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The purpose of this editorial is to bring together thoughts and opinions from the Editors and Senior Advisory Board of EJM regarding the nature of the long‐debated “theory‐practice divide” in marketing scholarship.

The authors synthesise diverse opinions from senior academics in order both to inspire further debate in marketing scholarship, and to draw some important conclusions for marketing academia as a whole.

The authors propose that, for marketing scholarship to mature and progress, room must be found for those who wish to focus both on practical and on pure marketing scholarship. Career advancement from both routes is vital.

The topic of the theory‐practice gap is complex. Many diverse opinions are cited and, due to space constraints, the coverage of many issues is necessarily brief.

Scholars should find the thoughts contained in the paper of significant interest.

The paper appears to be the first to bring together such a set of diverse opinions on the subject, and to try to draw some overall pragmatic conclusions, while still recognising the multiplicity of valid thought in the area.

The main aim of this paper is to stimulate more relevant and critical ideas about marketing and the wider management field by exploring the actual and potential contribution of metaphor to marketing theory and practice. The subsequent connections made can help contribute towards understanding and coping with the theory/practice gap.

To date, the majority of metaphor application has tended to be literal and surface‐level rather than theoretically grounded. This paper interrogates the literature surrounding metaphor in marketing and management fields, while also examining the contribution of other areas such as art. The paper constructs and debates the conceptual notion of the marketer as an artist.

Incorporation of theoretically grounded metaphors into marketing theory can help develop a form of marketing which is capable of dealing with ambiguity, chaotic market conditions, creative thinking and practice.

Adoption of a metaphorical approach to marketing research helps to instil a critical and creative ethos in the research process. Marketers are concerned with identification and exploitation of opportunities. Metaphor assists in the process by enhancing visualisation of these future directions. We live out our lives to a large degree through the making of metaphorical connections. We should therefore embrace more qualitative, creative associations in marketing theory, as well as practice.

Through critically reflecting on existing research on information and communication technology (ICT) in hospitality, the purpose of this study is to propose recommendations for future research to further narrow the theory-practice gap.

Personal experiences along with evidence from the literature provide a foundation for discussion, which is further enriched by integrating industry practitioners’ points of view.

Single-perspective and technology adoption studies have dominated ICT research in the hospitality literature. Technology effectiveness has often been measured indirectly. Oversimplifying technological issues has limited the generalizability of research findings.

Future studies are suggested to go beyond examining technology adoption, embrace multi-perspective approaches and incorporate a wider range of situational and contextual factors.

Through a unique perspective, this study highlights the limitations of previous ICT research in the hospitality literature and provides suggestions for future research to better meet the needs of practitioners. The arguments presented are not purely from an academic standpoint, as they have been endorsed by senior industry executives.

The aim of this paper is to examine how performance management (PM) is adopted in the public university sector and the problems it faces in an environment of conflicting management cultures.

This paper draws on institutional logics as a theoretical framework and inductive qualitative interviews as a research approach.

The results reveal that the conflicting values instilled in key players aligned with the different cultures have resulted in PM assuming a hybrid form, rather than the corporate form. Three identified problematic factors further demonstrate that the level of hybridity varies across the sector. The paper alludes to a theory-practice gap as a result of the findings and the concept of negative hybridity and its risk to effective governance aligned with the corporate approach.

The results are limited to Australian public universities. In addition, interviews were conducted with a specific set of university management staff. A different perspective on the findings may have been generated with a different set of management or operational staff.

The results provide policymakers and university management with information on the theory practice gap and the problematic factors contributing to it. It also informs policymakers to the risks associated with negative hybridity.

The results reveal the existence of a theory–practice gap because of a number of common problematic factors in the adoption of a corporate-oriented PM system in Australian public universities. The results highlight the need for further studies to establish the extent to which the current hybrid PM system deviates from the expected corporate-oriented PM system, and whether this poses a risk to effective governance aligned with the corporate approach.

The purpose of this paper is to define a typology of strategic segmentation accounting for antecedents (potentially conscious or subconscious) that influence marketing managers’ practice of strategic segmentation, thereby formulating a new theoretical basis to bridge the current theory–practice literature gap in strategic segmentation.

Based on the resource-advantage theory, this paper defines a typology of strategic segmentation that depicts how a firm’s access to imperfectly mobile resources relates to the marketing manager’s assumed heterogeneity of the market and to the manager’s approach to the market.

The authors postulate a typology of firms’ strategic segmentation and approach to the market that is heavily influenced, and potentially limited, by the firm’s available resources to effectively segment and address the market.

The typology suggests that resource availability affects a manager’s view and approach to the market. Therefore, testing of this typology should be performed to provide an empirical basis for a taxonomical foundation of strategic segmentation. Empirical testing should examine whether: resource availability is directly related to managers’ views of market heterogeneity, resources are negatively correlated with market approach, market-based intelligence (customer needs) are linked to the market approach, and there is relationship between a firm’s position within the typology and its long-term performance.

