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This chapter examines two different research approaches in education, namely “academic research” (rooted in theory) and “practitioner research” (rooted in practices), and some tensions that might arise from this distinction. It is suggested that the relationships between these two types of research are fuzzy, and that hybrid research studies (a mix of both theory and practice-guided research) are possible. The chapter also analyses both kinds of research in relation to etic and emic perspectives. In etic research, the researcher interprets data based on her theoretical frameworks, while in emic research the researcher is closer to the interpretations that social actors give to a particular social reality. It follows that, in higher education research, “academic research” would be likely to reflect an etic perspective (closer to theory) while “practitioner research” would reflect an emic perspective (closer to practice). However, in this chapter, it is proposed that both perspectives in research – etic and emic – constitute a continuum across which researchers need to move in a permanent, systematic, and reflective way. It is also proposed that the exercise of “epistemological vigilance” might help researchers to transit between etic and emic perspectives.

Although management accounting tools and techniques are developed to solve practical problems in organizations, there is a lot of criticism of management accounting research for not having an impact on practice. In interventionist research, the “shaping” of an intervention to solve a practical problem is an important step. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the findings of management accounting research can be reviewed to make them practically applicable in shaping an intervention.

The paper is based on the author’s experiences with an interventionist research project.

Systematic literature reviews, which are common in engineering and medicine, bring together the academic knowledge that can contribute to solutions for a specific practical problem, including a definition of the ways in which this knowledge can be applied. Inspired by the methodology for conducting such reviews, this paper proposes how interventionist management accounting researchers can use existing theoretical knowledge in shaping interventions that aim to solve a practical problem. After an intervention, the analysis of the intervention’s unforeseen effects can provide a basis for the refinement of the theory identified in the literature review.

Such a literature review can be organized according to four approaches to taking theoretical knowledge into practice. Unforeseen effects of the intervention can guide the selection of additional theory that helps to interpret these effects and refine normative and academic theory.

In management accounting it is uncommon to review the literature with the aim of shaping a solution for a practical problem. This paper explores how literature reviews that focus on a specific practical problem can contribute to bridging the gap between theory and practice.

In this paper we (a pracademic, a practitioner, and an academic) aim to explore the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing and offer recommendations to close it, while amplifying existing examples of best practice from within the field. We also propose a research agenda to spur dialog and guide further investigations in this area. Insights from prior research, coupled with the co-authors’ experience and observations, indicate that a disconnect does exist between academia and practice within social marketing, though it is admittedly and unsurprisingly not uniform across contexts and disciplinary areas. Given social marketing’s identity as a practice-oriented field, there are many existing examples of academic/practitioner collaboration and the successful linkage of theory and practice that deserve to be amplified. However, the challenges associated with the very different systems and structures affecting both worlds mean the disconnect is problematic enough to warrant systematic change to ensure the two worlds are more aligned.

This paper (a pracademic, a practitioner and an academic) explores the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing and offer recommendations to close it, while amplifying existing examples of best practice from within the field. The authors also propose a research agenda to spur dialog and guide further investigations in this area.

The authors suggest five key reasons that focus should be placed upon closing the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing: demonstrating societal value by contributing to practice; embedding and developing theories in practice; adding to the social marketing literature; contributing to social marketing teaching; and communicating the value and effectiveness of social marketing. To close the gap, the authors propose specific recommendations within four broad areas: marketing the academia and practitioner collaboration offer; building ongoing relationships; creating collaborative partnerships; and changing the publishing model ensuring communications are accessible to all. They also suggest ways for social marketing associations and peak bodies to play a role.

The concept of a disconnect between academia and practice is by no means new; it has been a pervasive issue across disciplines for decades. However, this issue has not been the subject of much discussion within the social marketing literature. Recommendations outlined in this paper serve as a starting point for discussion. The authors also acknowledge that due to long standing “bright spots” in the field, numerous examples currently exist. They place an emphasis upon highlighting these examples while illuminating a path forward.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a multi-layered theoretical framework to enable engaged scholarship to develop as a practice in entrepreneurship and small business research. To do so, it illuminates the salient features of engaged scholarship, collaborative learning and actor-network theory (ANT).

The paper follows a narrative or traditional literature review design. Specifically, it adopts a thematic approach for summarising and synthesising a body of literature on engaged scholarship, collaborative learning and ANT with the view to develop a new multi-layered theoretical framework.

Applying the theory of engaged scholarship to pivot entrepreneurship/SME research provides scholars with an opportunity to unlock the theory vs practice paradox. Moreover, engaged scholarship offers valuable instructions for encouraging interactionism between entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners as well as reconcile their polarised views. Co-production and co-creation of knowledge addresses the concerns often raised by the practitioner community regarding the relevance and applicability of academic research to practice.

The proposed multi-layered framework provides entrepreneurship researchers, and the practitioner community with a taxonomy to use to encourage a joint approach to research. Developing deep partnerships between academics and practitioners can produce outcomes that satisfy the twin imperatives of scholarship that can be of high quality as well as a value to society.

The paper advances the theory and practice of engaged scholarship in new ways that are not common in entrepreneurship/SME research. This enables engaged scholarship to develop as a practice in entrepreneurship and small firms’ research. Through applying the proposed multi-layered framework in research, academics can deliver fully developed solutions for practical problems. The framework is useful in the theory vs practice and entrepreneurship researchers vs practitioner debates.

