ELEVEN

Integrating Theory to Inform Practice
Insights from the Practitioner-Scholar*

RAMKRISHNAN (RAM) V. TENKASI

TRADITIONALLY, THE CHALLENGE of connecting academic theory and research to practice was seen as the exclusive responsibility of the research-scholar. Academics were asked to devise clever ways to make such bridging possible through the contextualization of their research results so that it has enhanced meaning for practitioners (Tenkasi, Mohrman, & Mohrman, 2007); to write in a compelling and interesting style that captures the minds, hearts, and consciences of practitioners (Bartunek, Rynes, & Ireland, 2006; Green, 2004; Van De Ven & Schomaker, 2002); and to contribute to an evidence-based management infrastructure that builds evidence-based practice capabilities among managers (Rousseau, 2006).

Recent decades have seen several intermediates emerge between the world of research knowledge and its application. These intermediates have changed society’s perception of the research-scholar, who has gone from the primary or sole agent responsible for translating and applying scholarly knowledge to one of several agents involved in the process. Several intermediate bundlers and co-producers of knowledge, including practitioner-scholars, consulting firms, and professional groups, now serve as alternative pathways for translating and integrating scholarly knowledge to practice (see Chapter 1, Research for Theory and Practice). The focus of this chapter is one such intermediate agent—the practitioner-scholar—and how he or she applies theory and research knowledge to practice in order to produce outcomes for an organization and, in this process, at times advances scientific knowledge.

The PhD program in organization development and change at Benedictine University is one of several executive doctoral programs (alongside programs at Case Western Reserve, Pepperdine, and George Washington universities) that teaches working professionals how to be practitioner-scholars. As a core faculty member with Benedictine’s PhD program over the past ten years, I have been able to observe and follow select graduates as they resume their work as full-time employees. I have seen how they use their theoretical and research knowledge to address issues of organizational change and resolve other business problems.

Drawing on these observations, this chapter focuses on five questions concerning practitioner-scholars as intermediate agents and alternative pathways in the research-to-practice translation value chain (Chapter 12, Organization Development Scholar-Practitioners). The questions are: (1) Who are practitioner-scholars? (2) How do practitioner-scholars translate and apply theoretical and research knowledge to resolve organizational problems? (3) How effective is the practitioner-scholar as an intermediate agent in translating and applying such knowledge? (4) How viable are practitioner-scholars in partnering with academics to conduct research that can reinform theory? and (5) What insights can traditional academics who want to shape organizational practice gain from practitioner-scholars as alternative pathways in the translation value chain?

Who Are Practitioner-Scholars?

Practitioner-scholars are actors who have received traditional academic training and who apply their knowledge of theory and research to an organization’s particular challenges to resolve business problems. Unlike traditional academics, practitioner-scholars are full-time organizational employees and thus are primarily committed to practical concerns and advancing organizational causes. Only as a secondary consequence do they feel responsible for advancing a theoretical and empirical understanding of the phenomenon of concern (Tenkasi & Hay, 2004, 2008). Astley and Zammuto (1993) label practitioner-scholars as an intermediate cadre of professionals who, by virtue of belonging to both the practice and academic communities, can effectively bridge the incommensurate worlds of scholars and practitioners. Huff and Huff (2001) label practitioner-scholars intermediate boundary spanners who have one foot in the world of practice and the other in the world of theory and research.

The Mode 2 knowledge producer, as described by Gibbons and Nowotny (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2001, 2005), is a prototype of the practitioner-scholar who combines theoretical knowledge with applied practice knowledge to solve particular organizational problems. As opposed to Mode 1 knowledge producers who seek to find generalizable laws across contexts in a nonengaged, basic scholarship way (Gibbons et al., 1994; Van De Ven, 2007; Van De Ven & Johnson, 2006), Mode 2 knowledge producers are closely tied to applied contexts. They are charged with achieving concrete results by creating actionable knowledge that can advance organizational causes. Their point of contact is closer to practice and involves investigating problems of high interest and practical import that sometimes cut across disciplines (Van De Ven, 2007; see also Chapter 1, Research for Theory and Practice, this book).

In Mode 2 knowledge environments, theoretical knowledge is tested not in the abstract but rather under concrete, local circumstances. This approach is to ensure that the theoretical knowledge is socially robust and produces consequential outcomes. The Mode 2 knowledge producer’s primary concern is solving problems, as that is what their organizations reward them for (Tinnish & O’Neal, 2010; Wasserman & Kram, 2009). They produce generalizable knowledge only as a by-product. Examples of Mode 2 knowledge producers are traditionally trained PhDs in the life sciences who work for pharmaceutical firms to develop drugs. Their main interest is producing effective drugs to combat the disease area they work in; their secondary interest is contributing to the body of literature on scientific theories on their particular concerns. In the context of organizational sciences, graduates of executive doctoral programs who continue working in organizations post-education are an example of these intermediate cadre of “boundary spanners” who can close the “relevance gap from both ends of business and science” (Huff & Huff, 2001, p. 50). Practitioner-scholars can also be classified as a subtype of the “engaged scholar,” as defined by Professor Van De Ven (Van De Ven, 2007; Van De Ven & Johnson, 2006). They can simultaneously play the role of the detached outsider and the attached insider (Evered & Louis, 1981; Mahoney & McGahan, 2007). Knowing outside research can provide evidence of the persuasiveness and boundary conditions of the problem, whereas knowing the inside situation and its contingencies can concretely ground the research in a particular situation (Mahoney & Sanchez, 2004).

