Bridging the research-practice divide: Harnessing expertise collaboration in making a wider set of contributions

Abstract

Understanding how we develop research contributions which go beyond conversations in the academic field is an enduring challenge. While much has been written on the importance of academic-practitioner relationships in the research process more is needed on conceptualizing how we develop a wider set of contributions. In this paper, we call for researchers to be reflective as to how different forms of expertise can be drawn on during collaborative relationships to bridge the research – practice divide. We develop a framework which combines different levels of expertise with varying forms of academic-practitioner collaboration to widen the impact of our research. Four strategies are proposed by which academics may leverage their expertise in collaborative relationships with practitioners to develop Research Impact and Contributions To Knowledge (RICK). These include: maintaining critical distance, promoting deeper engagement, developing prescience, and achieving hybrid practices. We discuss implementation approaches for each of these RICK strategies and suggest writing genres to help increase engagement by practitioners in research contributions.

Introduction

Making contributions from our research is an enduring and vexing question for scholars regardless of where they are on their career trajectory (Barrett & Walsham, 2004). For example, editors and reviewers constantly remind authors of the need to develop their contributions and point to the inherent merits of extending knowledge through theoretical insights (e.g. Van de Ven, 1989; Webster & Watson, 2002; Whetten, 1989). Scholars have also highlighted the pragmatic virtue of simplicity in developing one's contributions (Weick, 1989) as well as the importance of coherence (Shepherd & Sutcliffe, 2011).

Corley and Gioia (2011) develop a more expansive understanding of theoretical contributions. They highlight two key dimensions of a contribution, namely its originality (i.e. revelatory) and utility (i.e. practical or scientific usefulness). Building on the rigor versus relevance debate (Gulati, 2007; Tushman & O'Reilly, 2007), they note the ongoing neglect of our contributions' practical utility. One often cited rationale for this is the need for purity in academic inquiry which comes with distance, independence, and academic detachment (Caswill & Shove, 2000; Van de Ven, 2018).

Another related stream of research emphasises the need for collaborative academic -practitioner relationships. For example, scholars highlight academia's lack of engagement with practitioners and how this limits the scope of theorizing (Bartunek, 2007; Dutton & Dukerich, 2006; Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006). Van de Ven (in press) points out that academic and practical knowledge are two distinct domains of knowledge and both are critical for understanding complex issues. He highlights that there is a common misguided assumption that practical forms of knowledge are necessarily derived from academic research (Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006). In doing so, he argues that we miss the distinct competencies that practitioners have and their insight into complex problems (Van de Ven, 2007). Relatedly, Bartunek (2007) argues for “a relational scholarship of integration” so that academics can learn to work with practitioners in new ways and on a more equal footing. Such relationships can be fostered by understanding the complexity of practitioners' expertise and knowledge (Trullen & Bartunek, 2007). In this way, an engaged scholarship perspective challenges key debates as to whether our conceptualization of expertise should be exclusively associated with analytic abstraction (Caswill & Shove, 2000).

We build on these two streams of literature to examine how researchers can widen their contributions through a deeper understanding of expertise. In the following section, we start by discussing further the challenge of bridging academic-practitioner relationships in expanding the scope of our contributions. We subsequently draw on Collins and Evans (2008) problematization of expertise as being both contributory and interactional, to develop an expertise- collaboration framework. We conclude by discussing how our RICK framework is related to specific research strategies and suggest how they may be connected to specific genres of academic writing to widen the accessibility of academic contributions to practice.