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This paper compares and contrasts practice-based perceptions of the research–practice gap in the United States (US) with those in Australia.

The current study extends the work of Tucker and Lowe (2014) by comparing and contrasting their Australian-based findings with evidence from a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with senior representatives of 18 US state and national professional accounting associations.

The extent to which academic research informs practice is perceived to be limited, despite the potential for academic research findings to make a significant contribution to management accounting practice. We find similarities as well as differences in the major obstacles to closer engagement in the US and Australia. This comparison, however, leads us to offer a more fundamental explanation of the divide between academic research and practice framed in terms of the relative benefits and costs of academics engaging with practice.

Rather than following conventional approaches to ‘bridging the gap’ by identifying barriers to the adoption of research, we suggest that only after academics have adequate incentives to speak to practice can barriers to a more effective diffusion of their research findings be surmounted.

This study makes three novel contributions to the “relevance literature” in management accounting. First, it adopts a distinct theoretical vantage point to organize, analyze, and interpret empirical evidence. Second, it captures practice-based views about the nature and extent of the divide between research and practice. Third, it provides a foundational assessment of the generalizability of the gap by examining perceptions of it across two different geographic contexts.

Purpose: The current study aims to cast light on the divide between academic research in management accounting and its applicability to practice by examining, from the standpoint of nursing, how this gap is perceived and what challenges may be involved in bridging it.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The current study compares the findings of Tucker and Parker (2014) with both quantitative as well as qualitative evidence from an international sample of nursing academics.

Findings: The findings of this study point to the differing tradition and historical development in framing and addressing the research–practice gap between management accounting and nursing contexts and the rationale for practice engagement as instrumental in explaining disciplinary differences in addressing the research–practice gap.

Research Implications Despite disciplinary differences, we suggest that a closer engagement of academic research in management accounting with practice “can work,” “will work,” and “is worth it.” Central to a closer relationship with practice, however, is the need for management accounting academics to follow their nursing counterparts and understand the incentives that exist in undertaking research of relevance.

Originality/value: The current study is one of the few that has sought to look to the experience of other disciplines in bridging the gap. Moreover, to our knowledge, it is the first study in management accounting to attempt this comparison. In so doing, our findings provide a platform for further considering how management accounting researchers, and management accounting as a discipline might, in the spirit of this study’s title, “Learn from the Experience of Others.”

BUSINESS SCHOOL GRAFFITI is a highly personal and revealing account of the first ten years (1965–1975) at Britain’s University Business Schools. The progress achieved is documented in a whimsical fashion that makes it highly readable. Gordon Wills has been on the inside throughout the decade and has played a leading role in two of the major Schools. Rather than presuming to present anything as pompous as a complete history of what has happened, he recalls his reactions to problems, issues and events as they confronted him and his colleagues. Lord Franks lit a fuse which set a score of Universities and even more Polytechnics alight. There was to be a bold attempt to produce the management talent that the pundits of the mid‐sixties so clearly felt was needed. Buildings, books, teachers who could teach it all, and students to listen and learn were all required for the boom to happen. The decade saw great progress, but also a rapid decline in the relevancy ethic. It saw a rapid withering of interest by many businessmen more accustomed to and certainly desirous of quick results. University Vice Chancellors, theologians and engineers all had to learn to live with the new and often wealthier if less scholarly faculty members who arrived on campus. The Research Councils had to decide how much cake to allow the Business Schools to eat. Most importantly, the author describes the process of search he went through as an individual in evolving a definition of his own subject and how it can best be forwarded in a University environment. It was a process that carried him from Technical College student in Slough to a position as one of the authorities on his subject today.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the work‐related attitudes (job satisfaction, job stress and the propensity to remain) of Australian academics and their association with organisational, institutional and demographic factors.

Data were collected by distributing a survey questionnaire to 750 academics, from 37 Australian universities.

The results indicate a moderately low level of job satisfaction, moderately high level of job stress, and high propensity to remain. The findings reveal that the organisational factors (management style, perceived organisational support, and the characteristics of the performance management system) exhibited the most significant association with academic work‐related attitudes, with the only significant institutional factor, the declining ability of students, negatively impacting on job satisfaction and job stress. The findings revealed that work‐related attitudes differ, based on discipline, with science academics found to be more stressed and less satisfied than accounting academics. Different organisational and institutional factors were associated with the work‐related attitudes of academics from these two disciplines.

The findings will make university management aware of the work‐related attitudes of staff, and the factors that are associated with such attitudes, thereby assisting management in developing management policies, and taking appropriate action to address the concerns of staff.

