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Rigor and practical relevance are the foundations for logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) as an applied discipline. Whereas there are well-founded criteria for establishing methodological rigor, researchers must provide their own credible logic as to why their papers can influence practice. Accordingly, this paper aims to develop guidelines for establishing practical relevance in research papers.

A literature review of LSCM, marketing, operations management and management journals forms the foundation for these guidelines.

Relevance criteria are identified; research should be problem-driven, timely and important, and findings should be implementable, nonobvious, novel and not too costly. Measures for researchers demonstrating the fulfillment of these criteria are identified as practitioner input, gray literature, funding, practitioner involvement and feedback. Researchers should also clearly articulate both problem relevance and the relevance of their findings.

A lack of practical relevance is among the reasons for the rejection of papers by LSCM journals, but researchers can overcome this obstacle using these guidelines.

At a metalevel, this paper contributes to research with greater practical relevance.

Practical relevance is emphasized in the editorials of LSCM journals but has not yet been fully conceptualized from the authors' perspective.

The discussion of rigor vs relevance is an ongoing debate in academic environment. Ambitions to fulfill one of these two objectives might not exclude the other. Instead, they could and should be achieved simultaneously. However, what seems to be missing in supply chain management (SCM) research is the unfolding of symmetrical balance between the two dimensions of relevance – theoretical vs practical relevance. The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of this symmetrical balance and to change the conversation to also include the practical relevance dimension.

The paper is based on literature studies as well as the results of a questionnaire survey distributed to the Danish Supply Chain Panel consisting of 113 supply chain executives (as per the beginning of 2017). A short interview about the questionnaire results was also carried out with three panel members.

With an increased focus on journal rankings, there is a risk of pursuing more theoretically relevant SCM research at the expense of practically relevant SCM research. Both types of relevance are important for growing the discipline. But the current development seems to favor theoretical relevance, further widening the gap with respect to practical applications. Practical relevance is important both in the knowledge production and in the knowledge transfer stages.

There is a need to further explore different resources to close the gap between theoretical and practical relevance in SCM research. Researchers ought to follow an ambidextrous research strategy. This paper advises to bring back the core of the profession – the research process. This paper encourages researchers to be more creative and intensify the focus, equally, on both the theoretical and practical relevance in their research.

This research showcases a variety of different approaches for researchers to engage with practice so as to reduce any prejudices from both sides and enhance SCM decision-making processes. This paper recommends adding a new type of paper “practical paper” and including practitioners in the review board to evaluate the practical content of the research paper. This initiative would strengthen the interaction between researchers and practitioners.

This paper provides new insights on the need for symmetrical balance between theoretical and practical relevance being important for both academia and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how practical relevance of management accounting knowledge relates to research paradigms and theoretical pluralism.

The paper is conceptual in nature.

As the management accounting discipline is considered to be an applied discipline, a number of authors claim that management accounting research should develop relevant theory that can be used in practice. This call for increased practical relevance of management accounting knowledge interrelates with a debate on the desirability of theoretical pluralism and paradigm diversity in management accounting research. Drawing on the work of Nicolai and Seidl, the paper distinguishes different forms of practical relevance, and analyses the effects of theoretical pluralism on these different forms. The paper argues how theoretical pluralism particularly enhances relevance in a conceptual sense rather than an instrumental sense. The conceptual relevance of research may further be enhanced by interpretive research that acknowledges complexity and that has the potential to challenge the performativity of mainstream management accounting knowledge, without challenging the pursuit of efficiency as such. This is different from critical research. The instrumental relevance stemming from mainstream management accounting research entails de‐contextualization and simplification, and might create unintended self‐fulfilling prophecies.

The paper broadens the concept of relevance so that it includes conceptual relevance and legitimative relevance. It links these concepts of relevance to three research paradigms: a mainstream paradigm, an interpretive paradigm and a critical paradigm. For each paradigm, relevance is related to the use of theory.

The paper broadens the concept of relevance and advocates the pursuit of conceptual relevance, particularly through interpretive research.

The purpose of this paper is to underscore the fundamental importance of relevance to an applied field such as supply chain management (SCM). It is argued that simultaneity of research rigor and relevance is necessary to assert claims of impact.

This paper acts as a reflective essay, inductive reasoning and prescriptive framework.

Impact needs to be evaluated based on both rigor and relevance, and not exclusively based on whether a paper is published in a “top-tier” journal. Without relevance, academic research in SCM will cease to be of practical importance.

The primary limitation is that this is a conceptual paper relying on logical arguments.

The paper exhorts academics in SCM to recognize and insure practical relevance in their research. It develops strong arguments for why such a combined focus is needed and should be encouraged by journals.

Thought provoking paper intended to change how the field evaluates research for its impact. General strategies for increasing relevance in academic research are offered.

This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.

On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from information science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.

There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theoretical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental and conceptual relevance.

This novel approach will help to clarify the confusion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added value of management research.

There remains a critical issue in sport management scholarship in that the field lacks a well-defined framework for delineating practical implications in research. This research aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What types of practical implications can be identified in sport management research? (2) How can sport management research frame the practical implications of the study in a way that is both theoretically sound and useful for practitioners?

Through a scoping review and within the lens of Jaworski (2011)'s framework for managerial relevance, the study examined 427 articles from European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Management and Sport Management Review published between 2000 and 2020.

This study presents a five-pronged framework that identifies target managers, organizational tasks, time horizons, philosophical impact and desired outcomes. Furthermore, the current research offers suggestions for how to present managerial implications in sport management research.

