherently paradoxical nature of research andpractice. A paradox reflects “contradictory yet in-terrelated elements that exist simultaneously andpersist over time” (Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 382).There are a number of ways in which these para-doxes manifest themselves.

Researchers are pulled between the contradic-tory time orientations of practice, which entailsrapid responses and sudden changes, and of re-search, which calls for long periods of uninter-rupted deliberation. At the same time, researchersare torn between the imperative to define researchproblems precisely and investigate them carefullyand deeply, and the messy reality of the problemsof practice, which require breadth and immediateclarity. Researchers recognize the trade-offs


among generality, simplicity, and accuracy in the-orizing (Weick, 1989), often opting for accuracyand generality, whereas practitioners prefer sim-plicity above all else. Researchers cherish andprotect a few deep relationships with collabora-tors and colleagues, while recognizing thatmaintaining an association with practice is asocial pursuit, requiring multiple relationshipsand networking. When navigating the re-search–practice gap, researchers struggle to ne-gotiate the palpable disjunctions between thechallenges of achieving rigor and the demandsof maintaining relevance.

Working in the gap between research and prac-tice calls for a willingness to embrace these para-doxes and a concerted effort to move forward inthe face of the ensuing contradiction and contes-tation. Ultimately, as Smith and Lewis (2011)noted, paradoxes do not need to be dismantled orneutralized, but rather managed in a state of dy-namic equilibrium.

TheActivities ofNBS

We believe it is challenging for most researchersto navigate these paradoxes on their own. Bar-tunek (2007) illustrated a lone researcher crossingthe research–practice gap; we argue here that or-ganizations are better positioned to bridge the gap.Organizations like NBS enable individual re-searchers to pool resources, draw on specializedskill sets that they do not possess, and createopportunities that would otherwise be beyondtheir reach. Lone researchers often scurry backand forth in the gap, wasting valuable researcheffort. Few are able to fully occupy the space andspeak equally to both audiences with a singlepublication (Kelemen & Bansal, 2002). In thissection, which is informed by our collective expe-rience, we reflect on the opportunities and chal-lenges for intermediary organizations, like NBS,that seek to span the research–practice gap.

Identifying Research Questions

If the intention of research is to inform prac-tice, practitioners must help to shape and priori-tize the research questions. Too often, the re-search that is undertaken can be esoteric forpractitioners. “Dissemination is too late if the

wrong questions are being asked” (Pettigrew,2001, p. S67, cited in Van de Ven & Johnson,2006). Yet researchers rarely consult practitionersin setting their research questions or in interpret-ing their results (Rynes, Bartunek, & Daft, 2001),which results in research that is “lost before trans-lation” (Shapiro, Kirkman, & Courtney, 2007,p. 249).

To identify and prioritize problems, NBS drawson its Leadership Council. Involving practitionersin the process at the outset seeds relevant ques-tions. NBS carefully selects the members for thisgroup, involving noncompeting diverse organiza-tions leading in sustainability to evoke diverseperspectives and candid conversations. The Lead-ership Council meets one day annually to identifytheir top ten business sustainability challenges,which NBS disseminates hoping to motivatenew relevant management research. Moreover,by involving a diverse group of practitioners,not only does NBS serve a wider community ofpractitioners, it avoids being co-opted by singleprivate interests (Brief & Dukerich, 1991; Grey,2001; Kilduff & Kelemen, 2001). The processencourages conflict and negotiation, generatingcreative ideas that cut across organizational andsectoral boundaries (Van de Ven & Johnson,2006). The process aims to identify research ques-tions broad enough for practitioners, yet framed ina way to be researchable.

Shaping Knowledge Production

Researchers and practitioners value knowledgethat satisfies different objectives. Whereas schol-arly work strives for objectivity, accuracy, andgeneralizability (Bacharach, 1989; Sutton & Staw,1995; Weick, 1989), managerial work aims forsimplicity—something easy to communicate andunderstand, and relevant to a specific situation(Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006). Although prac-titioners see value and relevance in scholarlyknowledge, they lament the challenges in reading,interpreting, and applying it (Booker, Bontis, &Serenko, 2008). Practitioners also cite their lim-ited access to academic journals, overly scientificlanguage, lack of prescriptions for action, theirlack of time, and the sheer volume of scholarlywork produced as impediments to making use of


the evolving body of knowledge generated by re-searchers (Briner et al., 2009). It is easy for prac-titioners to dismiss the vast amount of scholarlywork that is generated, because it is often toonarrow. Individual studies often fail to meet prac-titioner needs.