The study provides an initial comparison of the work‐related attitudes (job satisfaction, job stress, and propensity to remain) of Australian academics across the accounting and science disciplines. The study also provides an important insight into the association between specific organisational and institutional factors, with the work‐related attitudes of Australian academics across both disciplines.

The aim of this paper is to identify and gain insights into the significance of barriers contributing to the purported “gap” between academic management accounting research and practice.

Drawing on diffusion of innovations theory, this study collects and analyses data from a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with 19 representatives of the four principal professional accounting bodies in Australia.

Professional accounting bodies perceive the gap between academic research and practice in management accounting to be of limited concern to practitioners. The two most significant barriers to research utilisation by practitioners are identified as: difficulties in understanding academic research papers; and limited access to research findings. In acting as a conduit between the worlds of academia and practice, professional bodies have an important role to play by demonstrating the mutual value to both academics and practitioners resulting from a closer engagement between MA research and practice.

As one of the few empirically-based, theoretically informed investigations exploring the research-practice gap in management accounting, this study provides insights rather than “answers”. Its findings therefore serve as a foundational basis for further empirical and theoretical enquiry.

This study contributes to the conversation about the “research-practice gap” in management accounting by adopting a distinct theoretical vantage point to organize, analyse and interpret empirical evidence obtained from Australian professional accounting bodies about management accounting practice.

The knowledge generated by academics in the field of management is often criticized because of its reduced relevance for professionals. In the review of the literature, the authors distinguish between three streams of thought. The review of the literature and the understanding of the research streams that have been addressed by the academic–practitioner gap in management has allowed to clarify that what truly underlies each of these approaches is a different assumption or paradigm from which the management science focusses.

This paper reviews the main approaches that have analysed this topic, drawing a number of conclusions.

The knowledge generated by academics in the field of management is often criticized because of its reduced relevance for professionals. In the review of the literature, the authors distinguish between three main perspectives. The review of the literature and the understanding of the research streams that have been addressed by the academic–practitioner gap in management has allowed us to clarify that what truly underlies each of these approaches is a different assumption or paradigm from which the management science focusses. To represent the findings of the literature review in this sense, the authors will present, first, a model that serves as a framework to interpret the different solutions proposed in the literature to close the gap from a positivist paradigm. Subsequently, they question this view through a reflection that brings us closer to a more pragmatic and interpretive paradigm of management science to bridge the research–practice gap.

In recent studies, researchers agree that there is an important gap between management research and practice, which may bear little resemblance to each other. However, the literature on this topic does not seem to be guided by a rigorously structured discourse and, for the most part, is not based on empirical studies. Moreover, a sizeable body of literature has been developed with the objective of analysing and contributing solutions that reconcile management researchers and professionals. To offer a more systematic view of the literature on this topic, the paper classifies previous approaches into three different perspectives based on the ideas on which they are supported. Finally, the paper concludes with some reflections that could help to reorient the paradigm from which the management research is carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the quality and accreditation of management education by examining the fit between the characteristics of current management academics in Portugal and recognised accreditation standards. For purposes of comparison, the authors use both general Portuguese teaching accreditation standards and specific international standards for management education.

The authors analyse indicators of staff career positioning, tenure status, full time vs part-time, age, degree qualifications, field of training, level of academic inbreeding, internationalisation, research activity, professional activity, and the number of hours taught per week. The authors also examine the relationship between them, in light of accreditation standards, for all academic staff teaching in management degrees submitted for compulsory accreditation by the Portuguese accreditation agency.

The reality found in this study shows gaps between the actual attributes of management academics and what can be considered appropriate attributes, according to the general consensus found in the literature and which is duly mirrored in common “qualified faculties” accreditation standards by Portuguese and international standards (AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS).

The findings relate to the Portuguese situation and the analysis developed should be extended to other contexts. Also, while the data, which were collected through a census, has a wide national scope, it only covers one academic year.

This work has policy setting implications for degree accreditation and for developing capacity during the transitional periods when universities implement the mandatory minimum standards. It can also help universities to benchmark themselves against their peers as a diagnostic tool for elaborating improvement plans.

The massification of higher education has led to legitimate concerns about the quality of the services provided, and consequently accreditation procedures were devised to restore trust. However, policy makers must be aware of the impacts of their actions, namely the effects of degree accreditation, as their goals need to be achieved with the minimum negative impact on academic work.

