A Focused Issue on Building New Competences in

Dynamic Environments
The Theory–Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance
Simonne Vermeylen
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 THE THEORY PRACTICE GAP:
REDEFINING RELEVANCE

Simonne Vermeylen
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ABSTRACT

Purpose This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and

usefulness and their relation to the theory practice gap in management
research.
Methodology/approach On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic rele-
vance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from infor-
mation science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while
reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.
Findings There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theo-
retical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental
and conceptual relevance.
Originality/value This novel approach will help to clarify the confu-
sion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added
value of management research.
Keywords: Relevance; management research and education;
theory practice gap; cognitive-linguistic relevance theory;
inferential pragmatics

A Focused Issue on Building New Competences in Dynamic Environments

Research in Competence-Based Management, Volume 7, 271 335
Copyright r 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1744-2117/doi:10.1108/S1744-211720140000007010
271
 272 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

INTRODUCTION

In 1959, the American Ford Foundation, among others, alarmed by the

poor quality of management education offered by business schools, criti-
cized the lack of a scientific foundation (Gordon & Howell, 1959). A simi-
lar debate was started in Great Britain stressing the national importance of
improving the quality of management education (Franks, 1964). These
reports set in place a model for management research and education
founded upon rigorous, discipline-led scholarship with a strong focus on
analytical models. To secure a legitimate position within the university
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system, business schools which started out as vocational schools in the late
19th century to form business leaders, increasingly follow a “scientific”
model, the purpose of which is to contribute to knowledge about managers
and management, but not for managers (Thomas & Wilson, 2011). Did
management schools overcompensate for the perceived deficit? Do we
know what the manager wants or needs (Moss Kanter, 2005) and should
we listen to him?
On the basis of the complaints and criticisms published over roughly the
last 30 years,1 the answer to the first question is “yes.” Business schools
have overcorrected and could make themselves irrelevant. To formulate a
unanimous answer to the second question seems significantly more difficult.
The exclamations “do we matter?,” “does our existence make a difference?,”
I shall not remain insignificant” (Hambrick, 1994, p. 19; Vermeulen, 2007),
“do we have something to say?” (Alvesson, 2013), add to the nagging feeling
that management research (and education) has become narrow and overly
specialized (Porter & McKibbin, 1988), not serving the student nor the prac-
titioner sufficiently. Anne Huff in her 1999 presidential address for the
Academy of Management complained that management science will be
increasingly seen as “counting angles dancing on the head of a pin” (Huff,
2000, p. 290). Since then the theory practice gap has kept discussions
ongoing. The field is diverse and fragmented as to the causes of the gap and
the preferred remedies, as the following overview illustrates.
Researchers and practitioners belong to separate discourse communities
with very different perspectives and ideologies and these differences impede
utilization (Beyer & Trice, 1982). Others argue that the lack of newness
negatively affects the curiosity of managers (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013;
Daft & Lewin, 1990), while concurrently the fragmentation of the organiza-
tional study field is said to lead to confusion (Pfeffer, 1993, 2007), a view-
point that from a different line of reasoning is shared by Lex Donaldson
(Donaldson, 1995). Normal science which stands for formal research
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 273

design, quantitative data, validation, reliability, and replicability and a

steady accumulation and building of empirically generated knowledge on
the one hand is contrasted with contra science or postpositivism such as
social constructionism and action research (Beer, 2001; Marsden &
Townley, 1996), since it is assumed that the positivist traits of managerial
research do not fit the organizational reality, a viewpoint shared by the
proponents of mode 2 research (Bartunek, 2011a, 2011b; MacLean,
MacIntosh, & Grant, 2002; van Aken, 2001). But defenders of normal
science such as Bill McKelvey and Lex Donaldson see this plea fraught
with subjective bias (McKelvey, 2003, 2006). Against this position others
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claim that practitioners need research that has a practical focus and which
can be applied immediately.
Lately there is a call for more evidence-based management on the practi-
tioners’ side (Bartunek, 2011a, 2011b; Nutley, Walter, & Davies, 2007;
Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006a, 2007; Rousseau, Manning, & Denyer, 2008),
widening the scientific research evidence with best practices, and making a
call on policy-makers to make more informed decisions.
This incomplete sketch reflects what has been reformulated as the
rigor relevance gap or the double hurdles, a metaphor launched by
Pettigrew (1997) referring to the fact that a management researcher not
only has to satisfy the requirements of rigorous research, but also needs to
fulfill the expectations of so-called practical relevance, hereby assuming
that there is a trade-off: more relevance would automatically negatively
affect the scientific rigor and vice versa.
A lot of issues are at stake: the legitimacy of business schools in particu-
lar (and universities in general), the question of accountability, the question
of whether research output has become an end in itself instead of a means
to knowledge creation for the betterment of humankind, leading to frustra-
tion as exemplified by the following quote:
Hundreds of thousands of talented researchers are spending their time producing little
or nothing of lasting value. Because the usefulness of their research is so low, their
social environment pays little attention to their research… Many researchers lose the
idealism that brought them to their occupation originally, as they shift their priorities
to social goals such as tenure and promotions. Seeing that their activities are benefitting
no one, some researchers come to see themselves as having obligations to no one but
themselves. (Starbuck, 2006, pp. 3 4)

This paper is organized as follows. On the basis of an extensive literature

review, we first order the assumptions underlying the complaints. Next,
we discuss the perceived causes of the gap and the corresponding bridging
strategies. The core of this text is spent on the concept of relevance.
 274 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

To that end, we will first clarify the terms usefulness and relevance by
reverting to a number of categories used in the literature. Relevance will be
worked out as a cognitive-linguistic concept in which communication and
information seeking are central themes. To that end, we will compare the
linear model of communication to the transactional, which will bring us to
the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson and its
pragmatic maxims, going back to Paul Grice’s cooperative principle. Next
we will integrate the concept of relevance in information science to posit
that the relevance of knowledge and information is a function of the con-
text, prior knowledge, and timeliness of the information search. In a fol-
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lowing step we will correct this user-based approach of relevance on

epistemological and logical grounds. The concluding step will consist in the
presentation of a simplified conceptualization of relevance and usefulness.
In line with Kieser and Leiner’s position (2009, 2011, 2012) shared
by Rasche and Behnam (2009) as well as by Nicolai and Seidl (2010), which
so far has remained unchallenged except for two comments (Fincham &
Clark, 2009; Starkey, Hatchuel, & Tempest, 2009), we will conclude
that none of the proposed bridging strategies will accomplish the task
of building bridges strong enough to carry the research and practitioner
communities in the formulation of a common relevance.

THE ARENA

The basic premise behind the call for more managerially relevant research
is based upon the assumption that using scientific findings is a good thing
for managerial problem-solving and decision-making. Knowledge as a pro-
duct of rigorous research will result in higher quality decisions which
should lead to better implementation of higher quality actions which finally
positively impacts the performance (see Fig. 1 based upon Champagne,
1999, p. 2). In the background is the implicit ideological assumption of
a performative teleology according to which the unique function of

Use of scientific Quality of Quality of Outcome

findings decisions implementation impact

Fig. 1. Basic Premise of Research-Based Decision-Making.

 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 275

management studies and research at business schools is to enhance eco-

nomic wealth production (Grey, 2002).
The problem is that the product of the research effort first needs to reach
the practitioner before it can be put to use. Several models have been dis-
cussed in the literature. As one of the seven typologies of Weiss (1979), the
sequence in Fig. 2 concentrates on research stages, using a transformation
process from fundamental or basic research to applied research, followed
by what in the innovation literature is called “valorization” of an innova-
tion. Conversion from research into technology (or managerial practices?)
makes research findings ready for implementation. In this input-output
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model, it is assumed that the knowledge in itself is valuable and that high
quality research to be understood as state-of-the-art will automatically
lead to higher adoption. Consequently evaluation of produced knowledge
is the responsibility of the scientific community and use is under the respon-
sibility of practitioners.
Of the same family is the chain model or the knowledge-driven dissemi-
nation model as a description of the ideal knowledge transfer (Starkey &
Madan, 2002), laughingly compared to a food chain by Bill McKelvey
(McKelvey, 2006, p. 822). Fig. 3 (designed by us) reads as follows (Van
de Ven & Johnson, 2006, p. 805): “… knowledge is created and tested
by academic researchers, taught to students by instructors, adopted and
diffused by consultants, and practiced by practitioners” (also Starkey &
Madan, 2002). This knowledge-driven or push model of research is of a

Adoption of
Basic Applied Technological Outcome
technology or
research research development impact
practice

Fig. 2. Knowledge-Driven Model.

Consultants

Research Publications Performance

Business schools

Teaching Students Organizations

Fig. 3. The Knowledge-Driven Dissemination Model.

 276 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

Knowledge from
knowledge reservoir
Definition of Identification of
problem missing knowledge
Commisisoned
(applied) research Solution

Fig. 4. Problem-Solving Model.

technical-rational character. Technical because the proponents believe that

management can be taught and learned via knowledge transfer and acquisi-
tion, and rational because it is assumed that managers rationally choose the
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best solution for a business problem. As Schön pointed out: “According to

the view of technical rationality the view of professional knowledge
which has most powerfully shaped both our thinking about the profes-
sions and the institutional relations of research, education, and practice
professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous
by the application of scientific theory and technique” (Schön, 1983, p. 21).
On top of the linear sequence from supply of research to utilization by
decision-makers, this model recognizes the fact that knowledge transfer
and/or translation do not happen automatically, but that extra steps should
be added to research activities in order to get the research results to users.
Behind the problem-solving or demand-pull model (also Weiss, 1979) is
the core idea that science is an answer to a problem. There is once again a
linear sequence from knowledge supply to the users, but the initiative shifts
from researchers to practitioners. Managers or policy-makers, as may be
the case, identify problems and express their needs, to which researchers
attend through study and the formulation of solutions or prescriptions. In
Fig. 4 (based upon Champagne, 1999, p. 7) two approaches to a problem
are explicated. Either the practitioner has to look for existing knowledge
that can solve his particular problem, in which case he acts as an informa-
tion seeker, or research is commissioned and hence undertaken upon
request and funded. The usefulness of knowledge is measured in terms of
its problem-solving capacity. As a result the better the researcher works
within the constraints of a problem definition, the better his “score.”

CAUSES OF THE GAP

The various solutions offered to close the gap necessarily reflect the under-
standing of its causes. They often hide epistemological beliefs, academics’
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 277

convictions about “good science” and methodological robustness, but also

interpretations of the expectations of the practitioner.
In what follows we zoom in on (1) the problems of knowledge trans-
fer, (2) what is called “knowledge production” or academic research,
(3) research and practice as two distinct communities, and (4) the barriers
on the practitioners’ side. We do not claim that this ordering is the only
possible one but in the present state of the dispersed literature, it seems the
one that best captures the often implicit reasoning and assumptions of
those authors pleading for strategies to bridge the gap.
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Problems in Knowledge Transfer: Lost in Translation

In the chain model, transfer takes up a central role. Following Figs. 2

and 3, if the academic knowledge which is presumed to be relevant
does not reach the practitioner, then the transfer process is to blame.
“Transfer” remains an unresolved terminological tangle in the words of
Larsen (1980), and can be related to knowledge translation, knowledge
mobilization, innovation diffusion, technology transfer, as well as to
research dissemination. Shapiro et al. characterizes the transfer problem as
one of “lost in translation” (Shapiro, Kirkman, & Courtney, 2007).
What can go wrong? Academic research fails to reach important
practitioner sources of information, such as the professional press, one of
the important reasons being that academics have no interest in either pub-
lishing there or influencing the editorial agenda (Latham, 2007; Rynes,
Giluk, & Brown, 2007). Because of the laborious review process, research
findings take too long to be published and hence fail to capture the atten-
tion of the practitioner by lack of topicality (Guest, 2007). Either the
researcher is unable to formulate or translate his findings to the managerial
practice, or worse: he does not pay attention in his research to the transfer
issues and/or the implementation problems that may come up (Cohen,
2007). Failure to package his message in a convincing way is an error or at
least a shortcoming on the researcher’s part. Latham (2007) points to the
language and style of writing required in academic publishing, which
because of “… statistical and methodological wizardry can blind rather
than illuminate” (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005, p. 99). A lot of theory and meth-
odological details frighten the practitioner, as do the presentation of an
abundance of quantitative data (Saari, 2007).
According to Dess and Markoczy (2008), scholarly journals overly
emphasize empirical and theoretical contributions and pay insufficient
 278 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

attention to the development of a normative theory or practical implica-

tions of such research. They illustrate this with reference to a study by
Rynes (2007) of 83 members of the editorial board of the Academy of
Management Journal. The respondents allocated an average of only 17
points (out of 100) to the importance of the contribution to business
practice while the relative importance of theoretical and empirical contri-
butions were, on average, 41 and 42 points, respectively.
Shortcomings on the teaching side as causes for the transfer failure are
unquestionably important, as evidenced by a number of publications on
that subject (Augier & March, 2007; Dameron & Durand, 2011; House,
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1975; Moss Kanter, 2005; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002; Porter & McKibbin, 1988;
Tushman, O’Reilly, Fenollosa, Kleinbaum, & McGrath, 2007), but for the
sake of brevity we don’t explore these further.