NBS overcomes these challenges in three ways.First, it systematically reviews prior work, ratherthan conducting new research. Although NBSuses a systematic review protocol, such synthesescan also be accomplished through meta-analyses,meta-syntheses, and other methods that rigorouslyaggregate knowledge (Briner & Denyer, 2010;Petticrew & Roberts, 2006). These robust, repli-cable processes offer a number of advantages overnew research. By broadening the research beyondwhat can be done rigorously in a single study wecan truly begin to answer practitioners’ questions,and perhaps to motivate fresh questions and in-spire ongoing discussion. By synthesizing a rangeof similar studies and/or by drawing research fromadjacent theoretical and disciplinary perspectivesand contexts, findings can be pooled to providebetter answers to the broad kinds of questionsoften posed by practitioners. Furthermore, whendone well, this kind of synthesis can help to gen-erate new theoretical frameworks and to identify,prioritize, and even fill gaps in the literature (Le-Pine & Wilcox-King, 2010).

The second way in which NBS overcomes thedifferences in knowledge desired by researchersand practitioners is through a Guidance Commit-tee composed of practitioners and an academicadviser. This committee helps shape the call forproposals, selects the winning proposal, and ad-vises the research team every two months througha conference call. By involving a committee ofpractitioners and researchers, NBS creates knowl-edge that meets the needs of both communities.NBS builds deep relationships with these practi-tioners, who ultimately learn to appreciate thevalue of academic research and evidence-basedoutcomes. NBS also builds capacity among re-searchers by offering intimate knowledge of prac-titioners’ needs without the administrative burdenof personally developing those relationships.

Third, NBS draws on both primary researchand practitioner experience, which acknowledges

the value of knowledge in the field (Schultz &Hatch, 2005). For example, only 13 of the 59practices in the Culture Project were supported byprior academic work. The remaining practiceswere derived from practitioner experiences andprovided an important platform from which fur-ther research could be undertaken. To meet thejoint hurdles of rigor and relevance, Stephanie’sresearch team carefully enumerated the practicessupported by good evidence and those that wereproposed but not yet validated. Broadening thedata to include practitioner knowledge canbroaden our understanding of the phenomenon.

Translating Knowledge

Our experience has shown that translatingknowledge in a way that practitioners can use is akey challenge for researchers. As one astute ob-server said, “Sometimes academics take very ex-citing, engaging, and important work and presentit in such a way that it looks like a butterflysquashed between two pieces of glass” (Blake Ash-forth, as quoted by Bartunek, 2003, p. 203). In-deed, it may very well be that the flat, symbolicrepresentation of our work dashes any hopes ofpractitioners’ understanding the substance (Kele-men & Bansal, 2002).

NBS acknowledges the dual roles of researchand practice. As a result, it encourages the dis-semination of the work to research audiences—several of the systematic reviews have been pub-lished as journal articles or book chapters (Bowen,Newenham-Kahindi, & Herremans, 2010; How-ard-Grenville & Bertels, 2012; Peloza, 2009). Thesystematic reviews also serve a number of practi-tioner audiences. NBS invests considerable effortsto shape the text, change the language, developvisuals, and offer short implications and key take-aways. The final products can include short exec-utive reports, presentation slide decks, videos, e-books, and decision tools.

Yet we must be sensitive to the differences inlanguage used by researchers and practitioners.Identifying language that can pass across the gaprequires mediation between the researcher andthe practitioner. Researchers do not easily changethe way they write scientific articles. To advancescience, it is important to detail methods, results,


and boundary conditions. However, such detailsare not needed for practice. Few people have theskills to mediate between research and practice,what Kieser and Leiner (2009, p. 528) called “bi-lingual” or “bicompetent” facilitators and Gulati(2007, p. 780) called “bilingual interpreters.”Training such people would be a noble pursuit ofbusiness schools.

Disseminating and Mobilizing Knowledge

Traditionally, researchers focus their dissemi-nation efforts on a narrow network of colleaguesthrough refereed journals and conferences. Re-searchers need to find ways to reach, motivate,and enable practitioners to use their findings(Rynes et al., 2001). It is challenging for research-ers to be heard in a crowded marketplace formanagement ideas (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006). Nomatter how relevant the research findings may be,practitioners confront a cacophony of ideas andoften do not have the tools or knowledge to dis-criminate quality. Practitioners, therefore, are in-creasingly relying on trusted, credible, reputablesources with whom they have built relationships.

NBS is starting to build a reputation for cred-ible, rigorous knowledge and is forming such rela-tionships with practitioners and researchers. Ituses multiple channels, including a Web site, con-ferences, Twitter, and targeted events, and repur-poses our content for other intermediaries. Wecontinue to be challenged, however, to gain ashare of voice in this crowded marketplace. Ittakes time, talent, and endurance to build suchreputations and relationships.