This paper provides an understanding that a manager’s knowledge of resource availability may be strategically counter-productive when creating a strategic segmentation. This limitation may lead to short-run choices for segmentation and market approach. Managers should, therefore, consider their strategic goals both with and without limiting their view based on current resources.

This paper provides the first typology of strategic segmentation by considering theoretical foundations of business that could bridge the often-noted theory–practice gap of segmentation.

One field in business where there is a purported gap between theory and practice is in marketing. This paper aims to examine one area of the debate, the degree of congruence between the established textbook theories of marketing and the practical activity of marketing managers.

Phenomenological interviews were carried out with senior marketing managers from a diverse range of organisations. The aim was to establish what types of factors inform manager's approaches to practice. Meaningful comparisons were made possible, as a range of marketing texts were also examined.

Textbook theories represent a flawed view of the practitioner's world. Many texts are very similar, based on an implicitly systems based paradigm. Universal truths are seen as indispensable modes of representational language. In contrast, the interviews with managers show that marketing is a locally contingent activity, occupying a discursive space separate from that of textbook theory.

Scholars desire to reduce real world activity to over arching explanations has led to the simplification of theory. Textbooks should embrace an approach based on interpretative insights into the realities of marketing practice. Moves away from the “one size fits all” theory need to occur, to a situation where marketing is recognised as being about a socially mediated, multifaceted approach to business activity.

Substantial attention has been paid to what many commentators regard as an academic practitioner divide in marketing. Most of this concerns the status of research into marketing. Considerably less attention is devoted to the position of the marketing textbook. This paper helps to remedy the situation. Ideas are offered up for the development of marketing knowledge and ways are suggested to help close the theory practice gap in the discipline, through the medium of the textbook.

This study aims to examine how government policies have influenced the governance paradigm of Australian public universities from a historical perspective. In doing so, it addresses current uncertainty on government-governance connectivity.

The study draws on Foucault’s concept of governmentality and governance and uses a developed framework of three constituents of governance to explore government–governance connectivity through a critical discourse analysis.

The findings reveal that government policies have influenced the three constituents of governance differently since 1823, resulting in three distinct governance discourses. In the third governance discourse, the findings reveal a deviation from policy directions towards corporate managerialism, resulting in a hybrid governance control environment. This scenario has arisen due to internal stakeholders continuing to be oriented towards the previous management cultures. Other factors include structural and legalistic obstacles to the implementation of corporate managerialism, validity of the underlying theory informing the policy directions towards corporate managerialism and doubts on the achievability of the market based reforms associated with corporate managerialism. The totality of these factors suggests a theory practice gap to be confirmed through further empirical research. There are also policy implications for policymakers to recognize the hybrid control environment and ascertain the risk the hybrid control environment poses towards the expected outcomes of corporate managerialism.

The findings are limited to a critical discourse analysis of data from specific policies and journal publications on higher education and a developed framework of constituents of governance.

The study is the first to examine government–governance connectivity in Australian public universities and also the first to introduce a three-constituent governance framework as a conduit to explore such studies. The findings contribute to the literature in identifying a theory-practice gap and offer opportunities for further research to confirm them.

This study aims to present a comprehensive integrative review of capitation payment for primary healthcare (PHC) in the Indonesian national health insurance (Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional,JKN).

Whittemore and Knafl’s integrative review method is used within this review and analysis framework. Multiple types of academic literature were included in this review, including all studies related to capitation payment in the JKN from 2014 until 2022.

This review found that several practices of capitation payments in the JKN in Indonesia deviate from basic economic concept of capitation. It does not yet incentivize PHC to create a competitive environment in attracting members and it does not incentivize health promotion and prevention. Moreover, the capitation model uses the same scope of primary care services for all PHC throughout the country – which in fact has disparities in providing 155 medical conditions as required competencies for PHC. The authors recommend that the JKN apply bottom-up costing and pricing methods to set market prices of capitation rates.

This is the first study that reviews theory-practice gap of the capitation payment model using an integrative review that covers academic literature, journal articles and regulations in Indonesia.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and complete the existing lack of quantitative data at the crossroads between organizational support (OS) practices and project management success in global projects (GPs) and discuss implication of the results in perspective of the theory–practice gap.

Building on classical organizational theory and GP knowledge areas, a survey addressing GP practitioners was designed. This paper focuses on OS practices as success factors and addresses a subset of the survey (1,170 respondents across 74 countries).

OS practices included in the study were found to have high importance for managerial success. OS practices for selection and training of team members show significant correlation with project efficiency but have low adaptation in many organizations. Statistically significant correlations were found to be weaker than expected, indicating that the relation between OS practices (as success factors) and project efficiency (as success criteria) is more complex than expected.

The work constitutes opinion-based research and is vulnerable to variations in OS practices and the definition of success in different organizations and industries. The granularity level of the theoretical framework brought about relative high-level survey questions and may impact the applicability of the results.

To improve the efficiency of GPs, better implementation of OS practices for selection processes and training personnel has been suggested.

The theoretical alignment of classical organizational variables with GP knowledge areas and associated practices provides an original approach to the “theory–practice gap” discourse.