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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 purpose of this paper is to report on a Forum for HRD initiative to proactively engage with HRD practitioners to develop “new commons” in the research‐practice nexus. Researchers joined a community of UK university HRD practitioners, negotiated a research project mapping the terrain of HRD practice, explored how research informed these are and identified future practice relevant HRD research.

The research process is described as grounded in relationship building and collaboration. Researchers utilized qualitative research methods to develop small‐scale empirical research and explore HRD practice in four case study universities and the UK Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

Findings are presented in the following themes: organizational approaches to HRD; underpinning philosophies and interventions as research informed and contracting and evaluating external providers and identifies opportunities to develop new commons between theory and practice via collaborative partnerships between the Forum for HRD and UK university HRD practitioners.

Future empirical research which is practice relevant is necessary in the area of evaluation of non‐accredited HRD interventions, the challenges of developing leadership and management in UK HE and the HRD research‐practice nexus.

The paper has valuable implications for bridging the space between HRD research and practice; it surfaces the practitioners' “lack of voice” within the profession and field of HRD and the lack of opportunities for the development of individual HRD practitioners.

The link between practice and theory within universities should be more developed, as HRD academics, a theoretical resource, are also “clients” of a University's HRD approach in practice. The research highlights how the reverse is the case, with the link between theory and practice under developed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2013.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to address the research-practice gap in management and advocate the need for an independent organization, called the evidence-based management (EBMgt) collaboration to facilitate generation and dissemination of knowledge that is rigorous, relevant, and actionable.

The authors use a theory-building approach to collaboration. They identify existing challenges in the research-practice gap literature and argue that EBMgt offers the most viable alternative to narrow this gap. They offer a theory of collaboration with supporting propositions that engages the generators, disseminators, and users of management knowledge in an ongoing sustainable collaboration toward EBMgt.

The authors envision evidence at the center of the EBMgt collaboration. They offer a process model of EBMgt incorporating a collaboration that ensures the fusion of rigor, relevance, and actionability of management knowledge toward the production of strong evidence that is of value to a decision maker. They suggest that the collaboration generate evidence in the form of a systematic review (SR) using a standard template and make it available online to management decision makers around the world in real time. They outline the parameters of the SR and offer details on the design of the Template.

The theory of collaboration brings together various competing ideas and recommendations made over the past few decades to close the research-practice gap in management. The theory can be used as a guideline to establish and maintain the operation of an EBMgt collaboration.

The authors offer details on the format and content of a standardized SR along with a template to execute it. They believe it would appeal to a practicing manager to know the state-of-the-art knowledge that applies to a decision that he or she is about to make in real time.

The work provides a theoretical platform for the idea of EBMgt collaboration that was not available before. The authors add value to the research-practice gap literature by addressing critical concerns including the identification of relevant research questions, evaluating and grading evidence, fostering communication between researchers and practitioners, and translating research to practicing managers. The integration of research and organizational knowledge in the form of an SR that provides decision support to a practicing manager is of significant value to the profession. The conceptualization of the collaboration, not as a research method but as a separate social system that links key management knowledge stakeholders together adds originality to collaboration research.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a partnership, the Ryerson-Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Collaborative for Client-Centred and Family Sensitive Care Collaborative, between an urban university and tertiary care mental health facility to build capacity in using research evidence to support client-centred care. A cornerstone of the partnership was a study exploring the connection between effective interprofessional collaboration and the capacity to provide exemplary client-centred care in mental health.

The Collaborative brings together organizations with shared values and a commitment to client-centred interprofessional care. It is a strategic approach in amplifying opportunities for the uptake of research evidence and knowledge transfer. One of the principal deliverables for the Collaborative was a multi-phased study exploring the relationship between team collaboration and client-centred care.

Research findings identified a significant association between the level of team effectiveness and collaboration and the staffs’ perceived capacity to deliver client-centred care. Client and family member perspectives highlighted the importance of interprofessional team functioning and collaboration. The work of the Collaborative helped narrow the knowledge practice gap through: a research practicum to mentor graduate students; knowledge exchange and dissemination; and working with advanced practice staff to support change within the organization.

Inter-organizational relationships, such as the Collaborative, support initiatives that accelerate the use of clinically relevant research and bridge the knowledge practice gap. A university/tertiary care teaching facility partnership represents a promising model for advancing and disseminating evidenced-based knowledge.

The Pathways Commission on Accounting Higher Education Report (2012) recommends turning the accounting profession into a learned profession through the purposeful integration of accounting research, education and practice. This paper develops an approach to identifying and quantifying the specific dimensions of the gap between the accounting academic and practice communities, thereby contributing to moving the accounting profession to a learned profession. For this we focus on audit research, because the discussion of the perceived gap between audit research and audit practice is extensive; yet no one has actually quantified that gap to date. While researchers have classified and quantified audit research, no one has done likewise for publications issued by the practice community. We choose the 38 distinct recommendations in the Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession (ACAP) Final Report as an initial benchmark. We compare those recommendations to the 16 audit research themes from Lesage and Wechtler (2012) and to the publications spanning 33 years of audit research posted on the American Accounting Association website. Eight Lesage and Wechtler themes, comprising 50% of the themes, were not explicitly included in any ACAP distinct recommendation. Conversely, seven distinct recommendations had zero direct matches in the audit literature. This gap suggests future research opportunities in terms of exploring underrepresented topics and, maybe more importantly, the reasons why some topics are underrepresented.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast perceptions about the research-practice “gap” as it may apply within management accounting, from the perspective of professional accounting bodies in Australia and Germany.

The findings reported in this paper is based on the collection and analysis of data from interviews with 19 senior representatives from four Australian Professional bodies and 14 representatives of German Professional accounting bodies.

In Australia and Germany, there exist common as well as unique barriers preventing a more effective engagement of academic research with practice. Common to both countries is the perception that the communication of research represents a major barrier. In Australia, practitioner access to academic research is seen to be a principal obstacle; in Germany, the relevance of topics researched by academics is perceived to represent a significant barrier to academic research informing practice.

This paper directly engages with, and extends recent empirically based research into the extent to which academic research may “speak” to management accounting practice. It extricates both common and specific barriers contributing to the oft-quoted “research-practice gap” in management accounting, and points to the pivotal nature of an intermediary to act as a conduit between academics and practice.

By investigating this issue in two quite different cultural, educational, academic and practice contexts, this paper provides much-needed empirical evidence about the nature, extent and pervasiveness of the perceived research-practice gap in management accounting, and provides a basis for further investigation of this important topic.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the relationship between research and practice. It addresses the question: How can practitioners’ use of generalisations be understood, with a view towards producing research-based generalisations that facilitate use in practice?

Language games are used to explore generalisation in practice, and the framework of pragmatic constructivism is adopted to characterise the generation of practice generalisation.

Practice is conceptualised as a complex set of clusters of organised actions run by a set of applied generalisations and driven by human intentions. Practice also encompasses reflective activities that aim to create the generalisations and reflect them into the specific circumstances to create functioning practice. Generalisations depend on underlying concepts. The formation and structure of concepts is explored and used to create the construction and use of different types of generalisation. Generalisations function as cognitive building blocks in constructing strings of interconnected functioning activities. Managers make their own functioning generalisations that, however, do not satisfy the research criteria for acceptable generalisations. The research/practice gap is shaped by the very different language games played.

If research is to be useful to practice, the generalisations produced must methodologically articulate the types of generalisation that pervade the methods with which practitioners construct functioning activities. Further research has to give more insight into such processes.

The paper contributes insight into both the generalisation debate and the research/practice gap debate.