The findings shed light on the managerial relevance of the recent sport management body of work, developing an important framework for practical implications for the field to reflect and incorporate into future studies. With a theoretical understanding of how to frame the practical implications of sport management research, the gap between academia and industry can continue to narrow, and the relevance to the industry may be more pertinent than ever before.

Purpose – The author introduces the Eastern philosophy of wisdom, especially its epistemology of Yin-Yang Balancing as the Eastern cognitive frame, to shed light on the debates over the distinction and integration between research and practice as well as between qualitative and quantitative methods so as to solve the problems of relevance-rigor gap as well as complexity-simplicity gap. The author also applies the frame of Yin-Yang Balancing to the development of a novel method of case study.

Methodology/Approach – This is a conceptual article.

Central theme – The Eastern philosophy of wisdom is better at an open-minded exploration of open-ended issues by emphasizing relevance and complexity, while the Western philosophy of science is better at a closed-minded exploitation of close-ended issues by emphasizing rigor and simplicity. A geocentric integration of both Eastern and Western philosophies is needed.

Research and practical implications – Management research is far behind the need for theoretical insights into practical solutions largely due to the increasing gaps between relevance and rigor as well as between complex problems and simple solutions. The root cause of the two gaps lies in the overreliance on the Western philosophy of science, so a new light can be found in the Eastern philosophy of wisdom, and the ultimate solution is a geocentric integration of Eastern and Western philosophies. A novel method of case study can be built by applying the Eastern philosophy.

Originality/Value – The author highlights the urgent needs for the Eastern philosophy of wisdom and its integration with the Western philosophy of science toward a geocentric meta-paradigm. As a specific application of the geocentric meta-paradigm, the author proposes a novel method of case study called Yin-Yang Method.

This paper aims to propose opportunities on how service research scholars can overcome the challenge of designing, delivering and disseminating managerial relevant studies. The proposed tactics will assist researchers and the community in general to resolve the pressing issues of both, the disconnection between theory formulation and verification and the divide between pursuing theoretical advances versus managerial usefulness.

Building on insights deriving from academic research, managerial publications and managerial feedback, the paper explores how to turn the challenges of developing managerial relevant research into opportunities.

Using communication research insights, the paper submits that, contrary to common belief, conducting managerial relevant research is not necessarily the main challenge for service researchers. The author identifies the main communications challenges according to three stages, designing, delivering and disseminating research with managerial relevance to the business community, leading to the phenomenon labeled as “lost before, and in translation.”

This paper highlights the developments leading to service research’s lack of managerial relevance perception. Using these insights, the author develops detailed chronological strategies and tactics how to change these perceptions into more favorable ones by designing, delivering and communicating research’s benefits of the research in a better, more efficient and impactful fashion, catered to the managerial audience.

The strategies and tactics outline build a practical “how-to” foundation for researcher to develop managerial relevant research, increase their publication chances and tap into new networks, data collection and funding opportunities.

This is the, to the author’s knowledge, first study to shed new light on the challenge of conducting managerial relevant research by not challenging the notion of relevance, but the way relevance is communicated, disseminated and originated.

The purpose of the study is to identify and discuss critical aspects of the academic/practitioner gap and suggest how to make marketing research more relevant.

The study uses data from an earlier study of eight qualitative interviews conducted with business-to-business (B2B) marketing practitioners and from an earlier quantitative study among 128 academics and 510 marketing research practitioners. The data are re-analyzed for this article.

Results show that academics and practitioners agree that academic research should be of more practical value. However, their priorities differ. For academics, publishing in refereed journals is the first priority and influencing practice is of much lower priority, while practitioners are not interested in the methodological and theoretical advances of marketing research; their priority is to satisfy day-to-day practical needs. Hence, practitioners have no interest in academic journals. The academic reward system tends to reinforce this divide because academic career progression depends substantially on the production of refereed journal articles.

Much prior consideration has been given to how academic journals can be made more relevant to practitioners, which is a desirable goal. However, a more fruitful approach for B2B academics would be to embrace new technologies such as blogging and social media to reach practitioners through their preferred channels. If greater relevance is to be achieved, then consideration needs to be given to the views of doctoral students, and to doctoral training processes in B2B marketing.

The study provides academics with guidance concerning how marketing research can have a greater effect on the practice of marketing.

The study contributes to the research base by identifying and discussing critical aspects of the academic/practitioner gap. The study also offers insights into how managerial relevance in marketing research can, practically, be improved.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the notion of “relevance” is produced, distributed and consumed in the field of management research by applying a critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a theoretical lens. A CDA perspective offers a way to scrutinize the power relations that emerge with journal rankings and how these influence how the relevance discourse develops.

This paper illustrates how a CDA perspective can be fruitfully applied to the relevance literature, exemplifying such an application with two illustrative texts. The texts represent two distinct cases; one is a fictive story informally distributed among scholars, and the other is an extract of a published review on the relevance debate.

A CDA lens sheds light on how academic power relations are maintained in the production, distribution and consumption of the “relevance” notion. It shows the importance of individual awareness among management researchers of how the discourse is shaped.

To increase the generalizability of the study, a CDA lens could be applied to a larger amount of texts in the relevance literature. The findings imply that the relevance literature would benefit from contributions bridging the gap between rigor and relevance, and questioning how power relations are maintained.

CDA adds a new perspective to the relevance debate, revealing how academic power relations are maintained with management scholars’ adherence to journal norms and the implications of this act.