The idea of the practitioner-scholar as an important intermediate agent between the scholar and practitioner—one with both outside and inside knowledge—goes back to Aristotle. The second century (BC) Greek philosopher initially taught the need to separate theory and practice and treated the spheres of scientific knowledge and those of experience and craft as separate, distinct domains (Aristotle, 1962). This divide became the primary assumption underlying Western scientific thought (Chalmers, 1999; Parry, 2003). But in later writings, Aristotle suggested that only by combining theory and practice can people solve consequential problems of science and society (Aristotle, 1961; Tenkasi & Hay, 2008). He labeled the combined knowledge of theory and practice phronesis, or practical wisdom (Dunne, 1993; Peters, 1967, p. 157). The person who is able to combine and apply such knowledge is the technites, or master craftsperson.

The scholar (lógios) appeals to scientific knowledge. Her strength is finding generalizable principles and explanatory reasons underlying a situation by invoking the larger scientific discourse of cause and effect (episteme theoretike) drawn from multiple contexts. However, the lógios lacks specific knowledge about and experience in particular contexts. In contrast, the practitioner (cheirotechne) derives her knowledge from experience (empeiria) with the specifics of a situation. She has the craft (techne) of getting things done in her context. But she does not know the general principles of cause and effect that underlie the situation, and engages in local activities as mostly unreflective, habitual forms of practice (Bourdieu; 1977; Bunge, 2004; Schon, 1995).

To truly change situations, such as helping a patient afflicted with disease, one needs both kinds of knowledge, concluded Aristotle—such as a physician who understands both the general principles of medicine and also the particulars of the patient’s situation. This combined knowledge, or phronesis, mirrors the integrated knowledge and pluralism suggested by contemporary scholars (Pettigrew, 2001; Van De Ven, 2007; Van De Ven & Johnson, 2006). This integration is required to yield the kind of actionable knowledge that can address complex and wicked problems.

Applying Theoretical and Research Knowledge to Resolve Organizational Problems?

We see that the practitioner-scholar’s intermediate role has both historical and contemporary precedent in Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (1961) and Van De Ven’s (2007) notion of engaged scholarship. But less is known about the specific ways in which the Mode 2 knowledge producer (technites) successfully integrates knowledge of the general with the particulars of an organizational context in order to inform practice. To understand this integration, we turn to an inductive qualitative study reported in detail in earlier publications (Hay, Woodman, & Tenkasi, 2008; Tenkasi & Hay, 2004, 2008). The study sought to understand not only the theory and practice the practitioner-scholar brings to the table, but also how he or she goes about linking theory to practice in organizational projects.

The 11 practitioner-scholars surveyed were graduates of Benedictine University’s executive PhD program in organization development and change, the program I have worked with as a core faculty member since 1998. Typical Benedictine students are in senior-level positions as skilled practitioners who want to bring meaningful change to their organizations. They come from diverse industries and positions: presidents and chief officers of large and small firms in technology, finance, nonprofits, and so on; vice presidents who manage human resources and organizational effectiveness; doctors who lead medical departments and hospital systems; and consultants with major and minor consulting firms. Their common interest (beyond the status and career advancement that a PhD brings) is, in most cases, to gain theoretical and research knowledge in order to improve their organizations or client systems.

Interviews were completed with 11 practitioner-scholars, whom I knew well as the chair or active member of their respective dissertation committees. I had continual contact with them as they pursued additional projects related to their dissertations or postdoctoral projects unrelated to their dissertations. The practitioner-scholars represented a purposive sample and were asked to recount organizational projects in which they had applied their theory and research knowledge to achieve business outcomes. Typical outcomes were customized business models and new techniques or processes that were implemented as a result of the project. Theoretical outcomes were mostly academic presentations, conference proceedings, and in a few cases, journal publications and books written independently by the practitioner-scholar or co-authored with a PhD program faculty member.

The 11 cases were analyzed using an iterative approach of going back and forth between the data and the emerging theory to develop a model (Eisenhardt, 1989; Elsbach & Sutton, 1992; Silverman, 2001; Yin, 1994). Six contrast interviews completed as part of an earlier project were also enfolded in the systematic case analysis (Tenkasi & Hay, 2004). Four of the interviewees were business researchers with no scholarly affiliation, and two were academics who had little experience in organizations but who had engaged in organization-based projects. The analysis broadly revealed that practitioner-scholars use both their theory and research knowledge and their familiarity with local cultural conventions to approach organizational projects. They combined their formal knowledge of theory and research principles from articles, books, and expert opinion with local knowledge of the organization’s power relationships and cultural norms to manage and move projects forward (Tenkasi & Hay, 2004).

Of more pertinence to this chapter, however, were the subjects’ strategies for integrating theory and research knowledge to produce outcomes while achieving academic results. To illustrate these dynamics, I will rely on two of the 11 cases that best illustrate the dynamics of theory-to-practice integration. The first case involves creating self-managing teams at a cable production firm to achieve manufacturing excellence. The second case involves improving the effectiveness of the research and development function at a high-tech firm. Practitioner-scholars tended to use theory and research to inform practice in four key ways. Their chosen way depended on whether their respective projects were in the definition and planning stage, the implementation stage, or the realization/closure stage of the project life cycle (Pinto & Prescott, 1988).

