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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the general failure of management accounting research to be useful for practitioners.

The paper discusses the causes and consequences of the problem, and possible remedies.

The causes of the problem, and hence also the remedies, are related to choice of topics, research design, and writing and dissemination of findings; researchers are forced into choices that lead to less useful research by the research evaluation standards used by the major accounting journals and university professor evaluation practices.

While this general problem of lack of research usefulness has been discussed at some length in other areas of management, the issue has not received much attention in the management accounting community, other than with a few calls for more field research. However, getting out into the field more to do research addresses only one part of this important failure.

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.

The introductory chapter includes how to design-in good practices in theory, data collection procedures, analysis, and interpretations to avoid these bad practices. Given that bad practices in research are ingrained in the career training of scholars in sub-disciplines of business/management (e.g., through reading articles exhibiting bad practices usually without discussions of the severe weaknesses in these studies and by research courses stressing the use of regression analysis and structural equation modeling), this editorial is likely to have little impact. However, scholars and executives supporting good practices should not lose hope. The relevant literature includes a few brilliant contributions that can serve as beacons for eliminating the current pervasive bad practices and for performing highly competent research.

Many quality improvement interventions such as educational programmes, hospital quality strategies, and quality evaluation systems have not been evaluated. The aim of this paper is to encourage research into these “quality improvement processes” by presenting suitable designs and methods, and by describing research approaches which are less familiar in healthcare. The paper proposes that the choice of research design depends on the level and complexity of the intervention. Theory‐building approaches are more suitable than experimental theory testing approaches for evaluating higher‐level complex interventions and for understanding critical context factors. Collaborative action evaluation studies can provide useful information for decision makers – an example is given. “User focused” research can provide knowledge for developing more effective quality intervention processes and for making better decisions about their use and implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to expand on some of the points made in Ken Merchant's paper (this issue) in connection with the research‐practice gap.

Aiming to be provocative for the purpose of evoking further discussion, this commentary adopts the perspective that some deeply rooted misconceptions about the nature and production of scientific knowledge underpin the research‐practice gap.

There are three key findings. First, contrary to popular belief, practical knowledge does not simply derive from basic (“scientific”) knowledge “trickling down” to practice; instead, basic knowledge needs to be transformed into a theory or phronesis of management accounting in a manner that reflects the context and purpose of organizations. Practical knowledge therefore becomes a distinct and rigorous mode of knowing in its own right, no less important than basic knowledge. Second, the adoption of field research or the case study method may be the only way to overcome all of the dimensions associated with the “data problem” existing in management accounting. Finally, a strong argument can be made to suggest that the research‐practice gap and its epistemological underpinnings not only impede the discipline's ability to carve out its own unique intellectual identity (Malmi and Granlund), but they also explain the discipline's inability to produce a cumulative body of knowledge.

The paper suggests that a key step, among others, in addressing the researcher‐practitioner gap is the need to overcome philosophical misconceptions about the nature and production of scientific knowledge. This perspective has not received significant coverage in accounting.

In this chapter we discuss how, as a tool for organizational change, action research can affect the development of cooperation between a traditional university and the external environment. The case analyzed was a two-year action research project carried out in cooperation with over 20 employers. This project was carried out at multiple levels and had several essential goals. Apart from its emancipatory role in the shift in the way students carry out their master's theses (toward application, implementation, where organizations become the research subject instead of the research object), the project's aim was to open up the university to cooperation with its environment and conduct useful research. The results indicate that action research through the democratization of the process of introducing changes and its bottom-up nature influences the development of real cooperation between the university and external organizations. Additionally, they contribute to the emancipation of university knowledge, its democratization, dehierarchization, as well as cocreation and sharing with cooperating organizations.

Practical and useful guidance is given to those undertaking management research; and advice is given on how to manage the practicalities of the research project. Particular emphasis is placed on applied and action research culminating in implementation of findings within an organisational setting. A description of the aims of management research is followed by advice on the selection of a research subject and the importance of the planning stage. Details of the processes involved in gathering the relevant information; its careful analysis; and the presentation of the findings in a readable, structured and coherent form are presented. Finally, suggestions on how to implement the research findings within an organisation are offered, as well as advice on the publication of results.

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect on the affective entanglement of both researcher and practitioners in a study of workplace diversity with a transformative agenda.

Events and experiences related to interventions in a municipal center are presented. The study is embedded in critical diversity research and applies engaged ethnographic methods.

The researcher reflects on how interventions designed to challenge the status quo faced difficulties while considering the impact of the research entry point, efforts to mobilize organizational members in favor of a diversity agenda and the micro-politics of doing intervention-based research.

The study reflects on how “useful” research with an allegedly emancipatory agenda might not be considered favorable to neither majority nor minority employees. The notion of affectivity is applied to deal with the organizational members’ multi-voiced response to the change efforts, as well as how the researcher’s position as researcher-change agent critically shaped the fieldwork experiences and their interpretation.

Few critical diversity scholars engage with practitioners to produce “useful” research with practical implications. In doing so, this paper contributes to critical diversity methods by exploring why presumably emancipatory initiatives apparently did not succeed, despite organizational goodwill. This involves questioning the implied assumption of the inherent “good” of emancipation, as well as notions of “useful research.”