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The purpose of this paper is to address the gap between management research and management practice by suggesting that, in addition to rigor and relevance, management knowledge should be actionable to be of practical value. To this end, an index for evaluating actionability is proposed and empirically tested.

Based on reflective and formative conceptualizations of actionability and a critical review of both evidence-based management (EBMgt) and evidence-based medicine literature, the authors developed 40 items that would best represent attributes of actionable research. The authors asked 187 management scholars, members of the editorial boards of influential management journals, and practicing managers to rank the extent to which each item was important to their perceptions of research to be actionable in practice. The authors treated actionability as a two-level construct consisting of first-order reflective factors and second-order formative ones.

Using principal component analysis with varimax rotation six factors were extracted, explaining 68 percent of variance in actionability: operationality, which also included items from causality; contextuality; comprehensiveness; persuasiveness, which split into two dimensions of rigor and unbiasedness; and lastly comprehensibility. Using partial least squares analysis, the authors demonstrated that these six factors formatively contribute to an overall index of actionability of management research.

The index offers an empirical measure to advance research on EBMgt by facilitating theory testing in different management contexts.

The developed index promotes EBMgt by providing producers, disseminators, and users of management knowledge with a metric to appraise actionability of management knowledge.

This index is the first theory-based and empirically tested tool for effectively evaluating the practical value of management research.

Purpose – The technologies teams use in organizations have dramatically changed in the 11 years since the 2000 Volume, Research on Managing Groups and Teams: Technology. This is an update focusing on new research and perspectives.

Approach – I recall where we left off in 2000 and then present a plea for changing our research approach to one that focuses on actionable research more aligned on how teams design their work than the effects we see when they do. I review a variety of literatures relevant to teams and technology and then suggest what the next 10 years may bring.

Findings – The scholarship on teams, technology, and teams and technology has blossomed, though not evenly. We are only beginning to see actionable research related to teams and technology.

Practical implications – The pace of organizationally relevant technology change has outstripped our ability to provide high-quality research in a timely manner if we maintain our current practices of studying individual or even interactions of effects as they exist in organizations. Our research will be more helpful if we shift our focus to how team members design their work.

Originality – I make two direct and dramatic requests of my colleagues. First, that they become more precise in their presentation of or at least specify the technological settings used in their research. Second, that they shift to actionable research that explicitly considers team, technology, and the processes through which team members design their work.

This paper offers a novel approach for conducting impactful research on emerging topics or practices. This method is particularly relevant in the face of emerging phenomena and new dynamics, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chain risks. Because these new phenomena and dynamics are relatively unexplored, little prior knowledge exists in literature and industry, and they represent a large opportunity and/or challenge to practitioners.

The action principles research (APR) approach, as a newer version of critically engaged research (CER), offers comparison against more traditional empirical or intervention-based research. The authors illustrate the approach with a pandemic risk-management study.

The APR approach originated in the information technology field. It is highly applicable for researchers who are seeking to more expeditiously support decision making and actioning on new dynamics and emerging topics and practice in supply chain management than is allowed by traditional methods and longitudinal CER.

In the context of ongoing calls for relevance, impact and actionable findings on pandemic risk management, this paper describes an approach to developing timely findings that are actionable for practitioners and that advance science around dynamic and emerging topics or practices. We hope this will grow societal value of research, particularly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the new dynamics and uncertainties that managers face in modern supply chains.

The ambiguous response of business schools to responsible management education (RME) is part of a larger problem which is rooted in how science evolves. The purpose of this paper is to explain how the consolidation of causal-based research in management will produce much more effective theories and teaching materials. Therefore business schools will then have to seriously engage in strong RME practices to prevent scandals from happening and to consolidate management as a profession.

In total, two models are introduced and explained. First, a comprehensive methodology for theory building that controls for causality and delivers clear and actionable results. Second, a model that depicts the three stages of interactions between variables (relationship, contingency and causality).

New causal-based research methods are starting to emerge that explain when a particular event will occur and how to “cause” for it to happen.

Business schools are not responsible of the current economic crisis. But if they do not find a way to introduce RME practices before the advent of causal-based research their reputation might be severely damaged during the next one.

As many other business school innovations, the first group of business schools that pioneer causal-based research will not only deliver on the promise of RME but also introduce the new generation of successful, relevant and actionable new managerial practices.

Proceeding from the widely accepted but relatively untested premise that the gathering of intelligence via market research is central to business success, this paper reports a study investigating the extent to which the type of research carried out influences the level of business performance.

Just over 6,000 market research projects conducted by a sample of 68 companies in New Zealand were classified as mainly “decision” or “background research” the companies allocated to one of three categories according to the mix of those types in their total research programme, and their business performance rated on four criteria. Firm size and the market research budget were taken into account as potential confounding variables. ANOVA, MANOVA and factor analysis were applied to data gathered from responses to a questionnaire developed by Diamantopoulos and Souchon, appropriately modified to the specific conditions of this study.

Companies carrying out mostly “decision research” rated themselves as performing generally better than those placing more emphasis on “background research” regardless of the size of the firm or the its market research budget. They scored highly on return‐on‐assets, return‐on‐sales and sales growth, and exhibited positive overall performance. The initial finding was strongly reinforced by factor analysis, 98 per cent of the variation in business performance being explained by the categorisation of a company's research as dominantly “decision” “background” or “mixed”.