Three key and interdependent dynamics compose the project definition and planning stage: framing the problem, conjecturing an appropriate pathway to resolve the problem, and influencing and legitimizing the pathway as the right course of action. Two key dynamics compose the implementation stage: activating the conjectured pathway and making sense of the pathway. Demonstrating the impact of the conjectured pathway was most commonly associated with the project realization/completion stage. The practitioner-scholars also used two metastrategies—turns and scaffolding—to inconspicuously embed theory and research into the background of the organizational projects across all stages.

Project Definition and Planning Stage

Framing the problem

The practitioner-scholars frequently used theory and research findings to frame and give direction to a broadly expressed change mandate from the organization’s leadership looking for the resolution to a perceived organizational crisis or the realization of a desired future state. They typically used framing to structure an otherwise equivocal phenomenon in more concrete, precise terms (Weick, 1979). In interviews with the practitioner-scholars, it was clear that CEOs and other top-management members expressed the desire for a future state and sometimes mandated a resolution to an organizational crisis, but not with clear specifics. It is frequently at this point when the practitioner-scholar steps in, using her theory and research knowledge to analyze the situation and frame and define the problem in more precise terms (Van De Ven, 2007).

One practitioner-scholar took the CEO’s vision to make his manufacturing plant a center of excellence by defining the program as one of bolstering the aging workforce’s effectiveness and productivity through principles of motivation and employee involvement (Lawler, 1986). In a second case, the practitioner-scholar framed the CEO’s mandate to make the research and development organization more effective as better systems and processes for knowledge management.

Conjecturing the appropriate pathway to resolve the problem

After top management accepted the practitioner-scholars’ framing as an appropriate problem definition (Van De Ven, 2007), the practitioner-scholars used their theory and research findings to conjecture a pathway (Bunge, 2004) most suitable for resolving the problem in light of the local contingencies. In the first case of the CEO’s mandate for the manufacturing plant to become a center of excellence, the practitioner-scholar could have addressed the issue using various mechanisms, including better manufacturing processes or materials management, both scientifically validated pathways to achieve manufacturing excellence (Best manufacturing practices report, 1998). But the practitioner-scholar saw that the real issue was motivating an aging workforce and enhancing their effectiveness through principles of employee involvement. She thus chose self-managing teams as the best mechanism to involve employees and increase their productivity.

She made this choice based on several local considerations. First, the older workforce had high levels of camaraderie and a collective identity as a group distinct from their supervisors. The practitioner-scholar saw that the best way to heighten awareness of quality, cost, and schedule was to let the employees take ownership of these issues through self-governing teams instead of relying on supervisory mandates, which had been ineffective in the past. Second, the practitioner-scholar chose the team-based design to allow for multiskilling and job rotation, which would give team members variety and challenge in an otherwise routine environment. Pathways such as technological enhancements to the old assembly-line format or better material management techniques would not have alleviated employee boredom or solved quality problems because these pathways didn’t take into account the company’s specific social dynamics.

This dynamic was also evident in the case of the second practitioner-scholar, who framed the problem of enhancing R&D effectiveness as one of better systems and processes for knowledge management. After reviewing several models for knowledge management, she found that the sociotechnical systems (STS) approach was most suitable. STS addressed the interface of knowledge elements pertaining to the social, technical, and environmental systems, and also engaged the workforce in designing such a system—a wise strategy given the CEO’s desire to involve a large swath of the R&D function in the change. The practitioner-scholar skillfully matched the CEO’s practical requirement of broad employee engagement with a theoretical model that allowed for the same. Asking managers from several R&D functions to join the central design team was attributed to the CEO’s mandate, although it was also clearly required by the STS approach.

Influencing and legitimizing the chosen pathway

Conjecturing the pathway and considering why one mechanism works better than others also helps to legitimize the pathway because it is based on both theoretical and practical considerations. Influencing and legitimizing frequently involved distributing articles and books from practitioner sources that carry legitimacy in the business world, such as the Harvard Business Review or Sloan Management Review, and readable article summaries from academic sources such as the Academy of Management Journal and Organization Science, condensed by the practitioner-scholar. Occasionally, the practitioner-scholar also brought in experts, including practitioners with hands-on experience in implementing the conjectured pathway in similar environments and scholars who had written practical books or articles on the topic. Sometimes the experts were hired as consultants to guide the project, but in most cases we observed, they came in as additional sources to influence and legitimize the chosen pathway and acceptance of it among concerned stakeholders.

Project Implementation Stage

Activating the conjectured pathway

Once the causal pathway or preferred strategy for change was established and accepted by relevant stakeholders, the fourth function of theory and research in informing practice was in activating the conjectured pathway. To activate the project, the practitioner-scholar often used the theoretical, research, and practice literature, including expert opinion on the chosen platform (whether self-managing teams or nonroutine STS), as guiding frameworks. This approach frequently meant creating training programs for the community to enact the details of the chosen pathway for change that preceded implementing the intervention. Often practitioner-scholars also used training programs as preassessment forums, using survey instrumentation, qualitative interviews, or in several cases, both, to create baseline information before enacting the change.