Problems in Knowledge Production: Lost Before Translation

“Academics research the wrong things” is a representative quote for yet

another line of reasoning. Even before their findings reach the audience,
the research is “lost before translation” (Shapiro et al., 2007, p. 250), in
agreement with Van de Ven and Johnson (2006). Researchers start from
existing theories a condition to get research published and try to
develop and refine these through rigorous research. They are interested in
finding causal relationships and/or correlations, often by using quantita-
tive data obtained from organizations dead figures, devoid of context.
Indeed one can produce an excellent piece of research on a managerial
problem, without ever having observed a manager in action or an organi-
zation in crisis. Most researchers don’t have managerial or industry
experience. What researchers think is relevant or worth studying may
not be relevant in practice, or at least not be perceived as such (Van de
Ven & Johnson, 2006).
Academics don’t seem to realize that they study phenomena that don’t
“… matter to the message receivers” (Shapiro et al., 2007, p. 249, his
emphasis), as they are conditioned by the academic reward system. Deans
of business schools and presidents of for example the Academy of
Management may say that they want practitioner-oriented research, but as
long as schools demand and reward scientific research designed to please
academics, “… business schools are creating faculties filled with individuals
whose main professional aspiration is a career devoted to science”
(Bennis & O’Toole, 2005, p. 100). This cause of the gap can also be read in
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 279

several other publications (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013; Alvesson &

Wilmott, 1992; Beer, 2001; Green, 2003; Pfeffer, 2007; Vermeulen, 2005).
Other comments point to the overspecialization of the research, which
is food for excellent theories but not adapted to the complex organiza-
tional reality which is in search of a holistic solution. In his blog of July
23, 2013, Markides writes that “…[for] academic insights to be useful to
managers, they have to be transformed into a holistic product, very much
how the different car components are assembled into a final product.
This ‘assembly’ process is much more than just collecting different
insights into one place.” Pfeffer in that respect offers a thoughtful reflec-
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tion on the lack of paradigmatic consensus in the domain of organization

studies. This situation not only negatively affects their scientific status,
but worse, creates confusion in the mind of the practitioner who is
bombarded with changing and diverging theories on the same issues
(Pfeffer, 1993; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006a).
As an overarching cause of the gap, several authors point an accusing
finger in the direction of the (neo)positivist character of organizational
research summarized as follows: “… formal research design; quantitative
data facilitate[d] validation, reliability, and replicability; [and] a steady
accumulation and building of empirically generated knowledge derive[d]
from a limited number of theoretical assumptions” (Clegg & Hardy,
1996, p. 3). Positivism is the epistemological belief that only information
derived from logical and mathematical treatments and reports of empiri-
cal observations are the source of all authoritative knowledge and that
only scientific knowledge (truth) is valid. This view holds that society at
large and management and organizations in particular, like the physical
world, operate according to general laws which are to be discovered by
the researcher. Hence the academic will look for regularities in large
datasets. In his position as an objective observer, he is value free (or
supposed to be). There is an object subject relationship between the
researcher and the organizational phenomena. It is this approach that
creates the gap between theory and practice, according to a number of
critics. Positivist inspiration creates an artificial distance and makes orga-
nization research unworldly. The researcher sits in his ivory tower and
looks at organizations through his lens. The instrumentalization of orga-
nizational problems as if they were a mechanical puzzle to be solved
with physical formulas is blind to the richness of organizational life
(Alvesson & Deetz, 1999; Stewart & Kornberger, 2003). As a conse-
quence, one should not be surprised that practitioners cannot relate to
the findings.
 280 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

Theory and Practice as Distinct Kinds of Knowledge

As McKelvey (2006, p. 823) puts it “Expecting knowledge to flow left to

right is like expecting round pegs to fit square holes ….” Introducing the
practitioners’ side to the problem reveals different viewpoints on the nature
of knowledge. The previous discussion on the transfer problem assumed
that the academic knowledge needed some kind of vehicle to reach the
other side. Other voices pointed an accusative finger in the direction of the
academic research, but the focus was still on scientific knowledge. But what
about the knowledge of the practitioner, instead of knowledge for him?
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Practical knowledge (Aristotle’s techne) is knowledge in its own right

and is not inferior to academic knowledge (episteme), hereby denying that
management practices are not a derivative of research but rooted in
another form of knowledge. Practitioners’ knowledge is knowledge in
action, embedded in context whereas academic knowledge strives for gener-
alizable theoretical insights in causal relationships. Practitioner knowledge
is independent, validly produced, and has an epistemological status equal
to that of academic knowledge, although obtained in a totally different
epistemology (Hay, 2003; Weick, 1996).
As an illustration of this line of reasoning, Sandberg and Tsoukas in a
recent article contend that the overall problem of the theory practice gap
finds its origin in the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the
relationship between theory and practice. Traditional scientific rationality
makes practice a derivative of theory. It forces management scholars to
impose a scientific logic on practice, which is fundamentally different from
the logic underlying practice and hence cannot resonate with the practi-
tioner. The subject object relation as a central concept in the traditional
sciences results in a supposed detachment from practice and disconnects
knowledge from its social context. Human existence is reduced into cogni-
tive knowing through datasets which are forced into homogeneity.
Drawing upon the Heideggerian ontological notion of being-in-the-world,
these authors argue that the gap cannot be closed unless we accept and
research accordingly that we are all entwined with others and the socio-
material world. As long as research is based upon an artificial breakdown
of the holistic organizational practice, it will not break free from abstrac-
tions and generalizations (Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2011).
These ideas are close to Caplan’s two communities theory, which is of a
less philosophical nature though (Caplan, 1979). Caplan not only points to
the different knowledge characteristics of both sides of the spectrum, but
he believes that the different cultures of researchers and managers are an
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 281

important cause of the gap. The former are driven by rigorous scientific
work, whereas the latter are interested in problem-solving and actionable
prescriptions. They speak a different language: abstract but precise versus
concrete and ambiguous, a difference that is also reflected in the communi-
cation style and form. Researchers are expected to report in a way that
enables verification and review by peers. A manager will experience these
subtleties as superfluous literature.

Barriers on the Practitioner’s Side

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It is also Caplan who argues that one cannot expect that policy decisions
are made on purely rational grounds. Feasibility and acceptability for a
number of stakeholders are as important as the rational adaptation of the
so-called best solution. Even in cases when the manager knows the aca-
demic findings, he may not be in a position to sell this solution.
The interesting notion is that the problem-solving and decision-making
responsibilities of managers are social activities taking place within com-
plex networks of stakeholders, power, emotions, long- and short-term opti-
mizing efforts, personal and corporate goals, all aspects which undermine
the assumption of rational decision-making as depicted in Fig. 1.
Managers are compelled to act without having formally tested their vari-
ables; they are much less methodological than driven by relationism
(Chia & Holt, 2006, 2008, 2011). What these authors call the “practice turn”
in managerial studies undermines the illusion of rational theory and orderly
strategic planning. The same goes for strategic change which according to
this viewpoint is not apt for studying as an object, since organizations are
rather “becoming” than existing as static objects (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002;
Weick, 1995). According to these authors, managers are working in a
constant flux of change and adaptation, and hence strategy is rooted in non-
deliberate practical coping, which does not fit into logical theories or
prescriptions.
De Goede et al. provide another equally interesting approach to the bar-
riers in research utilization by distinguishing between process barriers and
individual barriers. The first category relates to differing expectations of
outcome, conflicts of interest, timeliness, different language, and jargon, all
factors which could be tackled. Drawing upon an extensive review of litera-
ture, they also point to the importance of the acceptance and interpretation
at the individual level. Acceptance relates to the differing perception of
researchers and policy-makers of the research outcome to be true: not to
 282 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

mean credibility the authors warn, but different criteria about what is con-
sidered to be true in science and practice. Barriers classified under interpre-
tation deal with the value people give to research outcomes “Is the
problem important enough to act?,” implying that the value of research
output also depends on personal experiences and interests and possibilities
of solutions. Taken together one can see that the decision process to use
research or not for policy purposes is a complex process with diverse bar-
riers involving networks, power, perception of problems, cooperation and
coordination, bargaining, and consultation (de Goede, Putters, van der
Grinten, & van Oers, 2010). This is equally true on the research side which
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copes with its aims, duties, and responsibilities which raises the barriers for
a fruitful mutual understanding among the two communities even more.
This duality causes a gap to exist, so goes the conclusion: one should not
try to “convert” the practitioner, nor should the researcher give up the
quest to produce rigorous studies. But in the end it is the researcher who
must make an effort to be open to other forms of knowledge than the
academic and admit that other dynamics are at play (Jarzabkowski &
Giulietti, 2007).

The Systems View

Of a more controversial nature is the viewpoint that researchers and practi-

tioners belong to a different system and that because of the autopoietic and
self-referential nature of systems, communication about the relevance of
research for practice are impossible (Kieser & Leiner, 2009, 2012; Nicolai
& Seidl, 2010; Rasche & Behnam, 2009). Because of its importance in the
development of this essay, the systems view will be discussed at large in the
second part.

PROVING THE GAP

Since the gap is most often defined as the failure of research output to
reach the non-research side of society, utilization and eventually the impact
of the research output being implemented are the core themes. Research
utilization is commonly defined as the implementation of research-based
knowledge (science) in practice. There is no shortage of publications on
this issue in the fields of nursing, education, technology, management, and
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 283

public policy. (The following publications offer excellent overviews: Bax,

2011; Beyer, 1982; Beyer & Trice, 1982; Estabrooks & Wallin, 2004;
Hutchinson & Johnston, 2004; Landry, Amara, & Lamari, 2001a, 2001b;
Rich, 1997; Weiss, 1979). Specific research proving the gap empirically
between theory and practice in management is sparse. We all seem to agree
that there is a gap, based on our experience or contacts with the “field.”
But what does one expect happens with research output? This is a tricky
question, not at least since in the field of utilization and impact, the result
is only seen in retrospect and as mentioned previously, is hard to verify
(Estabrooks & Wallin, 2004). Thus before zooming in on the proof of the
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gap, we discuss first two major approaches to research utilization. We

acknowledge that the following studies for the major part were developed
to tackle the problem of research utilization in domains of public policy,
but over time they have been reinterpreted in a more general setting, and so
far we have not found indications which would make this transfer of these
insights from public to corporate policy unjustified.

A Conceptualization of Research Utilization

Several conceptualizations of research utilization have been proposed, the

distinction between instrumental and conceptual being the most popular
next to the symbolic (Caplan, 1979; Knorr, 1977; Larsen, 1980; Nutley
et al., 2007; Rich, 1977, 1997; Weiss, 1979). Rich (1977) distinguished
between “knowledge for action” and knowledge for understanding.” In
addition Knorr (1977) and Pelz (1978) introduced the concept of symbolic
or legitimative use. But it is Weiss (1979) who identified seven different
meanings of social science utilization in the literature and laid the ground-
work for further refinements in the conceptualization which have actually
resulted in three major categories:
• Instrumental use of research also known as procedural or problem-
solving is the specific and direct way in which research is used to solve
a problem at hand. To this end, research is ideally translated into a use-
able form such as procedures, guidelines, handbooks, manuals, frame-
works, analytical tools, or protocols. To these Nicolai and Seidl (2010,
pp. 1266 1267) add technological rules and “recipes,” schemes, and
forecasts.
• Conceptual research utilization is the cognitive and indirect use of
research findings. This can lead to changing an opinion or a mindset
 284 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

about a problem area, but there is not necessarily a direct a link to parti-
cular problem-solving actions. This is very close to Weiss’ enlightenment
model (1979, p. 429) which she explains as an “imagery” of science
shaping the way in which people think about social issues. The research
diffuses through manifold channels, and over time the insights will
“… provide decision makers with ways of making sense out of a complex
world.” This utilization of research findings is believed to occur more
often in practice than instrumental use, but it is per definition a less
tangible and observable process. This makes it much harder to research.
Nutley et al. in particular point to the underestimated impact of aca-
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demic research on the conceptual thinking (Nutley et al., 2007, p. 37) of

practitioners. Nicolai and Seidl’s (2010, pp. 1267 1268) findings charac-
terize the conceptual utilization with reference to linguistic constructs
such as metaphors which can change the way in which we think about
the world. But science can also uncover causal relationships, hidden side-
effects, or bring contingencies to the foreground.
• Symbolic (or persuasive) research utilization addresses the use of research
knowledge as a political tool in order to influence or legitimate policies
and decisions. Nicolai and Seidl call this “credentializing” (2010, p. 1268)
which can take the form of “couching one’s arguments in scientific lan-
guage.” This form of utilization often refers to studies made upon
request of governmental institutions which subsequently are (improperly)
used or diverted to other goals than originally intended. The same can be
said of any managerial decision where academic findings are used ex post
to justify the choice.

