The credibility issue: closing the academic/practitioner gap

The literature is highly critical of the business-academia relationship and there is a lack of congruence between strategic management research conducted by academics and that used by practitioners. There is also a lack of models of collaborative research and its dissemination. This research aims to identify means by which the degree of academia versus business congruence can be enhanced in managing strategic change effectively. A critical realist approach was taken using semi-structured interviews with practitioners, academics, and consultants in order to get a balance of views from different perspectives. The interviewees presented an opaque picture with a lack of clarity as to how organizations might or should access strategy thinking from within academia. This also extends to some uncertainty about what industry 'needs' and, from the point of view of the academic, what should be provided to client organizations. The results indicate that the transfer of new strategy approaches can only be achieved once practitioners acknowledge the credibility of academia in contributing to practitioner-related issues. Analysis of the qualitative data collected for this project suggests that achieving practitioner credibility requires the context and content of collaborations to be more proactively managed through more effective processes. Implications for academic institutions as well as individual strategic management academics are discussed. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.