Making sense of the activated pathway

Practitioner-scholars used surveys, interviews, systematic observations, and in one case, personal diary recordings to monitor and assess the pathway’s ongoing progress. Sometimes the practitioner-scholars used the same instruments as during the preintervention stage. In other cases, they created new surveys and interview questions based on the ongoing assessment of the activated pathway’s implementation. For example, the self-managing team project used a constant comparison qualitative design. The practitioner-scholar compared the evolution of six self-managing work groups as they transitioned into effective self-managing teams at different speeds over a six-month period. Her use of triangulated methods (Jick, 1979) over six time periods included surveys, interviews, and analyzing the team members’ diary entries. These methods helped her develop new insights and create questions that aided her in the ongoing assessment process. They also enabled her to design appropriate interventions for the lagging teams to catch up.

Likewise, for the STS knowledge management project, the practitioner-scholar used systematic research methods such as surveys and interviews to assess whether the quality of internal deliberations—an intervention created within the teams—helped them meet monthly goals in cost, quality, and schedule over one year. In this case, she used the systematic research methods to test a hypothesis instead of finding evolutionary insights, as with the self-managing teams. Whether hypothesis-driven or based on evolutionary insights, the practitioner-scholars’ hallmark was using systematic research methods to gauge the efficacy of the conjectured pathway. Practitioner-scholars on the whole engaged in fact-based decision making (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006), paying attention to the data rather than getting trapped by ideologies, beliefs, or conventional wisdom.

Project Realization/Closure Stage

Demonstrating impact of the chosen pathway in achieving the change

Finally, the practitioner-scholars applied research knowledge to demonstrate impact. Applying systematic research methods to activate and make ongoing sense of the conjectured pathway also helped demonstrate that the organizational project successfully achieved practical results, whether that meant changing mindsets, behavior, or other hard metrics. A selection bias is clearly at work in the successful projects we chose to study. Nonetheless, for these projects, demonstrating business impact required collecting and analyzing data using systematic research designs in the project execution phase. Practitioner-scholars frequently used quantitative evidence to indicate behavior and attitude change before and after the implemention of the program. They also used quantitative evidence to show shifts in hard performance measures before and after change. Likewise, the practitioner-scholars used qualitative data, particularly context-sensitive quotes or verbatim comments, to show changes in perspective or behavior. For example, the practitioner-scholar who set up self-managing teams used many quotes from team members to demonstrate that they were engaged in the kinds of behaviors involved in team self-management.

Turns: A Meta-Strategy for Relating Theory to Practice

In most cases, what was most salient and needed attention in the minds of management was the business problem. Our interviews with practitioner-scholars suggest that consulting is seen as adding value to the organization’s business problem, whereas research is seen as an abstract act that is not practically relevant. For many practitioner-scholars, research was a term they preferred not to use but rather to integrate into the process. As one aptly summarized,

Turns are reframing moves and tools that help make an element more familiar, legitimate, and palatable to the concerned audience. To do so, turns locate the element in a community’s “systems of meaning” (Fleck, 1979). In our observation, successful practitioner-scholars used theory-to-practice turns to make the unfamiliar familiar to the practitioner community during all stages of the project. We found several instances of theory- and research-to-practice turns that helped a community accept theoretically informed and research-based activities. Self-evident examples of theory-to-practice turns include (1) turning knowledge of current literature into information from best practices in the industry and other organizations; (2) turning representative sampling across level, function, and gender into a strategy for broader employee involvement; (3) turning action-research processes of implementation into learning from experience; and (4) turning principles of valid and reliable research (systematic data collection, comparative research designs, and rigorous analytical strategy) into foolproof strategies to assess bottom-line impact.

Practitioner-scholars used these turns to influence a business, not an academic, audience. Reframing for a business audience carries a more pragmatic goal: to present the academic import of the theoretical action in a way that is intelligible to the business audience, who will be motivated to construe and continue with the research for being practically relevant. Framing research activities in terms similar to familiar corporate activities exemplifies the underlying logic of practitioner-scholars who use turns to legitimate activities informed by theory and research principles. Translating in this way helps the organizational community to accept theory- and research-driven activities.

Scaffolding: A Meta-Strategy to Achieve Theoretical and Research Outcomes

In a few cases, practitioner-scholars used another, less common meta-strategy known as scaffolding across a project’s life cycle. Commonly associated with construction, the word scaffolding typically means a “platform made for workers to stand on when they want to reach higher parts of a building to add on to or modify the structure of the building” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2003). For practitioner-scholars, scaffolding means carefully selecting a theory-based platform that helps frame the problem at hand, guides practice, and has the potential to realize subsequent theoretical and empirical outcomes by seeking to answer new research questions. For example, the practitioner-scholar who framed the CEO’s vision to make the manufacturing plant a center of excellence used scaffolding in reorganizing the workforce into self-managing teams. She used the theory-based platform of self-managing teams to direct action and conduct systematic research on the gap she identified in the teams’ research literature; that is, What is the evolutionary pathway in becoming a self-managing team? Why can some teams but not others successfully transition into self-management? Why are some faster at it?

The practitioner-scholar who applied principles of STS theory to knowledge work in the R&D organization also used scaffolding. Her platform held practical ramifications to guide the process and also theoretical ramifications potentially to chart new territory for sociotechnical theory. It assessed how an R&D project team’s deliberations affect the team’s success as well as knowledge transfer and assimilation processes in and between multidisciplinary teams. In doing so, she was able to extend STS’s application from routine to nonroutine work.

