Academic-Practitioner Collaboration Need not Require Joint or Relevant Research: Toward a Relational Scholarship of Integration

Abstract

The article examines how management science researchers and academics might more fruitfully collaborate with actual managers. The two groups are separated by, among many other things, the language and intellectual structure with which they attack management problems. The linear, structured "academic" methodology and language employed by management scientists is often baffling to managers trained to think more holistically about the issues confronting them. The articles previously published in the history of this publication are analyzed for the amount of information provided directly relating to management practice. The creation of relationships between management science academics and managers beyond collaborative research projects are shown to be desirable, and the difficulties of creating them acknowledged. Such relationships may well thrive in settings less formal than collaborative research projects.