Drawing on data from 399 Swedish doctoral theses, this chapter explores the epistemological foundations of higher education research. Using an analytical framework whose elements are the institutional organization of researchers and knowledge, the object of study, and the object of knowledge, we found that higher education research is mainly a concern for the older universities and for research subjects within the educational sciences and, secondarily, the social sciences. The prime objects of study are topics related to teaching, followed by issues of system policy, institutional management, and knowledge work. Studies of academic work and quality are almost non-existent, and comparative studies and international perspectives are rare. Regarding the object of knowledge, doctoral students’ choices of research approaches, theories, and methods point to a diversified analytical toolbox, although dominated by text-based analyses and qualitative methods, especially interviews and documentary studies, and a range of learning and institutional theories.

The purpose of this paper is to understand advertising practitioners’ theories on how to communicate effectively with men and women via advertising. Further, comparisons are made between practitioners’ theories and academic research.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 39 US advertising practitioners.

Many professionals believed women preferred other-oriented messages, while men preferred self-oriented messages. They believed women were comprehensive processors, while men were less engaged with advertising messages. They believe men preferred slapstick humor and factual messages, while women preferred emotional appeals.

Comparisons between practitioners’ perspectives and the academic research reveal that practitioners’ theories often correspond to academic theories and empirical data. Relationships with the selectivity hypothesis are explored in depth. Suggestions are made to extend existing theory to test practitioners’ theories.

This study helps to bridge the academician-practitioner gap, which helps academics understand practitioners, communicate with them and develop shared knowledge.

This study fills a research gap in understanding practitioners’ theories of how to communicate with men and women. A key contribution of the research is a comparison of practitioner theories with academic research to note points of agreement and disagreement, bridge the gap and offer suggestions for future research.

This paper explores perceptions of tourism theory and its usefulness to the professional practice of tourism management as identified by the two major stakeholder groups – academics and tourism practitioners.

Data for this study were collected through the use of two electronically administered surveys with tourism academics teaching on undergraduate tourism programmes of study and tourism professionals, both based in the UK.

Findings suggest that tourism theory is important in understanding tourism itself. But at the same time it has pragmatic relevance, facilitating researchers and others to make sense of the real world and contributing to successful practice in tourism.

This is the first study to provide empirical data from both academic and practitioner perspectives into often contested debates about the nature and uses of tourism theory.

This paper aims to examine academic dishonesty and research misconduct, two forms of academic fraud, and provides suggestions for future research informed by criminological theory.

After reviewing prior literature, this paper outlines four general criminological theories that can explain academic fraud.

While criminological theory has been applied to some studies of academic dishonesty, research misconduct has rarely been examined within a broader theoretical context.

This paper provides a blueprint for future theoretically informed analyses of academic fraud.

This paper represents a unique attempt to apply general criminological theories to diverse forms of fraud in higher education settings.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and examine streams in the literature related to academic publishing, with a focus on works in marketing. The content of the works within each theme are then explored to identify what issues have been examined and their implications.

The paper is a literature review, drawing on 30 years of research on academic publishing in marketing. The review is designed to cover the underlying issues examined, but is not designed to be comprehensive in terms of all the works exploring each stream of research.

There are five main streams in the literature focusing on: rankings; theory and knowledge development; how to publish;, criticisms of publishing; and other issues. Within each stream, a number of sub‐areas are explored. The works tend to be fragmented and there is generally limited in‐depth qualitative research within streams exploring the underlying assumptions on which publishing is based.

The focus of the research is on the streams of works, rather than the findings within each stream and future research could explore each of these streams and sub‐streams in more detail. Generally, the works appear to becoming increasingly sophisticated in terms of their analysis, which is only possible with the new technologies available. New metrics proposed in the literature that can be used to better understand publishing and additional qualitative research exploring some of the basic assumptions could also be explored.

The research suggests that some streams with regard to academic publishing may have reached saturation and future publishing in these areas will need to be innovative in its approach and analysis, if these works are to be published.

This paper is the first attempt to develop streams within the literature on academic publishing in marketing and thus draws together a diverse cross‐section of works. It provides suggestions for directions for future research in the various streams.

Companies inevitably interact and entrench in complex organic systems of business relationships with other. These business networks are not objectively defined, instead they are shaped by the subjective perception of actors. This inherent subjectivity is associated with the notion of network pictures, that is, a research tool that researchers or managers can use to grasp practitioner theories. In this chapter, we discuss how the importance of identifying these theories results mainly from underlying principles of sense-making theory, as well as from the idea around performativity. Drawing on these theoretical groundings, this chapter has two objectives: to explore how practitioners actually perceive their business surroundings and to assess the extent of overlapping between (IMP Group) academic theories and practitioner theories. To achieve these objectives, the researchers use a dimensional network pictures model previously developed in the literature to analyze the network pictures of 49 top-level managers across 17 companies from two very distinct contexts or networks: a product-based network and a project-based network. Among other practices, findings illustrate how practitioners tend to simplify what is going on in their complex surroundings, to personalize their relationships with those surroundings, and to think in a stereotyped way. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the captured practitioner theories and academic (IMP Group) theories show that these are not always overlapping, and are in some cases quite the opposite. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion of the importance of grasping actors’ views of the world, arguing that sense-making theory and the notion of performativity are the two main conceptual drivers justifying the urgency in making those views more visible. This research also adds to the research on the impact and suitability of IMP Group theories on managerial thinking and practice. Finally, this research reinforces the current call for further practice-based research in business network contexts.