One of the practitioner-scholars’ defining qualities was reflecting on appropriate causal mechanisms in ways that accounted for both the general and the local. This ability enabled them to produce outcomes for the organization and to add to the larger body of knowledge. Considering both the general and the local distinguished practitioner-scholars from practitioners, who often mimic the latest technique or fad and apply it indiscriminately to their local environment without fully grasping the underlying theory or conducting research to direct their efforts. The practitioner-scholar’s approach also differed from the scholar’s approach. The scholar applies her theoretical understanding of organizations and conducts research on an abstract problem without fully considering local dynamics or how useful the findings may be for improving the organization’s causes (Tenkasi & Hay, 2004, 2008).

Effectiveness of the Practitioner-Scholar As an Alternative Pathway in the Research-to-Practice Translation Value Chain?

Practitioner-scholars, post-PhD, clearly appreciate using scholarship and the principles of systematic research design for approaching organizational problems. Frequently they use academic research to frame problems and to conjecture appropriate pathways to resolve them. The practitioner-scholar applies both theoretical and research knowledge to activate the pathway and to make sense of its progress, as well as to demonstrate the conjectured pathway’s impact. In this sense, the practitioner-scholar is a sound theory and research-to-practice translator, and an effective intermediate agent. Their research- and theory-driven practical projects sometimes lead to policy and practical changes in their concerned organizations.

But by using Van De Ven’s (2007) different levels of engaged research—namely, informed basic research, collaborative basic research, design and evaluation research, and action/intervention research—my sense is that most practitioner-scholar organizational projects lean toward the latter half of the continuum: design and evaluation research, and action/intervention research. In Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) terms, most practitioner-scholars’ organizational projects fit the description of incremental research set within established paradigms, which furthers the paradigm one step at a time. In other words, most of these projects apply recognized bodies of thought to solve the problem at hand. That is, the extant literature and research instruments could be applied to self-managing teams, nonroutine STS, transformational leadership, mergers and acquisitions, or joint ventures and alliances.

This approach is important in the research-to-practice value chain and an appropriate step for the practitioner-scholar. However, organizations have often been sources of paradigm-breaking administrative innovations that reconfigure practice and become the focus of much academic research. The research community then strives to find and formulate theory for innovations such as matrix structures, strategic business units, cross-functional teams, total quality management, six sigma, communities of practice, and other organizational innovations. It is hoped that the practitioner-scholar can also help create and document such paradigm-breaking innovations, bringing back to the academic domain her insights on new organizational arrangements. This sharing of new knowledge with the academic community, I believe, can be the practitioner-scholar’s next evolutionary step. Currently, however, most practitioner-scholars serve more to apply theoretical and research knowledge to their problem. This creates mid-range theories for their own use within their organizational contexts. Fewer practitioner-scholars are creating original knowledge and approaches that can inform the broader research and practice communities.

Creating theories about phenomena takes time and experience. Most practitioner-scholars are practical individuals with practical projects to complete. Benedictine’s PhD program does offer an introductory philosophy of science course that offers a big-picture view of how research and knowledge production activities change over time, thus changing concepts and methods. But I don’t believe this is sufficient for helping practitioner-scholars consider the ontological and epistemological issues underlying knowledge-production activities. In a related vein, if the hallmark of a successful boundary spanner is his ability to disseminate lessons from theoretically informed practical organizational projects to reinform theory, then after graduating, most practitioner-scholars are less successful.

A recent survey by Benedictine doctoral students Tinnish and O’Neal (2010) examined the publishing activity of 110 practitioner-scholars from four executive doctoral programs in the United States. The results suggest that only about 30 percent had published since completing the doctoral program. A majority of the publications were conference papers and nonacademic publications. Among respondents, practitioner-scholars on academic career paths published more than practitioner-scholars who worked in organizations. The sample included 24 practitioner-scholars in academic positions and 86 practitioner-scholars working with organizations. The key barriers to publishing among those working with firms were little incentive from their current organization to publish, not enough time, unable to identify the right forums to publish in, and lacking confidence that their submissions would be accepted for publication after putting in the required time and energy.

The practitioner-scholar’s primary role as a consumer and applier of extant theoretical and research knowledge touches on an important question impacting all the organizational sciences, particularly regarding its education and training objectives. Two questions of concern, as skillfully raised by O’Toole in Chapter 20, On the Verge of Extinction, are Should the field enrich itself by including the education of practitioner-scholars and that of basic research scholars? And should this be done in one program and institution or in different institutions and programs?

My belief is that the organizational sciences would benefit from training a cadre of practitioner-scholars alongside research scholars because both groups represent mutual synergies. Practitioner-scholars faithfully apply theoretical and research knowledge to solve organizational problems, whereas research scholars play the upstream role of producing the theoretical and research knowledge that gets applied.

Institutions such as Case Western Reserve University offer both traditional and executive PhD programs as parallel tracks. In the public health field, Johns Hopkins University pioneered the Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree for public-health practitioners several years ago alongside its traditional PhD in public health. Further, joint projects and common mentors foster interaction between research scholars and practitioner-scholars, serving as mutual learning forums for the two student groups. These examples demonstrate the viability of hosting two parallel streams in the same institution.

How Viable Are Practitioner-Scholars As Partners to Academics in Conducting Relevant Research?

When operating independently, practitioner-scholars are mainly appliers of extant theoretical and research knowledge. But when they partner with academics, they may be convinced to try out new concepts and approaches. Academic/practitioner-scholar partnerships can reinform theory, particularly if the new approaches make intuitive and practical sense for organizational projects.