Other valued intermediaries offer important ave-nues for disseminating research, such as the HarvardBusiness Review. Some researchers have reachedpractitioners through blogs, books, and the popularpress. However, such efforts can be challengingand time-consuming for researchers, especially tobuild a broad audience of practitioners. NBS ab-sorbs the cost of building these relationships andtranslating the research.

Moving Beyond Ideas to Action

If raising consciousness and changing behavioramong practitioners are the desired outcomes ofmanagement research, providing knowledge is of-

ten not enough. Pfeffer and Sutton (2006) ac-knowledged the challenges of using knowledge toimport practices, or theories, from one context toanother. Even if practitioners understand theresearch ideas, they have difficulty knowinghow to practice them in their specific context.Practitioners need to know more than “what,”they also need to know “how to.”

Action research is often described as a worthytool for moving research to action. Coghlan de-fined action research as “an approach to researchthat is based on a collaborative problem-solvingrelationship between researchers and clients,which aims at both solving a problem and gener-ating new knowledge” (2011, p. 53). Action re-search iterates between problem identification,action, and evaluation (Goduscheit, Bergenholtz,Jørgensen, & Rasmussen, 2008).

Action research, which is noticeably absentfrom North American research journals, necessi-tates the dual status of observer and problem-solver (Chisholm & Eden, 1993; Goduscheit etal., 2008). The researcher’s objectivity can becalled into question, as can the findings’ validityand reliability, given that it is the efficacy of theresearchers’ recommendations that is being judged(Kieser & Leiner, 2009; McKelvey, 2006).Coghlan noted that “at the core of the debateappears to be modernism’s adherence to the splitbetween the knower and the known, where theposition on knowing is a matter of a subject ‘inhere’ looking at or reflecting on an object ‘outthere’” (2011, p. 64).

NBS is tackling this implementation chal-lenge by adapting action research to the CultureProject. NBS will assemble a working group ofresearchers and practitioners to co-create newknowledge with the aim of embedding sustain-ability in their corporate culture. The researchteam will collect company-specific data fromworking group members, benchmark the datawith others based on cutting-edge methods, andthen train and empower members of the work-ing group to change their practices based onthese data. The research team will collect moreculture data after some time has elapsed toassess the efficacy of the practices. NBS willassemble the working group, cover the research-


ers’ expenses, and interface with members of theworking group. In doing so, NBS mediates therelationship between the researchers and work-ing group members, avoiding conflicts ofinterest.

This approach draws on the strengths of research-ers not only as scholars, but also as teachers. Theresearch team empowers a group of practitionersto apply the research and “own” the ideas, toimplement change. All the while researchers re-main objective. This cyclical process acknowl-edges and accepts provisional ways of knowing,which are tested in implementation, and returnsnew questions for further study. NBS subscribes toCoghlan’s (2011) and Pfeffer and Sutton’s (2006)edict to generate rigorous knowledge that effectschange.

Conclusion: LearningFromExperience

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

ShouldWeClose theResearch–PracticeGap?

To this point, we have joined the general call tobridge the research–practice gap but sidesteppedthe question of whether it should be closed. De-spite the possibilities created by bridging the gap,we acknowledge that it is important that criticaldistance is maintained, especially in relation toissues with wider social significance.

For example, current work in business sus-tainability directly challenges key business as-sumptions—issues such as whether unbridledeconomic growth is leading to environmentalcollapse, whether the concept of selling is com-promising human health and happiness, andwhether the drive for efficiency in operationsnumbs the human experience. These larger ques-tions challenge the status quo. If practitioner inter-ests drove all management research, researcherscould lose their ability to critically evaluate theorganizations they are tasked to analyze. Scholarsneed not focus only on finding solutions, but alsoon questioning the assumptions—the ones that

practitioners cannot see or do not want to address.While some researchers should work eagerly tobridge the gap, others should remain outside theworld of practice to see what insiders might miss.

Closing the gap also risks sending mixed mes-sages about what is “good” research. Conductinggood research is hard, and shifting the metricscould devalue the research process and its prod-ucts. Researchers need clear and consistent signalsof values and standards. If we are not careful aboutour prescriptions for closing the gap, we risk be-coming too heavily vested in the world of prac-tice, where urgent issues can displace enduringquestions and the bias to action can take prece-dence over deliberation.