Taking the chain model (Fig. 3) as a basis, Table 1 (adapted from

Leroy, 2007) summarizes the various causes of the gap, the underlying
assumptions, and the corresponding knowledge utilization. We point at the
same time to the implicit or explicit character of the utilization. We call
utilization explicit when one can empirically point to utilization people
know a theory, a concept is mentioned in a report, research can identify the
implementation, etc. It is of an implicit nature when, citing Weiss (1979,
p. 430), people cannot refer to the source but have a sense “… that social
science research has given them a backdrop of ideas and orientations ….”
Another well-known framework is the ladder of utilization (de Goede
et al., 2010; Knott & Wildavsky, 1980; Landry et al., 2001a, 2001b). This
model and its variants are designed and used to check whether findings in
reports which are commissioned by public authorities find their way into
policy-making or everyday practice. The aim is to identify the factors that
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 285

Table 1. Causes of the Gap.

Causes Assumptions Knowledge Utilization

1. Knowledge transfer Knowledge is useful for management Instrumental and

Linear transmission conceptual
Explicit

2. Two communities Two distinct kinds of knowledge:

theoretical and practical

a. Science Truth Conceptual

Nuances, in-depth reasoning Explicit
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Abstract
Precision
Valid and reliable knowledge
Analytical
Robust methodology

b. Management Power Instrumental,

Beliefs conceptual and
The big picture symbolic
Concrete Rather implicit
Speed
Knowledge is experience and intuition
Holistic

3. Knowledge Problem statement from theory Conceptual

production Causality and correlation: For each problem Implicit
the researcher will find a particular cause
Specialized, narrow domains
Nothing is as practical as a good theory: in
search of generalizations

4. Barriers on the Decision-making process is complex Instrumental

practitioners’ side Individual acceptance and interpretation Conceptual
Symbolic
Explicit and implicit

5. The systems view Systems are self-referential and autopoietic Conceptual?

which makes communication about
relevance impossible

lead to or hinder dissemination and subsequent utilization, and to explain

how these factors influence the likelihood that researchers succeed in
climbing up the ladder. Behind this research interest is the interaction
model it acknowledges the interactive and incremental nature of policy
development within a context of diversity within the groups of researchers
 286 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

and policy-makers. Knott and Wildavsky’s ladder consists of seven stages

and suggests a normative degree of utilization: the higher the step, the
better.
1. Reception: research results are received by the actors
2. Cognition: research findings were read and understood
3. Reference: research changes the way of thinking by actors; they refer to
the research
4. Effort: one can point to efforts made that the research results are intro-
duced into policy even when this was not successful
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5. Adoption: the research has a direct influence on the policy process and
policy formulation
6. Implementation: research was translated and used in practice
7. Impact: one can demonstrate effects of the policy implementation
When we compare this model to the conceptual/instrumental/symbolic
distinction, it seems that “instrumental use” overlaps with steps 6 and 7 of
the ladder of Knott and Wildavsky. “Conceptual use” comes close to the
cognition and reference stages. “Symbolic use” does not seem to fit directly
into the research utilization ladder, unless we can define it as an effort or
intention to bring the existence of research to the foreground.
Nicolai and Seidl (2010), in a like attempt to bring order to the many
meanings of research utilization, developed a “taxonomy of forms of prac-
tical relevance.” Unfortunately their distinction between instrumental, con-
ceptual, and legitimative relevance in our opinion equates the already
existing identical categories of utilization which clouds the discussion as we
will argue further. Thus for the sake of clarity we will use their taxonomy
in this publication as one of utilization.

Measuring Research Utilization

Measuring or at least demonstrating research utilization validly and reli-

ably remains a persistent and unresolved problem. The arguments are not
always based on empirical evidence, but are influenced by normative prefer-
ences and expectations. Studies published on the subject remain marked by
their descriptive, and sometimes reflective, nature (Rich, 1997). A major
problem is the operationalization of “knowledge”: there is a multitude of
“input” that can be called knowledge. We agree with Estabrooks and
Wallin (2004, p. 3) that research utilization is only a subset of knowledge
utilization and “… is a multifaceted concept encompassing different forms
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 287

of use of research based knowledge.” Second, there are different forms of

research and third, one must take into account the various channels which
are involved in the process of research communication.
“Pasteur’s Quadrant of scientific research” of Donald Stokes for exam-
ple, shown in Fig. 5 (Stokes, 1997; Tushman & O’Reilly, 2007), categorizes
research according to the degree that its aim is to pursue fundamental
understanding or to respond to pressing problems. Fig. 6 shows the
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Fig. 5. Stokes’ Quadrant Model of Scientific Research.

Fig. 6. Research at Business Schools.

 288 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

adaptation to the context of business schools by Tushman and O’Reilly

(2007, p. 348). Their point is that while conventional academic disciplines
are typically about a quest for understanding, research at business schools
should be judged by two distinct criteria: its external validity (the extent to
which the theory matches the phenomenon studied) and internal validity
(the extent to which the data fit the research question). Applied research
can be basic since it can have an impact on both scholarship and practice.
This distinction of applied/basic resonates with the problem-solving model
of Fig. 4, but in the absence of operational criteria to distinguish between
the two, one can wonder whether it is of any help to clarify the problems
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related to the research of knowledge utilization. But it seems clear that

most of the criticism against research not being able to cross the divide is
addressed to basic research and its theory building character.
As to the channels of transfer, it is impossible to track how research was
transferred, whether research was communicated in writing or via teaching
or via another way, which makes the verification of the first two steps of
the ladder of research utilization impossible unless we limit the study of
research utilization to commissioned research.
The most common approach of verification is by administering question-
naires about opinions and estimations of use or application, which is only
an intermediate step toward the measurement of the expected impact
(Skinner, 2007). We refer to Estabrooks and Wallin (2004) for an excellent
discussion on the methodological difficulties of researching utilization.
These authors point to the lack of prior theory or conceptualization of
research utilization, the absence of explicit definitions, and the usage of
unreliable research instruments. One time the utilization is approached as
an event a one-time measurement another time the process and its evo-
lution are studied. Or one uses the frequency of utilization, whereas others
focus upon the number of people knowing or applying practices. In the
absence of a unified scale, it is impossible to compare or to benchmark.
The same authors finally also point to the fact that most often the studies
are conducted at the individual level and that research utilization at the
organization level remains underdeveloped.
One of the most cited studies in the field of management is Miner’s
test of Lewin’s dictum that “nothing is as practical as a good theory”
(Lewin, 1945, p. 129). Miner’s reasoning can be summarized as follows: if
we understand by “practical” “that which is useful in an applied setting
to achieve some goal” and “good theory refers to theory of a kind that
produces valid science” (Miner, 1984, 2003, p. 250), then we can test this
hypothesis (2003, p. 250) by first identifying theories in terms of their
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 289

rated importance and validity, and secondly by verifying whether these the-
ories were put to work. We refer to said publications for the methodologi-
cal details. In order to be considered important, a theory (1) should have
proved useful in understanding, explaining, and predicting the functioning
of organizations or the behavior of people in them, (2) should have gener-
ated significant research, and (3) should have clear implications for practice
and application in some area of management or organizational functioning.
Interesting to note is his test of usefulness or practicality. Miner verified in
the literature whether these theories had contributed to practice in any
meaningful way, either because applications were generated or because
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research or experience had proved them essentially useful. His conclu-

sion was that the goodness of a theory and its usefulness were weakly
correlated.
Baldridge, Floyd et al. on the contrary found a positive relationship
between the academic quality and practical relevance of management
research. On the basis of a stratified, random sample of 120 publications they
argue that there is a positive correlation between an objective measure of an
article’s academic quality (number of citations) and expert panel ratings of its
practical relevance. The underlying idea is that academics and practitioners
both value research that is interesting and justified meaning research that
challenges and extends existing beliefs and research that offers compelling
evidence for its conclusions (Baldridge, Floyd, & Markoczy, 2004).
Other research in the Human Resources (HR) area tested the knowledge
of HR managers regarding proven insights from academic studies (Rynes,
Colbert, & Brown, 2002). More than half of the 1,000 respondents adhered
to old-fashioned practices and beliefs. A replica study in the Netherlands
showed the same pattern (Groen, Sanders, & van Riemsdijk, 2006;
Sanders, van Riemsdijk, & Groen, 2008), and the same can be said of
the findings of a recent Flemish study (Segers, Vloeberghs, DePrins, &
Henderickx, 2009).
Summarizing the foregoing, objectively measuring the degree and ways by
which research reaches the practice is an exercise that not too many research-
ers will tackle because of lack of methodology and verifiable criteria.

BRIDGING STRATEGIES

The bridging strategies which we will discuss hereafter are reactions or

responses to the perceived shortcomings of a traditional science practice.
 290 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

What needs to be kept in mind when evaluating the proposed solutions is

that primarily those pertaining to “knowledge production” are based on
fundamentally different epistemological and ontological assumptions, that
is, on the nature of knowledge and the methods which are considered to
stand the test of scientific rigor as understood by the humanities. If one
believes that there is no such thing as an objective reality, and that every-
thing we study and observe is a construct, in that case these proponents
will take the position that science at best can help the practitioner to
“make sense” of his own reasoning. Concurrently doing so will diminish
the gap between estranged theory and the practical concerns.
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The more positivist-oriented positions hold onto the belief that good
research needs to start from a theory maybe not the grand theories from
physics, but a mid-range theory or a meta-theoretical construct and that
the only way to progress is by developing a limited number of theories,
which will demonstrate their practicality for management.
Questions of this nature pertain to the following issues. What is organi-
zational reality and how can it be studied? Is it possible to discover general
laws or lawlike mechanisms to explain and predict organizational behavior?
Is it necessary to be able to empirically observe phenomena, or can we also
do with constructs? Lex Donaldson and Bill McKelvey are both strict in
their evaluation of the alternative proposals to bring management science
closer to the practitioner. Donaldson’s “For positivist Organization
Theory” speaks for itself (Donaldson, 1996). As he explains, positivist
organization theory is determinist, generalizing, functionalist, and explains
organizations by material factors. But Donaldson does not see this as rea-
sons to refute the normal science. In two recent articles he sets out the lines
of a statistico-organizational theory, drawing upon meta-analytics and
defending aggregation in order to avoid sampling errors and biases
(Donaldson, 2010a, 2010b). McKelvey also criticizes the alternatives
inspired by “postmodern” thinking, with robust epistemological arguments.
Particularly interesting is his 1997 article “Organization Positivism:
Separating Myth from Reality” in which he comments on a number of cri-
ticisms against so-called positivism (McKelvey, 1997, 2003, 2006). By doing
so, he is one of the exemplars of a straightforward approach to scientific
rigor: we must not give in to complaints about relevance and change our
research accordingly, but we must stick to the orthodoxy of what is
believed to be good science.
On the other end of the spectrum we find not always explicit differ-
ing points of view on what rigorous research should be, combining these
with suggestions to bring the “truth finding” closer to the user. Reference
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 291

here is primarily made to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory (but beware,

there is no consensus on what is understood by this term, and Kuhn’s view-
points are often reduced to a caricatured simplification), and to Burrell and
Morgan who pointed at the various underlying assumptions guiding orga-
nization theory through the use of metaphors (Burrell & Morgan, 1979;
Kuhn, 1962; Morgan, 1986). Once the positivist notion that lawful-like reg-
ularities exist and can be discovered (in social science) is refuted, a number
of interesting alternatives for research see the light. Concurrently they are
defended as alternatives with the hope of more practical relevance than
what is actually offered.
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Against this background we discuss the most popular bridging strate-

gies, hereby following the logic of the linear model of Fig. 3.