In a change project that involved setting up enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in a major engineering firm’s global facilities, I convinced a practitioner-scholar, a key member of the design team, to analyze social networks to assess the strength of network ties among and between units in two facilities. We were testing the hypothesis that facilities with strong network ties between and within units will more readily accept and use a newly launched ERP system. At least in the available literature, no one had assessed internal social networks and the strength of internal network ties within and between change recipients to predict the success of a change. Our test on a pilot basis confirmed our hypothesis, and the results of our study were published in an academic journal (Tenkasi & Chesmore, 2003). The other facilities in the global organization that wished to implement the ERP system drew on our study to change their social networks.

Practitioner-scholars are comfortable with publishing their project work as long as they receive appropriate and insightful guidance from academic partners. In fact, in Tinnish and O’Neal’s (2010) survey of practitioner-scholars, 78 percent of respondents expressed interest in publishing in the future from their current organizational research projects and 46 percent were actively trying to publish.

Working with practitioner-scholars, particularly those in line and senior executive positions, brings the benefit of gaining access to carefully collected internal firm data that are not readily available to outsiders. One practitioner-scholar, a senior director of technology strategy at a Fortune 500 high-tech firm, accessed internal firm records on 780 interorganizational relationships (joint ventures, partnerships, and alliances) over a ten-year period. He accessed information on whether the interorganizational relationship (IOR) was successful based on several organizational metrics (achieving internal and external expectations from the IOR in terms of financial measurements, length of time the relationship lasted, and stock price impact). He also tested the association of both partner characteristics (profile of the IOR partner–firm age maturity, firm financials, and so on) and the partnerships’ dynamics (relationship secrecy, relationship formality, time to build the relationship, relationship type, relationship strategic value, and so on) as independent variables garnered from the internal database. By systematically analyzing the firm’s history, he found several key insights that led to major changes in the firm’s IOR strategy, particularly regarding asymmetrical IORs and how to successfully work with smaller firm partners for interorganizational relationships. This practitioner-scholar is currently working on joint publications that provide a theory of strategic technology partnerships.

Another practitioner-scholar, the head of the Gastroenterology Department at a major medical hospital and university research center, offered to create an experiment for the hospital’s CEO, who worried about the effectiveness of a new clinic that integrated traditional and alternative medicine. Patients at the integrative medicine clinic reported overall satisfaction with the physicians and therapeutic interventions, but their overall cure rate had not improved compared with patients at the traditional medicine clinic. The practitioner-scholar, a strong proponent of the knowledge-based theory of the firm (Grant, 1996; Nonaka, 1994), firmly believed in the efficacy of integrated knowledge over specialized disciplinary knowledge for solving medical problems. He was puzzled as to why the cure rates were much lower in the integrative clinic compared to the traditional clinic. With his investigative spirit and my suggestions as his mentor, he chose to focus on patients with one type of disease, those with a particular musculoskeletal disorder. This disorder was the most common condition among those who attended the integrative clinic. It also had several comparison cases in patients who went only to the traditional clinic.

The practitioner-scholar accessed the hospital’s existing records on co-morbid conditions of 600 patients—300 of whom attended the integrative medicine clinic, the other 300 of whom attended the traditional clinic. By accessing this data and conducting systematic quantitative and qualitative investigations, he proved that patients at the alternative clinic were much sicker when beginning treatment than the patients at the traditional clinic, which explained why those at the alternative clinic did not have higher cure rates. Based on his important analysis, the hospital decided to continue operating the integrative medicine clinic.

Overall, practitioner-scholars who hold line positions are better positioned to change things within the organization, much more so than industrial and organizational psychologists in staff positions. Although these staff members fill a useful consultative role, they do not have as much power or authority to move things within the organization as do executive PhD scholars, particularly those who occupy line roles and continue to do so after completing the program.

Insights for Academics Who Want to Influence Organizational Practice

Our experiences with practitioner-scholars suggest that they use theory and research knowledge to inform practice and produce outcomes of dual relevance. However, we also see that theory and research knowledge, a critical component and one of the scholar’s strengths, is just one of a set of “know that” (knowing about something) and “know how” (knowing how to do something) (Ryle, 1949) in successfully impacting organizational practice. In connecting with organizations, the scholar brings certain kinds of “know that” (current literature, social science theory, principles of research design) and certain kinds of “know how” (designing research and data analysis). But he or she must understand the importance of merging this knowledge with the “know that” (contextual conventions, norms, rules, power relationships, routines, and established procedures) and “know how” (influencing, legitimizing, project management) specific to the organization.

Further, like the practitioner-scholar, the traditional academic must reframe her research ideas and methods in terms palatable to a practitioner audience. In particular, using devices like turns and scaffolding to translate academic and research elements for the practitioner audience is useful for this purpose. Likewise, when a scholar presents a research proposal on academic problems that he or she wants to investigate in a practical setting, the scholar must present the research question in a way that appropriately frames and defines the problem at hand and also shows how the investigative or intervention process is the suitable pathway for resolving the problem. Academics must also be able to demonstrate impact on intended outcomes. Firms are most interested in reaching practical outcomes; keeping this in mind would well serve the scholar who wants to impact organizations.

However, we believe that the best way for traditional scholars to impact organizations is to create a collaborative management research structure between the theoretically well-versed scholar and the theoretically aware, but also organizationally well-informed practitioner-scholar. The collaborative structure between scholar and practitioner-scholar is needed because applying theory and research knowledge to address organizational problems inevitably occurs in local practice contexts.