The authors work sheds light on the characteristics of those who teach management and how they align with the current accreditation policies that affect academia globally and, in the process, presents empirical evidence from Portugal, which is at a relatively early stage in the accreditation process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the production of management knowledge in Argentina.

Based on a qualitative research strategy that draws on one of the authors' participant observation in the field of Argentine management education, selected data from Argentine universities, and a bibliometric study of local and foreign management journals.

Suggests that local academics are mainly engaged in the production of practitioner‐oriented management knowledge that is highly influenced by US popular market managerialism. Analyses the causes of the low level of production of indigenous academic knowledge, concluding that it can be explained by three related factors: the lack of financial resources to pursue independent scholarly research; the academic elite's lack of independence relative to the consulting elite; and the resulting patterns of cultural and social capital of Argentine management scholars. Concludes that that this situation might not be unique to Argentina, and that the hegemonic position of popular management discourse in developing countries is useful for those interest groups who benefit from managerialism.

Contributes to the largely neglected study of the processes of creation diffusion and consumption of management knowledge in developing countries

Existing research on how professionals manage after-hours connectivity to work has been dominated by studies on the strategies/practices individuals develop. In these studies, mobile technology is perceived as a tool or an enabler that supports otherwise human-centric connectivity decisions. This view sees technology as separate or external to the organisation, missing out on its nuanced role in shaping connectivity decisions. Our study aims to bring technology back into the sociomaterially imbricated context of connectivity and to unpack its parameters.

Drawing on data collected from documents and semi-structured interviews, we adopt the framework of “sociomaterial imbrications” (Leonardi, 2011) to understand the social and material parameters that influence connectivity management practices at two different academic institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The study identifies a set of social and material parameters (organisational, individual, technological and situational) that imbricate to shape, collectively and not individually, professionals’ connectivity management practices. Connectivity decisions to change practice (such as decisions of where, when or why to connect) or technology (how to connect) are not as distinct as they appear but originate from, and are founded on, imbricated sociomaterial parameters. Our study further suggests that connectivity decisions are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of sociomaterial imbrications, but decisions are not solely idiosyncratic. The context within which connectivity decisions are taken influences the type of decisions made.

Connectivity management emerged from sociomaterial imbrications within a context constitutive of four interacting parameters: organisational, technological, situational and individual. Decisions around the “how” and the “what” of connectivity – i.e. the practice of connectivity and its underpinning technology – originate from how people perceive sociomaterial imbrications as enabling or constraining within a context. Individual perceptions account for changes in practice and in technology, but the context they find themselves in is also important. For instance, we show that professionals may perceive a certain technology as affording, but eventually they may use another technology for communications due to social norms.

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first is to provide insight into the academic life, teaching and research activities of active participants in the sustainability accounting and management academic community in North America. The second is to provide readers with an overview of the papers in this special issue.

To meet the first objective, we specifically sought out those who self-identify as sustainability accounting and management academics, based in North American universities and who actively engage in the sustainability academic community in North America. Using an anonymous online survey, this group was asked to respond to various questions about their academic life, research and teaching activities.

Survey respondents report that they choose to focus on sustainability accounting and management because they want to make a difference (change the world). To that end, the respondents identify carbon emissions and climate change, social issues such as inequalities, as well as grand challenges and sustainable development goals, as important research topics to pursue in the future. While passionate about their research topics, respondents generally note that research outlets that will serve to significantly move their careers forward are difficult to find. A relatively small number of respondents teach sustainability accounting or management, however, most courses taught are dedicated to the topic and teaching sustainability was identified as amongst the most enjoyable aspects of their academic lives.

With study respondents feeling closed out of a number of mainstream journals, career paths at North American institutions could appear somewhat limited for those choosing sustainability accounting and management research as a focus, interest and even passion. This is perhaps even more profound on the teaching side where from a practical perspective, we need to be teaching accountants and managers the significance of sustainability in and for the profession, yes – but even more so for society broadly.

As we move into the digital age, it is important that professionals bend their minds to sustainability as much as they do to keep up with the “pace of change” on other fronts. A potential risk is that “high-tech” subsumes equally important social aspects that need to be embedded in the process of generating accounting and management professionals.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a survey on the work experiences of a sample of scholars teaching and doing research in the area of sustainability accounting and management has been presented for publication. It is meant to provide some descriptive insights into what drives some active participants in this group of academics and reflect on where the future might lead as sustainability becomes an urgent necessity rather than a choice. These descriptive insights and reflections provide a starting point for future inquiries.