For an Improved Transfer Process

Although we did leave out the role of business schools in the discussion
above, here we cannot overlook the proposals to adjust the teaching con-
tent and methods in business schools. Some say that future managers must
be trained in the processing of scientific articles, in order to make them
more receptive and in hope that they will continue this habit during their
professional career (Lockwood, Keats, & Dess, 1990). This invitation to
“higher order thinking” can also be heard in Rousseau’s plea for more evi-
dence. Case studies are nice but often too superficial to form the conceptual
thinking necessary to understand the theories, and must therefore be sup-
plemented with robust research findings (Rousseau, 2006, 2007). And there
are other voices saying that students must be trained in critically reflecting
on their own belief system the universally praised art of common
sense through the analysis of academic teaching material (Dess &
Markoczy, 2008).
In contrast to the former solutions, others criticize the academic “old-
fashioned” teaching methods of a number of business schools, which they
claim are not adapted to the needs of the audience. If we want to educate
future managers in a relevant way, business schools should shy away from
abstract concepts and theories (Durand & Dameron, 2011; Van de Ven,
2007). At the same time, the latter authors accuse academics of dispropor-
tionally spending time and attention on publications, thereby neglecting
the quality of their teaching and hampering the transfer of knowledge.
Academic journals per their mission favor and select those contributions
that are theoretically and empirically “sound,” fitting with their strict
 292 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

review procedures. The study objects and the methods are so distant from
the daily life of managers that they do not perceive them as relevant. Two
alternatives can cure this: either publication norms need to be adjusted or
the communication style should be made more accessible to a lay audience.
As Rynes demonstrated, journals rate their own practical relevance as low.
Why not give this a higher weight or be more open to alternative research
methods (Lambrechts, Bouwen, Grieten, Huybrechts, & Schein, 2011;
Rynes, 2007) is the rhetorical question.
Across these suggestions, one can hear a plea for a different style and
tone. There is a belief that scientific insights can and should be formulated
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in a less hermetic language that is accessible to insiders only. The question

remains whether this needs to be done in academic journals or whether
academics in the frame of their social task should be able to express
themselves in columns, blogs, and the like in order to attract more atten-
tion to scientific findings.
The last alternative looks at the non-academic or popular media for dis-
semination of academic output. A serious criticism addressed to these med-
ia’s communication is exactly the lack of academic rigor, the loss of the
contextual nuances of the findings, and the blatant shortcomings in the
understanding and reporting of statistical findings. This creates not only
misleading beliefs, but can even be dangerous (Bryant, 2011; Goldacre,
2008), since the quality control is in the hands of people who are either not
scientifically trained or do not care about the rigor, and are concerned pri-
marily about their popularity. Thus why not create mixed editorial boards
(Segers et al., 2009) or start a magazine that combines rigor and relevance
(Dess & Markoczy, 2008; Latham, 2007).
Although consultants can, strictly speaking, not be considered as instru-
ments in the hands of academics to disseminate research, their role as a
linking pin in the chain remains all too often under the radar. Consultants
next to their limited role as knowledge producers play a quite important
role in the transfer of knowledge in their mediating role as implementers of
academic concepts and frameworks. Although not always rigorously fol-
lowing the orthodox or original underlying theory (misinterpretations of
the BCG matrix, ill-conceived industry analyses, and violations of the
SWOT methodologies, to name a few), according to Heusinkveld, consul-
tants need to get credit for translating the concepts into standardized
“products” (Heusinkveld, 2004). This commoditization allows for a dissemi-
nation intensity that can never be reached through the traditional academic
publications. This scale of application in turn would increase the confi-
dence in the applicability or impact of the concept.
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 293

Changing the Knowledge Production

A number of authors voice the opinion that more collaborative research

either to set research agendas or to perform research jointly by academics
and practitioners could bridge the gap (Mohrman, Pasmore, Shani,
Stymne, & Adler, 2008; Pettigrew, 2001; Shrivastava, 1987; Tushman &
O’Reilly, 2007). This can for example take the form of forums, in which
practitioners discuss problems and available solutions (Van de Ven &
Johnson, 2006) or one can think about so-called round tables where practi-
tioners meet academics in applied research. Karl Weick defends the position
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that it is the manager who needs to have the last say in informing academics
of what is worth researching in line with the problem-solving model.
However, he as well as Vermeulen is not in favor of producing purely instru-
mental solutions to short-term problems, but instead wants to stimulate a
dialogue between the two sides of the gap in order to find out what is needed
to safeguard the long-term continuity of an organization (Vermeulen, 2005;
Weick, 1996, 2001). For a quick overview of the “Weick-Like” research
agenda setting we recommend reading Lundberg (Lundberg, 1999).
Of a different nature is the mode 2 research which changes the way
knowledge is produced as well as the nature of the produced knowledge in
hopes of improving the relevance (Gibbons et al., 1994; Huff, 2000;
MacLean et al., 2002; van Aken, 2001, 2005). We have summarized the
main points in Table 2. Under the assumption that practitioners and aca-
demics share sufficient common ground, the mode 2 is transdisciplinary,
jointly produced among a variety of actors, and bound to a specific context
of application. MacLean et al. (2002) however reported that little mode 2
research has found its way to academic journals for reasons of criteria of
scientific rigor.
A third kind of change in research practice is the “action turn” which
changes the role of the researcher (Reason, 2003; Reason & Bradburry,
2001; Reason & Heron, 1997; Reason & Torbert, 2001; Schön, 1983, 1995)
since “… action research practitioners aim to remove the monopoly of
knowledge creation that has been endowed to academics doing social
science, and contribute to the development of inquiry as part of everyday
practice” (Reason, 2003, p. 113). Action research is not a substitute for
sound research methods but according to Reason and Bradburry (2001) it
is a call for the moral quality of openness and the creation of communicative
space and communities of inquiry. Action research is not to be confused
with the (participatory) action research promoted as a vehicle for social
change and emancipation. Action research in organizational science has
 294 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

Table 2. Mode 1 and Mode 2 Research.

Mode 1 Mode 2

Starting points Small focus Large focus

Test of hypothesis Convergent proofs

Problem formulation By academia By the practitioners

Discipline Monodisciplinarity Trans- and multidisciplinarity

Researcher groups Homogeneous Heterogeneous

Causality One-dimensional Complex

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Methods Quantitative Qualitative

Statistical analysis of datasets Case studies
Action research

Goal Refine existing knowledge/theories Problem-solving

Descriptive and explanatory Prescriptive

Knowledge General General and specific

Usage Source of knowledge Guidance for practice

Accountability Vis-à-vis the research community Vis-à-vis society at large and

intended users in particular
Reflexivity

Quality control Peer review Stakeholders, community of

interest

gained quite some popularity: its proponents emphasize the methodological

rigor while simultaneously being in the action. The divide between thinking
and studying versus implementation is made non-existent (Beer, 2001;
Chia & Holt, 2011; Whyte, 1989).
Next to action research and mode 2 is engaged scholarship, worth men-
tioning as a way to increase the relevance to society (Boyer, 1990, 1996;
Starkey & Madan, 2002; Whitley, 1984). “Engaged” in this context means
to be able to ask the right questions, to solve problems grounded in reality
with the aim to contribute to the betterment of mankind. Engaged scholar-
ship means openness towards other disciplines, and is a call to treat organi-
zations not as suppliers of data phenomena are often compressed into
data for research purposes but as living organisms, workplaces where
managers and academics work together.
But instead of looking for more “accessible” methods and theories, other
authors (but a minority) make a different case. In their 2010 article
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 295

(originally in French, presented in an English version in Copenhagen,

21 23 November 2012, first CBSM conference) Sanchez and Heene exam-
ine some fundamental epistemological issues in building grand theory and
mid-range theory in strategy (Sanchez & Heene, 2010, p. 250; Weick,
2001). They point out that after more than 30 years of research and theory
development, strategy has yet “to achieve the orthodoxy of an established,
well integrated theory that is the hallmark of a true discipline.” This state-
ment says a lot: the intention is not directly to gain better access to the
practitioner, but to preserve the science status. Mid-range theory is a step
away from “grand theory” a positivist illusion according to its critics
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but claims that it is possible to develop robust contextual theories. These

are not only good for the legitimation of the research field, but they will
also diminish the present fragmentation of viewpoints and by doing so
reduce the confusion on the side of the practitioner, a point of view that is
shared by Pfeffer (Pfeffer, 1993, 2007).
The same authors were at the helm of literally “reinventing strategic
management.” “The goal of the competence movement is to build new
strategy theory that will ‘work’ in practice” (Sanchez & Heene, 1997,
p. 303) and on the same page … “developing useful theory.” The compe-
tence perspective’s new insights make some phenomena “more understand-
able and thus more manageable” (1997, p. 304). Without saying so
explicitly, what Sanchez and Heene together with a lot of others try to do,
is contribute to the conceptual utilization of knowledge. The competence-
based movement in strategic thinking does not offer any prescription or
specific solution it is not of a problem-solving nature but it offers an
alternative view on, for example, competition and competitive advantage.
McKelvey’s (2006) diagnosis is that too much research only produces
averages and similarities, and that by doing so estranges itself from the
managerial world which is full of idiosyncratic advantages. Thus according
to him we should develop a science of extremes in order to be more useful
for managers. As mentioned before he will not give in to ‘postmodernism’
or engaged scholarship, but believes that research into complexity can pro-
vide insights which ultimately will help the manager (McKelvey, 1999,
2003, 2006; McKelvey & Boisot, 2009).

Improving Managerial Practice

At the other end of the spectrum is the conviction that it is the responsi-
bility of managers and policy-makers to use scientific findings. Evidence-
based management (EBM) started in medicine practice, but has gradually
 296 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

found its way into management. What is interesting here is the call to the
practitioner not to take decisions and implement practices on the basis of
intuition, experience, common sense, or fashionable hype, but to turn to
proven solutions. This equates with drawing on the best available infor-
mation which is more than and different from scientific research.
Evidence at large can consist in systematically collecting relevant research
and looking for multiple sources of information, including best practices,
benchmarks, or reliable facts and figures. EBM draws attention to other
sources of knowledge than the academic, namely experience (practices)
while also recognizing the importance of the local context and the interest
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of stakeholders in selecting the best evidence (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006a,

2006b; Rousseau, 2006, 2012; Rousseau et al., 2008; Vermeren &
Speelman, 2010). However when reading, for example, the call for papers
on EbSM or Evidence-based Strategic Management for the Review of
Managerial Science (in March of 2013), we could not help but feel for
the practitioner to whom the responsibility is turned to produce meta-
analytics and summaries, unless we observe here a movement not in the
direction of the practitioner, but an attempt once again to consolidate
the fragmented field of managerial studies. But whatever the case, one
can only be happy that management is invited and stimulated to improve
the decision-making process by installing a culture of systematic research
into facts and figures.
To summarize the discussion this far, the strategies to improve transfer
and communication are primarily directed toward the first two steps of the
ladder of utilization. The alternative kinds of theories and knowledge pro-
duction have the implicit purpose of enhancing cognition, acceptance, and
implementation.
So far we have followed the various authors’ use of the words “rele-
vance” (except for Nicolai & Seidl, 2010) and “usefulness.” In the next half
of this paper we will turn our attention to the concept of relevance, which
we want to redefine and distinguish from usefulness and utilization.

RELEVANCE AND USEFULNESS

The academic concern that the researchers’ activity seems devoid of

meaning for its audience ultimately refers to a lack of knowledge utiliza-
tion by managers and policy-makers or at the most extreme end of the
chain, the lack of impact upon implementation (see Fig. 1). As
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 297

demonstrated above, the existence of a gap between theory and practice

is seen as a problem and consequently as something that needs to be
solved, hence the formulation of various bridging strategies to strengthen
or improve the interface between science and practice, assuming and
accepting that the evaluation of the work of a researcher is in the hands
of the practitioner. Consequently “relevance” is implicitly divided into
“practical” and “theoretical.” What is striking in the literature on the
issue is the absence of a line between usefulness and relevance, and the
same goes for utilization.
First we provide an overview of the meanings of usefulness and rele-
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vance, which gives us the starting point to plead for a separation of both
terms. Against this background we will argue that the interface between
research output and management is foremost a problem of communica-
tion. Before a receiver of a “message” can or will act upon it (utilize it),
he or she must perceive the message as relevant. This call for attention in
turn presupposes that a manager in our case has a problem for which he
is in search of a solution, or at least that he has to make a decision. We
thus take the position depicted in the problem-solving model of Fig. 4,
where it is assumed that a manager can draw upon a knowledge reser-
voir. But relevance does not present itself but must be preceded by a
search for information in the expectation that the information will be
helpful. Talja and Hartel’s (2007) conceptualization of user needs in that
regard is very helpful for understanding that information and communi-
cation practices not only incorporate information seeking but also infor-
mation receiving and sharing. This process works in accordance with the
expectation of relevance, which in turn depends on the interpretation of
the information. This process is of a cognitive and linguistic order. There
is no reason to believe that it works differently for a researcher and a
manager. Whereas one could be tempted to reduce relevance in that case
to be solely dependent on the user, drawing upon information science
theory and untangling relevance and usefulness we will state that rele-
vance is a general epistemological concept if at least one user will benefit
from it.
Whereas we draw upon the relevance theory or inferential pragmatics of
Sperber and Wilson to understand the process of communication, we will
integrate insights from library and information science to further elucidate
the relevance concept. By doing so we hope to contribute to the ongoing
debate on relevance by demonstrating that researchers and practitioners
not only belong to two communities (Caplan, 1979) or systems (Kieser &
Leiner, 2009; Rasche & Behnam, 2009), but that exactly the cognitive,
 298 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

dynamic, and goal oriented nature of managerial work makes it impossible

to evaluate the usefulness of research ex ante.

Different Meanings

In a blog posted on July 23, 2013, Costas Markides wrote “I’d like to
propose that the dissatisfaction [with the proposed bridging strategies]
exists for another reason. It’s not that our research is of little relevance.
Rather, the dissatisfaction exists because our research is not useful or
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more precisely, it is not presented in a form that some (not all) of our
customers (i.e. the managers) find useful.”
This quote is one of many possible and is illustrative of the confused
usage of the concepts of relevance and usefulness, which are used without
explaining what is exactly meant with these terms and, even more impor-
tantly, where the difference is. Nicolai and Seidl’s (2010) otherwise excel-
lent article and taxonomy of relevance suffer from the same weakness.
Developed on the basis of a textual analysis of the relevance literature
and of a set of 450 articles in three leading academic management jour-
nals, their taxonomy of practical relevance (the adjective practical is again
used without any further explanation) and the corresponding scheme
(2010, p. 1266) has substituted Weiss’s forms of utilization into forms of
relevance, without any justification or reference to Weiss (1979), thereby
creating the assumption that utilization and relevance are one and the
same concept.
Similarly, authors use the word “relevance” in combination with “practi-
cal” (Baldridge et al., 2004; Benbya & McKelvey, 2007; Nicolai & Seidl,
2010; Thomas & Wilson, 2011), implying that every researcher knows that
“relevance” by itself refers to “theoretical relevance” which is the contribu-
tion of research to the furthering of knowledge in a field of science (theory
development). This confusion and vagueness of terms is problematic
since and we fully agree “… the different meanings imply different
and conflicting relationships between science and practice” (Nicolai &
Seidl, 2010, p. 1258).