Further, it is crucial that collaborative research structures account for different sets of “know how” and “know that.” We see at least four roles in collaborative research communities that invoke different sets of “know how” and “know that.” First, we need a set of actors familiar with the universals (the larger scientific discourse pertaining to theory and research) who can articulate what is known and what needs to be known to advance knowledge from a theory and research vantage. The scholar can fill this role.

Second, actors are needed who are familiar with the particulars of the organization—local theories of action, organizational history, social dynamics, norms, and power relationships—that the practitioner-scholar is adept at. When these two sets of actors unite, collaborative research communities can find appropriate causal mechanisms that can move the system to its desired state, achieving practical outcomes while enhancing scientific theory.

Third, to put causal pathways into motion, we need actors with credibility, legitimacy, and influence in the organizational system, particularly among top management and other stakeholders. These actors have deep practical knowledge of how to move projects in the organization. The practitioner-scholar might be able to fill this role, depending on his or her place in the organization. Finally, we need actors who can adeptly translate theory regarding its practice implications and can frame practice contingencies in terms of their theoretical potentials that require both the scholar and practitioner-scholar.

Interrelating theory and research to practice can helpfully lead to mutual sense making. Practitioner-scholars frequently use theory to activate and make sense of practice. And when executing practical organizational projects, practitioner-scholars’ evolving practice insights reenable them to make sense of the theory at hand. This important reciprocal dynamic leads to relevant outcomes for practice and theory.

To me the critical contribution of collaborative research systems is facilitating these dynamics. Further, I believe collaborative research communities should deliberately create sense-making forums to optimally assess and understand the interplay of theory and practice in projects to lead to dual outcomes. An example of one such structure comes from Mohrman, Gibson, and Mohrman (2001), who describe interpretive forums that bring together scholars and practitioners to mutually pursue useful research and practical outcomes. Set up as forums to aid mutual perspective taking (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995), they are meant to join members of the research and practice worlds to reflect and interpret information.

By letting varied interpretations and objectives surface, these forums allow their members to reflect on their and others’ views of a situation, collectively reexamine, and come away with better interpretations that take into account each other’s viewpoints. Such forums may include sessions to craft the research effort to ensure that an organization’s practical concerns and academic research concerns are taken into account, sessions to jointly examine and interpret data patterns, and sessions in which members draw and discuss possible action implications of the research findings.

Depending on an organization’s openness to research, such collaborative research communities can propose an overt negotiation process between scholars and practitioner-scholars. The negotiation process would aim to develop a shared agenda for investigating organizationally hot theoretical and practical issues (Adler & Shani, 2001). Some contexts may require the practitioner-scholar to educate key managers beforehand on systematic research’s benefits in creating organizational outcomes (while advancing scientific outcomes) and on a collaborative structure’s unique strengths in enabling these outcomes. In organizations not as receptive to research, practitioner-scholars might frame the collaborative enterprise mainly as a consulting project. After this, they can incorporate theory and research elements into the background in a way that complements the organization’s practical needs (Werr & Greiner, 2008). One caveat: The organization should see the research by-products as legitimate, and the collaborative team should get appropriate permissions for publications from the data.

Conclusion

The growing number of executive PhD programs in the United States and worldwide, as well as the number of working professionals from diverse positions who are enrolling in these programs, show that practitioner-scholars play a key role in organizations today (Tinnish & O’Neal, 2010; Wasserman & Kram, 2009). At least some practitioner-scholars can play the role of the technites, carefully blending the traditions of theory and practice to address problems of scientific and social concern (Tenkasi & Hay, 2008). Their work can then be built upon in academic/practitioner-scholar collaboration. For at least the past 300 years, traditional science has carried on Aristotle’s legacy of separating theory from experience and knowledge from action (Chalmers, 1999; Parry, 2003). But today’s practitioner-scholars can live out Aristotle’s second, lesser-known legacy, heralding a new era of integrating theory and practice.

REFERENCES

Adler, N., & Shani, R. (2001). In search of an alternative framework for the creation of actionable knowledge: Table-tennis research at Ericsson. In R. Woodman, W. Pasmore, and A. B. Shani (Eds.), Research in organizational change & development (vol. 13, pp. 43–79). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Aristotle. (1961). Metaphysics (Vol. 1, Bks. 1–9; Vol. 2, Bks. 10–14). (H. Tredennick, Trans.). Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Aristotle. (1962). Nicomachean Ethics (M. Ostwald, Trans.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Astley, W., & Zammuto, R. (1993). Organization science, managers, and language games. Organization Science, 3, 443–460.

Bartunek, J. M., Rynes, S., & Ireland, R. D. (2006). What makes management research interesting, and why does it matter? Academy of Management Journal, 49, 9–15.

Best manufacturing practices report. (1998). Retrieved October 1, 2006, from http://www.bmpcoe.org.

Boland, R. J., & Tenkasi, R. V. (1995). Perspective making and perspective taking in communities of knowing. Organization Science, 6(4), 350–372.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bunge, M. (2004). How does it work? The search for explanatory mechanisms. Philosophy of Social Sciences, 34(2), 182–210.

Cambridge dictionary of American English. (2003). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chalmers, A. F. (1999). What is this thing called science? Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the rough ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techne’ in modern philosophy and in Aristotle. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Eisenhardt, K. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–550.