The evidence for the positive effect of “decision research” on business performance suggests deliberate repositioning of market research strategy towards “decision research” rather than the “background research” which is generally in favour. This will require a major shift in the marketing management mindset with respect to marketing intelligence.

This is the first study to show a direct correlation between type of market research conducted and better business performance. It offers an improved conceptual framework for marketing intelligence and planning.

This paper aims to articulates how educators are ideal candidates to become “brand ambassadors”, triggering dormant qualities to influence behavioral change. The study aims at advocating a call for environmental futures by mobilizing pedagogues for changemaking. The research purpose was to deduce insights of real-life experiences when dealing with social influencers.

A design research approach was adopted. A sample of educators and students representing two universities of applied sciences was selected for qualitative. An experimental participatory experience was facilitated and observed.

This paper provides empirical insights. Design research findings include a persona profile, and an experimental prototype, designed to activate findings for real world impact. The outcome is for impact in the real world.

The research was conducted locally at a Dutch university of applied sciences, on behalf of a Norwegian commissioner. Therefore, cultural contextual conditions were factored.

An applicable advice is sketched, tested and shared with non governmental organization’s, institutions or stakeholders who aspire to mobilize and activate educators, turning them into ambassadors for their cause.

This paper aims at contributing and taking a position within the current tensions in academia and in the educational sector, in the light of the2012 San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment declaration and of the urgency of enabling educators to partake to climate change activism.

Besides the engaged topic, this paper is uniquely based on a highly experiential, design thinking approach, which was co-created and facilitated in an experimental setting.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence based guidance to researchers and practice personnel about forming and carrying out effective research partnerships.

A review of the literature, interviews and discussions with colleagues in both research and practice roles, and a review of the authors' personal experiences as researchers in partnership research.

Partnership research is, in some respects, a distinct “approach” to research, but there are many different versions. An analysis of research publications and of their research experience led the authors to develop a framework for planning and assessing the partnership research process, which includes defining expected outcomes for the partners, their roles, and steps in the research process.

This review and analysis provides guidance that may reduce commonly-reported misunderstandings and help to plan more successful partnerships and projects. It also identifies future research which is needed to define more precisely the questions and purposes for which partnership research is most appropriate, and methods and designs for specific types of partnership research.

As more research moves towards increased participation of practitioners and patients in the research process, more precise and differentiated understanding of the different partnership approaches is required, and when each is most suitable. This article describes research approaches that have the potential to reduce “the research-practice gap”. It gives evidence- and experience-based guidance for choosing and establishing a partnership research process, so as to improve partnership relationship-building and more actionable research.

A major part of knowledge management for knowledge-intensive firms such as professional service firms is the increasing focus on thought leadership. Despite being a well-known term, it is poorly defined and analysed in the academic and practitioner literature. The aim of this article is to answer three questions. First, what is thought leadership? Second, what tensions exist when seeking to create thought leadership in knowledge-based organisations? Third, what further research is needed about thought leadership? The authors call for cross-disciplinary and academic–practitioner approaches to understanding the field of thought leadership.

The authors review the academic and practitioner literature on thought leadership to provide a rich oversight of how it is defined and can be understood by separating inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors also draw on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with senior leaders of professional service firms.

Through analysing and building on previous understandings of the concept, the authors redefine thought leadership as follows: “Knowledge from a trusted, eminent and authoritative source that is actionable and provides valuable solutions for stakeholders”. The authors find and explore nine tensions that developing thought leadership creates and propose a framework for understanding how to engage with thought leadership at the industry/macro, organisational/meso and individual/micro levels. The authors propose a research agenda based on testing propositions derived from new theories to explain thought leadership, including leadership, reducing risk, signalling quality and managing social networks, as well as examining the suggested ways to resolve different tensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to separate out thought leadership from its inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors show new organisational paradoxes within thought leadership and show how they can play out at different levels of analysis when implementing a thought leadership strategy. This work on thought leadership is set in a relatively under-explored context for knowledge management researchers, namely, knowledge-intensive professional service firms.

The purpose of this study is to carry out the systematic literature review, bibliometric analysis and content analysis of extant literature of service supply chain (SSC).

Systematic literature review (SLR) technique was used for identifying the research papers. In the first step after reading titles, abstracts and keywords and, full-length articles wherever required, papers not related to SSC were removed. In second steps papers were read more critically and papers not related to SSC were removed. Finally on 502 papers bibliometric and content analysis was further carried out. Content analysis was based on the clusters formed by bibliographic coupling. Further, content analysis of the recent articles revealed the current research trends and research gaps.

This paper identified the six existing research diversifications in SSC as (1) logistics SSC, (2) model, framework and conceptual papers, (3) third-party logistics service providers, (4) articles from various perspective, (5) measurement of quality and performance on services and (6) impact of adoption of technology, cooperation and branding on logistics service providers. Further, six future research directions are also provided.

This research provides a clear view of the progression of publication, research diversification, research themes of six identified clusters, sub-themes of clusters and content analysis of each cluster. Content analysis of recent articles reveals the current research trend and future research directions.

This is a first of its kind of study which presents the diversification of research areas within SSC, bibliometric analysis, content analysis and provides actionable future research direction.