The Concept of Usefulness

Usefulness often seems to be taken for granted as a synonym for “practi-
cal,” in opposition to “theoretical.” We think that what is meant by useful-
ness in a research context is the question of whether a potential user is
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 299

willing and able to do something with the research results (drawing a paral-
lel with the marketing notion of a customer), also meaning that research is
used, taken action upon, implemented, or getting attention. Other terms
used are pertinence or contributing to practice. According to Webster’s dic-
tionary, something is useful when “capable of being put to use; especially:
serviceable for an end or purpose. And a second meaning reads: “of a valu-
able or productive kind.”
Benjamin Franklin already in 1743 wrote an interesting “Proposal for
promoting useful knowledge among the British Plantations in America”
through the creation of a society. The last “subject of correspondence” was
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to be “… all philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of

Things, tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the
Conveniences or Pleasures of Life,” which is a significant program of use-
fulness reaching far beyond the technology and innovations that Franklin
heartily promoted.
Shrivastava, drawing upon a publication of Thomas and Tymon, com-
piled five criteria to identify useful research programs (Thomas & Tymon,
1982). The author readily admits that “standards for judging the usefulness
of research results or knowledge claims depend on the needs of users, and
the different ways in which research results are used” and hence that these
criteria can be refuted (Shrivastava, 1987, p. 87). But he correctly first
states that “the usefulness of strategic management research thus lies in its
ability to provide decision-makers with a rationale for making decisions
and thereby prompting actions in organizations” (1987, p. 79).
The first criterion is the meaningfulness or comprehensibility of research
results, which is “a function of the extent to which research findings capture
and adequately describe organizational reality.” Useful research addresses
strategic problems faced by decision-makers. Second, practitioners’ interest
for research work is driven by goal relevance: variables should relate to the
goals of the organization or the individual goals of the manager. This
means that the work should contain performance variables relevant to the
manager’s goals (our italics). Third, research is considered more useful
when it is actionable, also called having operational validity, which is “the
ability of the practitioner to implement action implications of a theory by
manipulating its causal (or independent) variables” (Thomas & Tymon,
1982, p. 348). The more abstract and general, the less can be expected that
managers will put the research findings to work. The criterion of originality
or newness or non-obviousness is based upon the observation that com-
monsensical or old results are uninteresting and fail to trigger the necessary
awareness. Though not mentioned by the author, this novelty seeking
 300 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

behavior that provides a stimulus was already suggested by Grice’s maxim

of quantity as explained below (Xu & Chen, 2006, p. 964). The last consid-
eration is the cost of implementation. According to this reasoning, man-
agers will only consider applying research insights when the monetary and
time costs warrant success and when the risk of failure is not excessive
(Shrivastava, 1987, pp. 79 80).
In his study of “useful” research, Armstrong and Pagell define useful
knowledge as evidence that could contribute to better decisions than would
have otherwise been made in given situations (Armstrong, 2004). In
another paper specifically aimed at finding useful knowledge with regards
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to forecasting, the same author states: “by useful knowledge, we mean

knowledge that can help people improve their forecasting. To be useful,
this knowledge must allow a forecaster to determine what actions to take
in a given situation” (Armstrong & Pagell, 2003, p. 1). But these authors
leave it unclear whether usefulness and being used (utilization) mean the
same. And their proposal to develop a usefulness index for papers based on
two factors, whether the paper has useful findings and its average citation
rate, is for the first factor a logically flawed reasoning. Judging usefulness
on the basis of useful findings is a circular reasoning that again leaves the
core question unanswered.
From the above we can summarize that something is useful in relation
to a goal, when it is considered actionable, and when it can make a differ-
ence in the positive sense. Usefulness infers potentiality but the question
of whether something can ex ante be regarded as useful without having
stood the test of implementation remains unanswered. As will be seen in
the discussion below, most definitions of relevance match these of useful-
ness, which obviously does not help in clarifying the issues.

The Concept of Relevance

For the development of this section we heavily rely on papers by Tefko
Saracevic and Birger Hjørland, whose contributions to a better understand-
ing of the concept of relevance cannot be overestimated (Hjørland, 2010;
Saracevic, 1975, 1996). Hjørland (2010) offers an excellent overview of the
dominant views on relevance in the field of information science and brings
the views of Saracevic back to the forefront of the conceptual discussions.
Whereas Hjørland and his fellow authors are primarily interested in the
information retrieval aspect which is only one of the issues we bring into
the theory practice debate, the said article contains numerous interesting
issues which can further our understanding. Our choice to include this
strand of literature is inspired by the observation that practitioners cannot
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 301

feasibly identify the literature that would fit their needs. In matters of
information query, relevance is the matching of a query serving as a tool
to a goal (Hjørland & Christensen, 2002) and information scientists,
among others, research the information seeking process. We thus attempt
to understand how decision-makers can come into contact with research
findings, evaluate them, and eventually utilize them into practice.
Relevance has been a subject of investigation in a number of fields such
as philosophy, communication, logic, information science, and psychology.
Per Webster’s dictionary, relevance is “relation to the matter at hand” or
“practical and especially social applicability” (Gulati, 2007, p. 770). (The
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Webster’s notion of “social applicability” is a reference to the 1960s, when

relevance became a buzzword to express a concern for social problems such
as equality, poverty, or racism.) Popular descriptions of relevant research
read as “when managers can relate to it and can apply its lessons”
(Tushman et al., 2007, p. 348; Weick, 2001). “Apply lessons” assumes that
the output of research takes the form of a prescription, of a “how to”
recommendation which can be converted into a practice.
Not only a task but also the presence of a goal influences the rele-
vance: something (A) is relevant to a task (T) if it increases the likelihood
of accomplishing the goal (G), which is implied by T (Hjørland &
Christensen, 2002). In this view organizations are goal-seeking entities,
and managers are driven by goals and objectives, which may be organiza-
tional or personal. It therefore makes sense to suggest that relevance is
goal-dependent (Gorayska & Lindsay, 1993). The goal-dependent theory
of relevance embraces both propositional reasoning and the problem-
solving activities of people such as managers, and defines relevance in a
practical way, that is, is it likely to work? Thus relevance is a term used
to describe how pertinent, connected, or applicable some information is
to a given matter, task, or problem which is the meaning intuitively
understood by most people everywhere. According to Saracevic, “They
use it [relevance] for filtering, assessing, inferring, ranking, accepting,
rejecting, associating, classifying … and other similar roles and processes,
or in general they use it for determining a degree of appropriateness or
effectiveness to the ‘matter at hand.’” (Saracevic, 1996, p. 203). He also
points out that people use relevance dynamically relevance changes
with the intentions and cognitive horizons or as the matter at hand is
modified. This concept of relevance is of a subjective nature, known as
situational relevance, as well explained by Xu and Chen. Subjective
because relevance is in the user’s judgment. If a user believes a document
is about the topic area of interest to him, then this document is topically
 302 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

relevant (Xu & Chen, 2006, p. 962). Most often, however, situational fac-
tors come into play in defining what is relevant. Situational relevance is
of a pragmatic nature and defines relevance as the utility of a document
to the user’s needs.
Relevance can be extended to the property that determines the connec-
tions and relations in our complex social world which Schutz called the
“lifeworld” (Schutz, 1970 in Saracevic, 1996, p. 204). He reasons that at
any given moment a person has a “theme” and a “horizon.” The horizon
refers to the social background, the experiences, and physical space that are
connected to the theme, to be understood as the present object or aspect of
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concentration what is commonly called “the matter at hand.” Schutz

(1970) defined three basic types of relevance which are interconnected in
what he called a “system of relevancies”, that is
• Topical relevance : the perception of something being problematic, what
is separated from the horizon to form a theme;
• Interpretational relevance: the stock of knowledge at hand such as past
experiences, in grasping the meaning and to which the topical theme may
be compared;
• Motivational relevance: involves selection of the several alternative inter-
pretations and refers to the course of action to be adapted.
Applying these to the field of strategic management, the selection of the
topic or problem at hand (topical relevance) refers to the perception of a
gap between an actual and a desired state. Cognition is involved in the
interpretation of the kind of problem, and the underlying intentionality or
motivation can be linked to the corporate and personal goals. We fully
agree with Saracevic that the strength of this theory lies in explicating the
existence, interactivity, and interdependence among various types of
relevance.

Communication and the Inferential Model

Publishing in an academic journal is in essence a communication process

(Gueuns, 2010), which is commonly defined as the transmission or
exchange of ideas. Remember that quite a number of bridging strategies
are intended to improve the communication between researchers and man-
agers. Looking at the gap from a communicative point of view reveals a
number of interesting features that will bring us closer to the relevance
problem.
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 303

One of the earliest definitions of communication comes from Aristotle

who developed a speaker-centered model of rhetorics, embracing ethos and
pathos, but also the logos rhetorical induction and deduction through
syllogisms.
The linear transmission model of communication is conceptualized as a
process in which meanings are packaged in symbolic messages or codes,
which are transported from sender to receiver who is supposed to decode.
Thus in our case at hand, the researcher as the sender uses a specific lan-
guage to send a message to a receiver. Noise creates the ubiquitous problem
of miscommunication: researchers think that they send a very relevant piece
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of research into the world, but it does not reach the destination. In order to
improve communication, according to this model, we need better packa-
ging and speedier transportation of messages. Good communication in this
sense is basically a technical problem to be solved in our examples of brid-
ging strategies through more popular publication channels, an adapted
choice of wording, and presentation of the findings. What is often over-
looked in this model is the destination of the messages which is the person
(or thing) for whom the message is intended” (Shannon, 1948).
The transactional model, grounded in social psychology, posits that
unlike the linear model, communication is a simultaneous process.
“Sender” and “receiver” both become “communicator.” As communicators
the parties involved negotiate the meaning among themselves but also
respond to themselves called reflexivity and to their environment.
Instead of reducing communication to a technical process of decoding and
the minimizing of environmental noise, social interaction is in this instance
of utmost importance. Contrary to the marketing inspired solutions of the
communication gap such as proposed by Gueuns (2010) or the production-
consumption metaphor present in many publications, the transactional
model does not know creators nor consumers of messages (Craig, 2001,
p. 125). This model leaves room for the “environment” which embraces not
only physical location, but also personal experiences and cultural back-
ground earlier called the horizon (Schutz).
The inferential model of Sperber and Wilson is of a transactional nature
and addresses communication primarily as a cognitive process using infer-
ence, intention, interpretation, and meaning, all within some context
(Sperber & Wilson, 1986; Wilson & Sperber, 1994, 2004). While this
cognitive-linguistic theory was developed for verbal communication
where parties can see each other we have not found contraindications
that its principles cannot be transferred to written (scientific) communica-
tion. Xu and Chen (2006), for example, explicitly transfer the principles of
 304 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

conversational communication to written communication via documents.

The inferential model refers to Paul Grice’s (1913 1988) linguistic theory
of conversation and the “principle of cooperation” (Grice, 1975, 1989).
Grice laid the foundations for an inferential model of communication, an
alternative to the classical code or linear model. According to this inferen-
tial model, the essential feature of human communication is the recognition
of the intention. A speaker provides evidence of her intention to convey a
certain meaning, which is inferred by the audience on the basis of the words
and information provided. The communication is successful when the par-
ties cooperate in making their meanings clear (Xu & Chen, 2006, p. 963).
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An author or speaker will convey as much information as is needed in any

given context, so that the audience can recover the intended meaning from
what was said or written as well as from the context and implications. In
this conceptual model, the author takes into account the context of the
communication and the mutual cognitive environment between the author
and the audience (i.e., what the author/speaker thinks that the audience
already knows on the one hand, and what the audience thinks the author
wants to communicate on the other). Also known as the maxim of quan-
tity, he then says just enough to communicate what he intends relying on
the hearer to fill in the details that were not explicitly communicated. This
works also the other way around: the receiver interprets the message as a
function of his context, prior knowledge, or timeliness and will make infer-
ences through this interpretational lens.
The central idea of Sperber and Wilson’s theory is that all utterances are
encountered in some context, and that the correct interpretation of a parti-
cular utterance is the one that allows most new implications to be made in
that context on the basis of the least amount of information necessary to con-
vey it. Relevance thus is made dependent on the quantity of new deductions
enabled by said utterance. The basic tenets of the relevance theory are
condensed in a cognitive and a communicative principle, based upon the
following assumptions:

• The greater the cognitive effect resulting from processing the informa-
tion, the greater its relevance;

By cognitive effect, we understand for example the answer to a question,

the solution of a problem, the improved knowledge on a topic, the correc-
tion of a mistaken opinion or the confirmation of a suspicion. The cogni-
tive effects can thus consist in the addition of new insights or in the
abandonment of old beliefs.
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 305

• The greater the processing effort required for processing information, the
lesser its relevance.