Eslbach, K., & Sutton, R. (1992). Acquiring organizational legitimacy through illegitimate actions: A marriage of institutional and impression management theories. Academy of Management Journal, 35(4), 699–738.

Evered, R., & Louis, M. R. (1981). Alternative perspectives in the organizational sciences: “Inquiry from the inside” and “Inquiry from the outside.” Academy of Management Review, 6, 385–395.

Fleck, L. (1979). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published in German in 1935)

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge. London: Sage.

Grant, R. M. (1996). Toward a knowledge based theory of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17, 109–122.

Green, S. E. (2004). A rhetorical theory of diffusion. Academy of Management Review, 29, 653–669.

Hay, G. W., Woodman, R. W., & Tenkasi, R. V. (2008). Closing the ODC application gap by bringing ODC knowledge closer to ODC practice. OD Practitioner, 40(2), 55–60.

Huff, A., & Huff, J. (2001). Refocusing the business school agenda. British Journal of Management, 12, S49–S54.

Jick, T. M. (1979). Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: Triangulation in action. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 602–611.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lawler, E. E. (1986). High-involvement management: Participative strategies for improving organizational performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mahoney, J. T., & McGahan, A. M. (2007). The field of strategic management within the evolving field of strategic organization. Strategic Organization, 5, 79–99.

Mahoney, J. T., & Sanchez, R. (2004). Building management theory by integrating products and processes of thought. Journal of Management Inquiry, 13, 34–47.

Mohrman, S. A., Gibson, C. B., & Mohrman, A. M. (2001). Doing research that is useful to practice: A model and empirical exploration. Academy of Management Journal, 44(2), 357–375.

Nonaka, I. (1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5, 14–37.

Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. London: Polity Press.

Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2005). Re-thinking science: Mode 2 in societal context. In E. Carayannis & D. Campbell (Eds.), Knowledge creation, diffusion, and use in innovation networks and knowledge clusters: A comparative systems approach across the United States, Europe, and Asia (pp. 39–51). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Parry, R. (2003). Episteme and Techne. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2003/entries/episteme-techne.

Peters, F. E. (1967). Greek philosophical terms: A historical lexicon. New York: New York University Press.

Pettigrew, A. (2001). Management research after modernism. British Journal of Management, 12 (Special Issue), S61–S70.

Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2006). Hardfacts, dangerous half-truths, and total nonsense. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Pinto, J., & Prescott, J. (1988). Variations in critical success factors over the stages in the project life cycle. Journal of Management, 14(1), 5–18.

Rousseau, D. M. (2006). Is there such a thing as “evidence based management”? Academy of Management Review, 31, 256–269.

Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson.

Schon, D. A. (1995). Causality and causal inference in the study of organizations. In R. F. Goodman & W. R. Fisher (Eds.), Rethinking knowledge: Reflections across the disciplines. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Silverman, D. (2001). Interpreting qualitative research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Tenkasi, R. V., & Chesmore, M. C. (2003). Social networks and planned organizational change: The impact of strong network ties on effective change implementation and use. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 39(3), 281–300.

Tenkasi, R. V., & Hay, G. W. (2004). Actionable knowledge and scholar-practitioners: A process model of theory-practice linkages. Systemic Practice & Action Research, 17(3), 177–206.

Tenkasi, R. V., & Hay, G. W. (2008). Following the second legacy of Aristotle: The scholar-practitioner as an epistemic-technician. In A. B. Shani, N. Adler, S. A. Mohrman, W. A. Pasmore, & B. Stymne (Eds.), Handbook of collaborative management research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Tenkasi, R. V., Mohrman, S. A., & Mohrman, A. M. (2007). Making knowledge contextually relevant: The challenge of connecting academic research with practice. Paper presented at the Third Organization Studies Summer Workshop on Organization Studies as Applied Science: The Generation and Use of Academic Knowledge about Organizations, Crete, Greece.

Tinnish, S., & O’Neal, R. (2010). Building on the scholar-practitioner legacy: An investigation into the publishing rates, enablers and obstacles to publishing in the OD field. Lisle, IL: PhD program in Organization Development, Benedictine University.

Van De Ven, A. H. (2007). Engaged scholarship: A guide for organizational and social research. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Van De Ven, A. H., & Johnson, P. E. (2006). Knowledge for theory and practice. Academy of Management Review, 31, 902–921.

Van De Ven, A. H., & Schomaker, M. S. (2002). The rhetoric of evidence-based medicine. Health Care Management Review, 27(3), 88–90.

Wasserman, I., & Kram, K. (2009). Enacting the scholar practitioner: An exploration of narratives. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(5), 12–38.

Weick, K. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Werr, A., & Greiner, L. (2008). Collaboration and the production of management knowledge in research, consulting and management practice. In A. B. Shani, N. Adler, S. A. Mohrman, W. A. Pasmore, & B. Stymne (Eds.), Handbook of collaborative management research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Yin, R. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ramkrishnan (Ram) V. Tenkasi is Professor of Organization Change at Benedictine University in Chicago. His research and practice interests on large-scale organizational change, knowledge, and, information technology have been funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense. A recent research project supported by the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Program elevates his analysis of large-scale change to understand the interplay of planned institutional interventions and emergent entrepreneurial dynamics in explaining the formation and rapid evolution of the Indian software industry. He is past Chair of the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management and was awarded the Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, one of 150 research awards annually granted by the U.S. government across 42 disciplines.