Further, it is presumptuous of researchers toassume that practitioners want the gap closed.The gap creates a buffer, allowing practitioners tograpple with problems and solutions without re-searcher interference, especially when research evi-dence is vague or equivocal. It allows practitionersto prototype, experiment, and learn vicariously(Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006). Although there is aplace for the rigor provided by evidence, it canalso be burdensome when speed, agility, and evencreativity are paramount.

We are not arguing that the research–practicegap should be closed. Instead, we are asking thatthe liminal space be bridged, spanned, or filled.The gap endures because of the inherent para-doxes we identified earlier: Competing time ori-entations, the demand for more expedient formsof knowledge and problem solving, and a ten-dency to cultivate networks of mostly fleetingrelationships make it difficult for even the mosttalented researchers to bridge the gap. Closing thegap risks having researchers behave as practitio-ners or vice versa, yet filling it opens up theopportunity to build intermediary organizationsthat can span the space and allow both researchand practice to do what they do best.

TheBoundary-SpanningRolesofIntermediaryOrganizations

NBS is a boundary-spanner. Such intermediaryorganizations maintain the strengths of Bartunek’sseparate poles without needing to cast aside theprinciples of research (or of practice, by implica-


tion). They help address the conflicting and com-peting priorities of researchers and practitioners,and can transcend the inherent paradoxes to si-multaneously elevate both research and practicethrough practice-based research and research-based practice. Intermediary organizations extractvalue from the differences between the twoworlds.

Many organizations fill the liminal space be-tween research and practice; others include prac-titioner journals, consultants, and think tanks.Most of these organizations, however, occupy asmall part of the space, whereas NBS has tried tospan the entire space. We believe there is value inproviding a stronger link between research andpractice. In this final section of the paper, we hopeto equip others with what we believe are the threekey activities necessary for these boundary-span-ning activities in the hopes of motivating newforms of intermediary organizations.

Convening

Convenors initiate collaborative endeavorsand build collaborative networks by attracting theright parties to the table and by building trust andcomfort among the parties to get the conversationstarted (Gray, 1985, 1989; Wood & Gray, 1991).By creating a space for interested individuals ororganizations to become involved in solving aparticular problem, the convenor makes an impor-tant contribution to establishing and developingan ongoing community (Gray, 1989). Convenorshelp to develop spaces conducive to joint inter-pretive forums where a variety of members canreflect and interpret information to improve thequality and impact of the knowledge being shared(Mohrman, Gibson, & Mohrman, 2001).

Facilitating

Whereas conveners bring different parties tothe table, facilitators help to keep them there(Westley & Vredenburg, 1991). Facilitators sup-port and enrich collaboration by assisting partiesin communicating, negotiating, and problem solv-ing. Facilitation helps identify the right questions,find common language, and sustain an ongoingdialogue. Good facilitators in this context are of-ten bilingual or bicompetent people who are as

comfortable talking about methods with research-ers as they are chatting about firm strategy withpractitioners. They create a safe space where busi-ness interests and academic interests can bejointly served without compromising the need forrigor by researchers and the pragmatic needs ofbusiness. They also create the semantic capacityto mediate between the research and practicecommunities and keep both parties at the table(Carlile, 2002). Good facilitators can delineatethe knowledge gap, and they are able to motivateboth parties to work within and across it.

Supporting

The research–practice gap involves a broadrange of knowledge-handling skills, such asknowledge production, translation, communica-tion, dissemination, and training. Whereas mostresearchers are good at one skill and many aregood at several, few researchers can span the spec-trum. An intermediary organization can hire peo-ple who specialize in particular support roles.Much like medical writers, who need not researchor practice medicine, these intermediariesneed not be researchers or practitioners. The sup-porting role requires people who are specialized attheir particular skill but are sufficiently fluent inthe language of both communities. They can helppractitioners and researchers co-create newboundary objects that embody knowledge fromboth communities. By engaging in creating theseobjects, both communities may find themselvestransformed (Carlile, 2002).

These three roles—facilitating, convening, andsupporting—help transcend the paradoxes be-tween research and practice. Most researchershave some of these skills but few have them all,which is why we need intermediary organizationsto bridge the gap. These skills also serve as thefoundation for the activities that bridge the gap.We illustrate these skills and activities in Figure 3.

In this paper, we set out to share our experi-ences in bridging the research–practice gap in aneffort to motivate others to do the same. Weargued that the inherent paradoxes in researchand practice make spanning the gap difficult forany one researcher—the gap calls for intermediaryorganizations. NBS is only one example of an


intermediary organization; the field of manage-ment will benefit from many more. With thegrowth and development of intermediary organi-zations that foster communities focused arounddifferent management topics, we are confidentthat the relevance of management research willbecome more evident.

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