(Though Sperber and Wilson make no mention of it but Saravecic does

this is a similar argument as the “principle of least effort” advanced several
decades ago by Zipf (1949), which states that it is in the human nature to
want the greatest outcome for the least amount of work. According to the
same line of reasoning, all activities can be viewed as interactions between
tasks needing to be done and tools developed to accomplish them.)
These assumptions result in the first cognitive principle of relevance:
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human cognition tends to be organized to maximize relevance. Sperber and

Wilson’s theory is among others based upon the notion that the search for
relevance is a basic feature of human cognition, and that the tendency to
maximize relevance is a universal one. As a result of constant selection pres-
sure toward increasing efficiency, the human cognitive system has developed
in such a way that our perceptual mechanisms tend automatically to pick
out potentially relevant stimuli, our memory retrieval mechanisms tend auto-
matically to activate the potentially relevant assumptions, and our inferential
mechanisms tend spontaneously to process them in the most productive way.
The second communicative principle of relevance is as follows: every
utterance conveys a presumption of its own relevance or the presumption
of optimal relevance is ostensively communicated (Sperber, Cara, &
Girotto, 1995; Wilson & Sperber, 1994, 2004).
Not only does the context or situation play a role, but also the connec-
tion with background information that is available to yield conclusions
that matter in a context will influence the relevance. More theoretically,
information will yield a more positive cognitive effect when it can be
processed in a context of already available assumptions, beliefs, or prior
knowledge (Wilson & Sperber, 2004, p. 609).
Relevance cannot be expressed in quantitative terms there is no digital
notion of relevant and irrelevant but is a matter of degree. All other
things being equal, the greater the cognitive effects, the greater the rele-
vance of that information to that individual on that occasion. But the more
processing efforts required, the less the relevance. A new model, framework
or any other research finding will get more or less attention from the hearer
in comparison to alternatives he or she has already available. Thus an infor-
mation seeker makes a cost-benefit trade-off between processing effort and
cognitive effect.
For Sperber and Wilson, relevance is conceived as relative and subjec-
tive, as it depends upon the state of knowledge of a hearer. Still according
 306 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

to this theory, the most important type of cognitive effect achieved by

processing an input in a context is a contextual implication, a conclusion
deducible from the input and the context together, but from neither input
nor context alone. Also central to their theory is the notion that an indivi-
dual’s cognitive goal at a given moment “is always an instance of a general
goal: maximizing the relevance of the information processed” (Wilson &
Sperber, 1994, p. 49).
The strength of this theory lies in making a strong connection between
cognition and communication, and explaining these in relation to an intui-
tively understood goal: the maximization of relevance. Sperber and
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Wilson’s inferential pragmatics moreover is interesting since relevance is

interpreted as an interacting system of context, prior knowledge, and indi-
vidual interpretation.
Relevance as a cognitive concept thus has a number of interconnected
characteristics or attributes summarized hereafter in its logical sequence
(based upon Saracevic, 1996, p. 205):
• Relation: relevance arises when expressing a relation, frequently in a
communicative setting or exchange of information. Relevance implies an
interaction.
• Intention: the relation in expression of relevance involves intention(s)
it depends on the objectives, roles, motivation, and expectations of both
parties.
• Context: the intention in expression of relevance always comes from a
context and is directed toward that situation “the matter at hand.”
Relevance cannot be considered without a context.
• Inference: relevance involves assessment about a relation, in terms of the
effectiveness or degree of maximization of a given relation. Information
sought for an intention geared toward a context will be evaluated. It
thus deals with appropriateness and effectiveness and is also called
pertinence.
• Interaction: inference is accomplished as a dynamic, interacting process,
where an interpretation of other attributes may change as cognition
changes. Relevance is dynamic.

The Importance of Expectation and Selection

From the mass of competing stimuli in a manager’s situation the mass

of information that is available and addressed to him and/or his
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 307

organization how does he have to select one? Not only will the one with
the greatest cognitive effect jump to the foreground, according to Wilson
and Sperber, but also the one that requires the least processing effort.
People tend to pay attention to the most relevant information available to
them at the time, and to bring to bear on it a context of assumptions that
will maximize this relevance. Let us focus on these assumptions.
Before anybody can know whether something has the potential of being
relevant and hence is worth his effort, he or she needs to assume that there
is some kind of benefit. This is exactly what Sperber, Cara, and Giotto
extensively discuss in “Relevance theory explains the selection task” (1995,
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pp. 49 51). People will direct their attention to those stimuli from which
the desired information is expected, whether or not these stimuli are in
themselves salient. It is possible that managers, for example, will search for
not so easily accessible information which may allow the derivation of the
expected effects. But in turn these expected effects have to be sufficiently
important to offset the added effort of retrieval. In the absence of specific
expectations of effect, or in the presence of weak expectations, considera-
tions of effort may play a central role in directing the attention. At the
same time, since the perception and conceptual representation of informa-
tion involves a processing cost, the most striking and easily representable
information at a given time is, ceteris paribus, likely to be perceived as the
most relevant information at that time.
Although only mentioned in a footnote (Sperber et al., 1995, p. 51), the
following observation is much to the point. The authors explicate that the
level of processing efforts may rise in the course of processing so as to
make the initially expected level of relevance or any level of relevance
worth the effort appear unachievable. At that point “a sound relevance-
driven cognitive system cuts its losses and turns its attention to some other
information available.” Processing efforts thus are dynamic and may
increase or decrease over the information processing period. We suppose
that increased efforts have an equal chance of resulting in the expected cog-
nitive effects as well as in a behavior of giving up the effort.
The least effort principle guiding the inferential pragmatics is attractive
but not as straightforward as it seems to be. Gwitzda and Cole (2011) point
to a logical but paradoxical conclusion from an experiment. Considering
the satisficing behavior within Herbert Simon’s bounded rationality theory,
the increasing demands of obtaining information is expected to lead to
worse performance. Indeed the more effort that is required, the more can
people be expected to make “good enough” decisions, that is, not consider
the exhaustive study of all alternatives and their consequences. A person
 308 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

will stop searching for information when what has been found thus far
suffices to satisfy the person’s information need. “Effort is defined here as a
number of cognitive actions, such as (re-)formulating a search query, asses-
sing search results, reading an individual document, and judging its rele-
vance” (2011, p. 1). In an experiment on simple and complex tasks to be
performed by users with high versus low cognitive abilities, these research-
ers observed counterintuitive results. A high cognitive ability group tended
to perform more actions than a low ability group under conditions of
increased difficulty, yet their task outcomes did not show the benefit of the
extra effort invested in the task performance. While the authors in their
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conclusion offer a number of interesting hypothetical explanations for this

“violation” of the principle of least effort, this research is again evidence of
the difficulties that researchers encounter in demonstrating relationships
between information, documents, tasks, efforts, and outcome (Gwitzda &
Cole, 2011).
Expectation of relevance finally is closely related to the probability
judgment. New evidence “e,” says the economist Keynes, is irrelevant to a
proposition “p” given old evidence “q,” if and only if p/q & e = p/q and
relevant otherwise (Keynes, 1921). He related the relevance of a piece of
evidence to the changes it produces in the estimations of the probability of
future events, which fits nicely into macroeconomic modeling. But what
about uncertain and unpredictable futures?, we wonder. If a piece of
research evidence is not clear about its impact on, for example, the chances
of survival, the safeguarding of the organization’s continuity, or its compe-
titive position, it will be discarded as irrelevant. Thus given that managers
have a set of beliefs about the world and the factors of success, when they
receive new information which in their perception will only marginally
change their view (the probability of having an effect being close to zero)
or have no influence on corporate performance, they will discard it as
“irrelevant.”
But probability also plays a key role in the question of the search itself,
so we think. If we formulate the relevance issue as the answer to a question,
what then is the probability that a manager will ask those questions to
which researchers are likely to have an answer? In other words, if the ques-
tion is not asked, the information risks remaining dormant and irrelevant.
We recall the problem-solving model in Fig. 4 where in one alternative, it is
supposed that there exists a knowledge reservoir which can solve a policy
problem or at least help in identifying the scope and alternative responses.
Managers and policy-makers, according to Weiss (1979, pp. 427 428), can
happen upon it. Their attention can be drawn by coworkers, they can find
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 309

it in journals, while attending conferences, or it may be by chance that a

fitting answer is identified. And she adds that locating the most important
research depends on the efficiency of the communication links, and hence
that there is a belief that improving these links to the policy-makers will
help cure the problem.
But as Floridi says (2008, p. 299), the searching person cannot be
expected to be omniscient because the world is informationally opaque, so
a manager may often fail to request the information that would actually be
relevant to her by lack of knowing what is available or by lack of knowing
how to formulate the search. Unfortunately the probability of asking a
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question is unrelated to the probability of receiving an adequate answer

(2008, p. 301), but raising awareness and triggering the curiosity of the
managerial audience in hope that it will be better equipped cognitively to
make efficient searches is for sure one of the most efficient bridging strate-
gies in this regard.

The User-Based Concept of Relevance

The above sketch of the concept of relevance has clarified the subjective
elements of it: users’ perceptions of information on the one hand, and their
information needs on the other. The main points can be summarized as
follows (Hjørland, 2010):
• The question of relevance is to be understood in relation to human
activities or the fulfillment of tasks (2010, p. 219) “… to understand
the relation between user needs and the information ecology” (i.e.,
the “universe of recorded knowledge”).
• The relevance of some knowledge to a task is not “given” but is depen-
dent on theoretical assumptions.
• The user-based approach considers relevance to be
• a subjective
• individualized
• mental experience
• that involves cognitive restructuring
In information science this user-based approach has replaced the objec-
tive relevance or system-determined view where the user is kept out of the
picture and relevance is considered to be the property of the system of
information retrieval (IR) (Saracevic, 1996). Once the user is placed in the
center, then the core question is: what makes a user judge a document as
 310 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

relevant? This is also the basic question that academics have tried to answer
when formulating bridging strategies.
Xu and Chen (2006) discuss the extant research within IR and conclude
that there is no manageable core set of criteria which are sufficiently predic-
tive for “relevance” by lack of statistical significance. Different studies
come up with different factors ranging from 20 to 40 Hjørland (2010,
p. 225) even identified 80! The terminology is confusing, meanings are over-
lapping, and different studies use different methodologies. This observation
is in line with Estabrooks’s criticism on the research regarding knowledge
utilization as mentioned earlier.
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So if content or document attributes do not provide the necessary cri-

teria, should we consequently conclude that relevance is exclusively left to
the user? To answer this question, one needs to reveal assumptions that are
not explicitly mentioned or addressed in the user-based view (Hjørland,
2010, p. 221):

• a strong tendency to psychologize, “… implying that it is the users’ satis-

faction with the output that should form the basis for evaluating …”
• a lack of reflexivity: researchers comment a lot on information seeking
behavior of others, but fail to critically evaluate their own.
• the assumption that relevance is equal to relevance assessment.

We find the same tone in the concluding paragraph of Talja and Hartel
(2007): “User-centeredness” easily appears as ethically sound, warm, and
compassionate, based on the ethics of caring about people and their pro-
blems. There are many traps in these images, however, the most important
one perhaps being that there are many different streams of user-centered
approaches.
The parallel with our concerns may be clear. Should the legitimacy of
research work be judged on the basis of a kind of “consumer satisfaction”
in which the researcher is the supplier and the user is the consumer? This
would imply that if the consumer is not satisfied, the “product” is not OK.
If it were only a question of the study of knowledge as Saracevic (1975,
p. 328 quoted in Hjørland, 2010, p. 222) wrote, then this might reveal
something about what information is relevant. But the tendency to turn to
psychology and “mentalism” of an individual user in order to understand
inner motivational states is a category mistake related to what Gilbert Ryle
(1949) termed the “ghost in the machine.” Relevance according to this criti-
cism should be related to knowledge, not to individual ill-understood
“needs” (Hjørland, 2010, p. 222).
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 311

According to the reflexivity principle, researchers should learn from

their own criteria when doing research. Do relevance theories reflect the
practice of researchers? Do we have any insight in the way researchers
select and use information? A published paper is a kind of case-study in
the researchers’ relevance criteria, as Hjørland notes. To consider one’s
own motives to cite other papers is to consider relevance criteria in “real
life.” These relevance criteria should not be understood as different from
the relevance criteria used by managers. We understand by this comment
that academics, when turning to managerial preferences to come up with
solutions for more “relevance,” use relevance criteria which are different
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from their own.

The third point is at the core of our discussion. Neither Saracevic nor
Hjørland agree that assessment or judgment equates with relevance. Can
judgment be considered as the yardstick for final truth? No is the answer
of Hjørland, and he offers valuable food for thought. A basic purpose of
research and higher education, he writes, is among others to put people
(managers in our case) in a position to solve problems to be able to eval-
uate different alternatives. Information systems which provide access to
research publications have among others a function of support, but the
relevance of the offering cannot be made dependent solely on the evalua-
tion of one or a few users. Before this position is criticized as an elitist
“theoretical” and overly academic point of view, let us reconsider the pur-
pose of scholarly education. When we teach research methods, strategic
concepts, and managerial theories, when we provide a historical overview
of managerial thinking, when we spend a lot of time on statistical methods,
etc., most of the time this is not meant to turn all business students
into PhD candidates, but because we believe that all this material helps
the future practitioner to read and interpret the knowledge claims in aca-
demic papers and other kinds of publications and communications
on managerial issues. This is what we call the development of critical
thinking. Research and education are the best weapons against an overly
dependence on experts, as John Dewey must have said (note 29 in
Hjørland, 2010, p. 234).
To be able to seek and find relevant information is both a question of
developing or choosing a theoretical approach to the task and knowing
how the information is distributed over the information ecology (disci-
plines, publications, conceptions).
We fully agree with one of Hjørland’s conclusions (2010, p. 230), namely
that the core subject of relevance research is to be found in epistemological
issues, much more than in the “head of the users.” Thus relevance in
 312 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

management studies should be about what kinds of knowledge or informa-

tion could be fruitful for different purposes. Which insights or knowledge
can serve as a tool for managerial actions?
With this we have refuted the purely subjective relevance evaluation,
and thus we will now turn our attention to a renewed concept of relevance
in light of the above.

Relevance and Usefulness as Distinct Kinds

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Building upon the former observation that there is more to relevance than
individual judgment, we will have to dig a little deeper into the epistemolo-
gical issues and look into the kinds of knowledge that serve as a tool for
human action. Above we have hinted at the distinction between two types
of cognitive processes employed in understanding utterances in particular
and information in general: decoding and inference. The pragmatic inferen-
tial process combines the decoding with other information in order to reach
an understanding of the informative intention. This inferential phase of
interpretation is constrained and guided by the communicative principle of
relevance, which in summary licenses a receiver of information to look for
an interpretation which interacts fruitfully with his cognitive system and
does not require any unjustifiable processing effort (Carston, 1998; Sperber
et al., 1995). This is what we termed situational relevance.
The relevance of some knowledge is not a “given” but dependent on the
theoretical assumptions, so we know from epistemology. Recognized rele-
vance is the universal acceptance that x is relevant for goal y that in a given
context is perceived as important. Thus the concept of relevance cannot be
separated from established norms (theories or paradigms), as we have
briefly mentioned in the first part of our paper in the ongoing discussion
between (neo)positivists and postmodernists, for example. Social sciences
have much less consensus regarding the kind of information that is relevant
to their development than the exact sciences, and hence this makes them
more susceptible to theory proliferation and fragmentation, and what we
have come to know as fads and fashions (Abrahamson, 1991; Van Rossem,
2005).
In the following paragraph we will argue that relevance be it indivi-
dual, situational, or recognized is no guarantee for usefulness but only a
necessary condition. The development of our reasoning is primarily based
upon two publications (Caruana & Freitag, 1994; Floridi, 2008) whose
authors use the logical or material implication to make the point that we
also pursue. Just stating that a piece of information or research is relevant
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 313

when an informee is satisfied with the help to perform a task is insufficient

as a relevance criterion for reasons explained above. Caruana and Freitag’s
short article may again seem a strange choice on our part since it is about
learning algorithms in a computerized setting. But the question and the
approach are equally intriguing and “relevant” to our problem: what is a
relevant attribute, how do we know that something is irrelevant and when
can a relevant attribute of a document be considered useful? Caruana’s
exposé although from a different angle is exactly about the compara-
tive question raised in the relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson which
states that a model, framework, or any other research finding will get more
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or less attention from the hearer in comparison to alternatives he or she has

available.
Following the definition of relevance as an attribute of information (or
as is the case research output) that improves performance, Caruana and
Freitag draw our attention to the difference between relevance and useful-
ness. In line with our former intermediate conclusion that relevance is an
epistemological concept, much more than an individual evaluative cate-
gory, Caruana and Freitag state that relevance is general and usefulness
particular. Usefulness of information, they argue, is measured with respect
to a particular user calling upon a particular set of attributes or characteris-
tics, given a particular distribution of knowledge. Thus whether something
can be evaluated as being useful, one has to expect that a piece of informa-
tion will improve the performance of a particular user in the context of his
available knowledge. Whether or not the new information was indeed more
successful in comparison to alternatives is something that can only be
observed or measured after implementation (did it indeed work better in
comparison with alternatives?) or utilization.
If a piece of information proves to be useful, this implies it was consid-
ered relevant to the problem prior to its implementation (the expectation
or probabilistic interpretation). This means logically that all useful attri-
butes are relevant, but not that all relevant attributes are therefore useful!
Useful attributes are often a small subset of relevant attributes and will
not solely depend on the quality of the information, but on the specific
situation, context, or goal of the particular user. Accepting this material
implication, this means that what is irrelevant is not useful. However as
Caruana and Freitag state, irrelevance is hard to prove, because it requires
that one can demonstrate that for a typical set of knowledge attributes
there exists no user for which the attribute can be useful (falsification).
Proving relevance is easier since it is sufficient that one can demonstrate
that there exists at least one user who can benefit from the information.
And if it were empirically possible, it would even be better to compare the
 314 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

performance of two sets of users, one using a theory and the other not, and
to see whether there is a significant difference that can be attributed to the
implementation of the theory. Note that in this reasoning, neither relevance
nor usefulness is left to the evaluation of the user but is objectified.
In formula terms: given a problem P and a knowledge set K, let R stand
for relevance and U for usefulness, then the material implication reads
as follows. If something is useful, then it is relevant. It is useful: hence the
conclusion that it was (or is) relevant.
U R
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U
R
By the same rule, something that is irrelevant will not be useful
−R
−U
However it would be a logical error to state that something which is not
considered useful is not relevant. Relevance so considered cannot be used
as an efficient proxy for usefulness of a theory.
Connecting this viewpoint to the inferential pragmatics of the relevance
theory we dare to conclude up to this point that most likely, a lot of
theories and research findings will never have the chance to prove their
usefulness as long as they are not minimally picked up by the managerial
community as relevant to their managerial or policy-making task. We will
come back to this point.
Thus both on an epistemological and logical basis, relevance does not
need to be divided into theoretical and practical as is often done. Relevance
of research or knowledge is of a general epistemological nature meaning
for a researcher exactly the same as for a practitioner: the furthering of the
understanding, the changing of a mindset, the confirmation or refutation of
a viewpoint. The usefulness concept relates to the implementation, what
one can do with it. In the case of a researcher, this can point to the oppor-
tunity to publish, to use research articles for teaching purposes, or to apply
a methodology.

Managers and Decision-Making: A Thought Experiment

Following the example of Hjørland and Christensen (2002), we will sketch

a real-life situation of a manager in a strategic setting in order to illicit the
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 315

former observations and to see where they bring us a better understanding

of the rigor relevance gap:
• There is a work task or “a matter at hand” for a manager.
• Preserving the continuity of the firm is the minimum goal, but he may
also have more explicit goals (profit, sales, margin, market share …).
• The manager has a MBA like education2 and knows of a number of
theories.
• He has extended experience and has his own personal theories about
success.
• He functions in an environment where existing forms of practices are in
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place and within a given institutional setting.

We will further draw on Sanchez and Heene’s theoretical approach of stra-
tegic management (Sanchez & Heene, 2004: chapter 10 Managing
Managerial Cognition).
In most situations, people act in some standardized ways routines
which we would classify under “operational management,” following
Porter’s distinction between operational effectiveness and strategy (Porter,
1996). “The responsibility of strategic managers [is] to define, design, and
put into action a viable Strategic Logic for an organization …” (Sanchez &
Heene, 2004, p. 145). And they add that managers need to take decisions
under high levels of structural and dynamic complexity, incomplete and
imperfect information, and irreducible uncertainty.
Imagine that our manager encounters a strategic problem which per defi-
nition has no routine solution. Will our manager spend all or most of his
time to seek the best information, read all the academic journals, or attend
conferences in order to formulate the best possible answer to his strategic
concerns? In line with Herbert Simon’s theory of bounded rationality,
decision-makers “… impose bounds (limits) on the information they
attempt to gather and to interpret in making decisions … Rather than try-
ing to gather and interpret all possible information, decision makers tend
to rely on information that they found useful in prior experiences …”
(Sanchez & Heene, 2004, p. 150).
Strategic decisions are a typical example of a high-complexity task, and
our manager is faced with an abundance of literature, not only in quantity
but also in content. He may find diverse and contradictory theories and
often does not know exactly what and where to search from lack of focus
or an ill-defined search question.
Hjørland and Christensen (2002, p. 963) explicitly state the intuitively
obvious observation that the more clarified the user is about what he
 316 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

wishes to accomplish, the better he can determine what is relevant and

what is not relevant for him. If his information need is defined broadly,
any informative object that provides new information will trigger his atten-
tion. In the narrow sense, only informative objects that may contribute to
the actual strategic problem are considered relevant. This is in close har-
mony with the following quote from Nicolai and Seidl (2010, p. 1268):
“For the decision maker, such academic studies are of relevance in that
they can provide a better understanding of the decision situation. Yet, as
Bartunek (2007, p. 1326) points out, recommendations to pay attention to
particular causal relationships ‘do not help managers to know what to do
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in response to [them],’ they just change their understanding of the decision

situation.”
Hjørland and Christensen’s article (2002) guides us through the informa-
tion retrieval process: in this case we suppose that our manager is looking
for articles in the management literature that can help him to solve his
(strategic) problem. The manager first of all expects papers in a database
(library, internet …) to be (topically) “relevant” and he expects the retrieval
mechanisms to identify relevant papers. A number of possible reasons can
explain why the information searcher is not well served (we have adapted
and shortened the list from Hjørland & Christensen, 2002, p. 962):

• A word is used in another conceptual meaning than the searcher

intended (see the keywords and abstracts at the beginning of a journal
article).
• The relevant concept is mentioned, but in a concrete document, which
cannot be generalized to the user’s problem.
• The document describes some research, which has been done with
research methods that the user finds is below standard (unlikely in most
management cases, but applicable when evidence-based management is
expected to be applied).
• The document is written from a theoretical perspective in a style in which
the user has no confidence that it will be able to solve his problem.
• The research seems made for its own purpose rather than for solving
problems, that is, it concentrates on issues to which the practitioner can-
not relate.
• Implications for practice seem too vague; the link to the user’s own work
domain cannot be drawn without assistance, reinterpretation, and a lot
of adaptation.
• The theses or implications of the document seem politically problematic
for the user.
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 317

• The demands on time and effort to utilize the material are too heavy in
the user’s present situation.

But even then, given the structural and dynamic complexity of a system
(Sanchez & Heene, 2004, pp. 146 147), it is a difficult task for managers to
discover the causes of a problem or to understand all the interactions, and
hence to evaluate the usefulness. Hjørland and Christensen (2002, p. 964)
add on top of that: “In fields where there exist uncertainty about causes,
unclear conceptions and unclear relevance criteria, criteria for successful
task fulfillment also tend to be uncertain.” Translated to our problem at
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hand, this means that it is impossible to establish a direct and one-

dimensional link between a publication and the impact or change that was
realized during a strategic process.

A SYSTEMS VIEW OF RELEVANCE

It is clear from the foregoing argumentation that we are in full accord with
Rasche and Behnam that the very concept of relevance (and we dare to add
also usefulness) needs rethinking both by practitioners as well as by aca-
demics (Rasche & Behnam, 2009). As mentioned earlier, the proposed
remedies to bridge the gap between theory and practice are all based upon
the linear model and the assumption that technical measures can do the
job. But as Nicolai and Seidl conclude, despite the many recommendations
and suggestions in an abundance of publications on the subject, the rele-
vance problem is persistent and may even get worse (Nicolai & Seidl, 2010,
p. 1270). This observation brings them to the suggestion which was also
the starting point for our investigation that there must be more funda-
mental reasons for the gap in management science in particular and social
sciences in general. We have looked at the problem as a linguistic-cognitive
communication issue on information search and processing, and have pro-
posed a general concept of relevance and in particular of usefulness. But by
doing so, there still remains an important aspect to be untangled in the dis-
cussion of the relevance gap, namely whether researchers can determine
what will be relevant for practitioners and conversely whether practitioners
are able to tell to researchers what will be relevant to them. The call for
more participatory research suggests that the academic community and the
managerial community can find a common ground. The general notion of
relevance as exposed in this paper suggests that any research has an
 318 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

objective relevance value as long as there exists at least one user even in
the future who can use it to frame his thinking and acting differently.
Rasche, Behnam, Nicolai and Seidl, Kieser and Leiner offer an account
from a systems point of view that leads them to the drastic conclusion that
the relevance gap is unbridgeable (Kieser & Leiner, 2009, 2012; Nicolai &
Seidl, 2010; Rasche & Behnam, 2009). In this last part of this essay we will
come to the conclusion that the systems view and our view are very much
compatible and convergent.
The two communities theory of Caplan (1979) assumes a cultural gap
between researchers and users, which is visible in different cultures, differ-
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ent languages, and different methods of communication. Through adapta-

tion of research products such as investing in more readable and
appealing reports, making more specific recommendations, and focusing on
factors amenable to interventions by users it is believed that the gap
between these communities can be diminished or even closed. Equally, if
users in a participatory setting make an effort to influence the research
agenda by discussing the subject and scope of research projects with
researchers, discussing the results, and giving feedback subsequently, the
gap problem could be overcome. All of these efforts to remedy the gap can
be reduced under the revised relevance concept, with the intention of
increasing the relevance for the practitioner. This would be accomplished
through more positive cognitive effects and/or the reduction of the proces-
sing effort. But in this reasoning, it is assumed that researchers know how
to communicate with their audience and are able to adjust the quantity and
quality of their communication to a more or less lay audience, and we add:
without offsetting the scientific rigor. Following Sperber and Wilson, every
utterance conveys a presumption of its own relevance (our italics) or the
presumption of optimal relevance. Taking this reasoning one step further it
is reasonable to expect researchers to communicate in a scientific way to
the audience belonging to the same community for whom the relevance
speaks for itself. If and when we ask them to “translate,” we are calling
upon different skills but also upon different meanings of relevance. The
matter at hand, the task and the goals of both communities are different,
the context and the situation as well. Even if a researcher would have the
intention to communicate his knowledge to managers, the problem remains
that neither party can foresee the inferences nor direct the cognitive inter-
actions (see parargraph 5.2).
These considerations come very close to the arguments from a system-
theoretical perspective which denies that bridging is possible. Particularly
the collaborative research and mode 2 hybrid fora (Gibbons et al., 1994;
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 319

Pettigrew, 2001; Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006) are refuted on the basis of
the self-referential and autopoietic nature of the two systems. Whereas the
community theory leaves room for reciprocal adaptation, the system-
theoretical lens excludes this possibility. To make their point, Kieser and
Leiner refer to Luhmann’s theory of communication (Luhmann, 1995).
Luhmann’s core thesis is that the specialized systems of modern societies
are highly autonomous or autopoietic. For example, a communication
event within the scientific system, such as an extensive explanation on the
appropriate research method, cannot be successfully transferred to the
business system. The reason is not that people are unable to communicate
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with each other, but that the communication elements cannot be connected
to or transferred from one system to the other because of their autopoietic
character. Although the authors make no mention of the inferential prag-
matics of Sperber and Wilson, we think that this theory can provide an
extra explanation for such an incapability. Utterances create expectations
of optimal relevance, which guide the hearer or the reader of a text towards
the intended meaning. An utterance in a scientific context requires a totally
different vocabulary and reporting to guide the expectations of the reader
(namely members of the research community) and vice versa the research
community needs and expects different information to meet its expectations
of relevance than is the case with practitioners. The same goes for the cog-
nitive principle. According to this, an input is more relevant when it con-
nects with background information. It goes without saying that the
background of a fellow researcher is totally different from that of a man-
ager. They are driven by different goals, and their conceptual or theoretical
knowledge against which the findings can be interpreted are different. In
brief, they see totally different contextual implications. Where the proces-
sing effort for a researcher may be worth the effort because of the expected
contributions to a new research insight, for a practitioner this effort could
not be justified because of the limited benefits he sees at that moment.
Sperber and Wilson conclude that the universal cognitive tendency to maxi-
mize relevance makes it possible, at least to some extent, to predict and
manipulate the mental states of others and hence to adjust the quantity and
quality of communication. And this is exactly what happens in scientific
communication. Journals in particular are not meant for popular mass
communication. This is not to say that a more popular translation would
not be possible or desirable, but doing so makes the communication less
scientific and consequently less useful. Thus relation, intention, and context
(attributes of relevance, see p. 27) are fundamentally distinct, which in turn
makes the inferential process also totally different. To repeat in Kieser and
 320 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

Leiner’s words (2009, p. 519), “… a practitioner may read an article in a

scientific journal but, assuming she understands it, will not communicate
its scientific content to her colleagues in a scientific mode” (authors’ italics).
Systems are also self-referential: researchers refer to other research, the-
ories, concepts, and methodologies. Practitioners may refer to earlier
experience, implicit or explicit decision rules and criteria. Both the autop-
oietic and self-referential character of systems does not prevent them from
operating in a “cognitively open style” (Kieser & Leiner, 2009, p. 219),
meaning that external events can trigger a reaction (such as a call for a
research program, the availability of research budgets and the like), but the
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responses to these triggers are determined by what these authors call the
“operative closure.” Operations from an external system cannot connect
directly with another system. Communication and interpretation will be
fundamentally different.
The reasons given by Kieser and Leiner can be reduced to the inability
of different systems to connect their communication elements because of
different codes, an argument that is equally used by Rasche and Behnam
(2009). Following Luhmann, the scientific code is true/not true, whereas
the code for organizations belonging to an economic system is payment/
nonpayment or performance/non-performance. Kieser and Leiner specifi-
cally state (p. 523) “It is hard to imagine how communication that is based
on the true/false code can at the same time apply the relevant/irrelevant
code (producing practical solutions/not producing practical solutions) in a
meaningful way.” What they thus do in setting up this line of reasoning is
connecting the issue of relevance to the “task at hand” and emphasizing
the importance of the performance, commonly called impact.
“Truth” here refers to conceptual adequacy, methodological rigor, and
empirical evidence. Although we cannot (yet) prove this point, we think on
the basis of our extensive reading on the subject that a lot of criticism
against the non-accessibility of science is directed against the methodologi-
cal sophistication which for non-scientists (in the humanities) is considered
irrelevant to their task.
The inferential pragmatics of Wilson and Sperber complement this view
by stressing the reciprocal nature of communicating and understanding.
The sender of a message will provide enough information for what he
thinks is sufficient for the audience, while the audience cooperates by trust-
ing that the other provides him with sufficient information on the basis of
which he infers meaning(s). Thus trying to be more explicit in, for example,
explaining at length methodologies, statistical problems, sample selection
and the like in hopes of decreasing the effort will not cure the failure to
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 321

connect systems. Let us revert to Rasche and Behnam’s (2009, p. 248)

example of user-friendly writing. This will be hard to achieve without chan-
ging the nature of the argumentation they say, because a differentiated
argumentation of research problems requires new terms and references to
existing theory. In inferential pragmatics terms: the cognitive effort
required to absorb this new information will decrease the relevance, unless
one manages to convince an audience that the application will lead to an
improved performance raising the expectation of return which may
increase the willingness to invest in the understanding and searching of the-
oretical concepts, most of which have no predictive validity.
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The asymmetries between both systems thus are of a two-way nature.

Researchers and practitioners process communications using their system-
specific logic and coding. Thus it is at least superficial to point the accusing
finger to the “ivory tower” mentality of researchers or the “pragmatic”
behavior of practitioners as causes of the gap.
To summarize, the systems view, which we complemented with the infer-
ential pragmatics and the information science insights, demonstrates in our
opinion that the existing gap between (management) science and practice is
not due to an unwillingness to build bridges and cross over them, but is
inherent to the different missions of both systems.
As a last point in our essay, we will select a number of proposed cures to
the gap what we called bridging strategies and hold them to the light
of the renewed concept of relevance as set out above.

BRIDGING STRATEGIES AND THE QUEST FOR

MORE RELEVANCE

Improving the knowledge transfer from production to consumption

(Cohen, 2007; Hambrick, 1994; Latham, 2007) is, we repeat, based upon
the assumption that knowledge in itself is relevant and that improved com-
munication mechanisms can bring the knowledge to the other side. This
reasoning is doomed to fail when we accept that researchers and practi-
tioners belong to different systems, and that neither side can economically
make the necessary inferences to maximize the relevance as we understand
it, without compromising their very own goals. This is the famous trade-off
between relevance and rigor which is a major concern of the scientific
community. The researcher indeed can try to explain his work for a lay
audience, he can adjust his teaching likewise, but it is still the receiver of
 322 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

the message who decides on the meaning and what to do with it. The
researcher has no control over the context, background, prior knowledge,
problems at hand, or the goals of the reader or the listener; “it is ultimately
the listener’s ability and willingness to understand that decides on the fail-
ure or success of the communication” (Rasche & Behnam, 2009, p. 246).
Interacting with practitioners as a cure for the gap (Anderson, Herriot, &
Hodgkinson, 2001; Bartunek, 2007; Mohrman et al., 2008; Pettigrew, 2001;
Pfeffer, 2007; Van de Ven, 2002) is regularly seen as a way to produce
knowledge that is relevant for both communities while safeguarding
the rigor. We agree with Kieser and Leiner (2011) that it is hard to imagine
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how communication that is based on the true/false code can at the same
time apply the relevant/irrelevant code, considering that relevance for
another system cannot be determined ex ante. How for example can practi-
tioners and researchers jointly come up with univocal criteria of scientific
excellence and usefulness? With action research “… practitioners aim to
remove the monopoly of knowledge creation that has been endowed to aca-
demics doing social science, and contribute to the development of inquiry as
part of everyday practice” (Reason, 2003, p. 119; Reason & Bradburry,
2001). Participatory action research (PAR) (Argyris & Schon, 1978; Chia &
Holt, 2011; Whyte, 1989) goes one step further. The idea of open communi-
cative space and communities of inquiry do sound attractive but we suspect
that the balance will tip in one direction. What kind of communication
is available? If text is chosen to communicate the results of the research, it
will either have to fit into the language of science or in the language of
the manager, because of the inferential differences. If not, relevance will
not be maximized for either party, which is a loss of energy. But even propo-
nents of more collaboration between researchers and practitioners with
the intention of making it relevant admit that the outcome need not be
actually useful in practice (Rynes et al., 2002). Persuading practitioners to
collaborate does not guarantee usefulness of results or desired impact either,
they write.
What then is the task at hand? For sure the cognitive effect will be great
on the practitioner’s side, but can the same be said of the researcher who is
supposed to contribute to the furthering of general understanding? This is
not to say that collaborative research can’t be an excellent method for prac-
titioners to improve the methodological robustness of corporate research
or for researchers to find new problems that deserve attention. One system
can “irritate” the other (Rasche & Behnam, 2009, p. 250), but according to
the systems view, each will process these irritations following its own logic.
Thus as Kieser and Leiner conclude, collaborative research can make sense
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 323

indeed, but does not lead to better research nor to more “relevan”’ output
for the practitioner at the same time.
The “intellectual arbitrage” that is sought (Van de Ven & Johnson,
2006, p. 809) through participatory research may facilitate the information
search problem for the practitioner and since he participates in the
research, the cognitive effect is most likely to be higher than in a traditional
research setting. If this is the intention of these kind of bridging strategies,
all the better. But in that case the research outcome is not served by lack of
relevance for the research community.
The call for evidence-based management (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006a,
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2006b, 2007) can be rephrased as a call on the side of the practitioner to

apply a more scientific methodology to managerial problems. “Demand
evidence” and “examine logic” are commendable recommendations and
sound like music to the ears of the academics who fail to understand why it
is that practice often overlooks sound evidence. But how is the practitioner
supposed to maximize the relevance of evidence that was reported, not with
his particular problem in mind but with the aim of publication. Of course
he could try to find out but is unlikely to do so because of the processing
effort and the uncertain outcome. How is he going to do the search for evi-
dence in such a way that he can trust he has a valid answer to his problem?
Before he can do so and we refer in this respect to what we argued
above in order to be able to search, one has to be familiar with the termi-
nology, concepts, and theories in the background. If not, the search risks to
be irrelevant and one ends where the defenders of evidence-based manage-
ment do not want to be, namely in fashionable literature. We suspect this is
one of the reasons why centers for evidence-based medicine are created
within universities and lead by academics.

AS IF IT WERE RELEVANT …

Although the primarily linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics

has many more aspects than discussed here, we are confident that the
insights provided have been useful in developing our thesis that gap-
bridging strategies are not working and will not be working. To summarize
up to this point: the processing effort required to find and interpret aca-
demic papers and the expectations as to their relevance is apparently too
excessive for managers given their task at hand, and significantly decreases
the cognitive effects which researchers might hope they will produce.
 324 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

And in comparison to alternatives such as fashionable practices or stan-

dardized solutions offered by consultants one can expect that academic
papers will lose in this competition. It is one of our unproven hypotheses
that the characteristics of fashionable literature or gurubooks short, easy
reading, ideological tone, appealing to greed and fear, abundance of exam-
ples, narratives, and visual presentation well explain the success of these
publications over scientific ones on the basis of the inferential pragmatics.
The various elements of the relevance concept presented this far can
help us in understanding why it is that managers may embrace a manage-
ment concept or not. Their interest is not triggered or they cannot relate to
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it, because the theory:

• is not sufficiently original to raise awareness
• thus has a low cognitive effect
• makes an insufficient contribution to the organizational or individual
goals
• requires too much processing effort
• is not connected with their context
But contrary to believers of technical bridging strategies, curing the
above through, for example, more “interesting” and “influential” work
challenging conventional wisdom (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013) or through
research that “…” holds the attention of those reading and studying it and
subsequently influences them to act” (Bartunek, Rynes, & Ireland, 2006,
p. 9), together with Kieser, Leiner, Nicolai, Seidl, Rasche, Behnam,
Donaldson and McKelvey we reject this utilitarian and instrumental user-
based view of science and research on system-theoretical grounds which
encompass cognition, communication, and information processing.
What then is left for relevance? In the light of the foregoing, maybe we
have to get rid of the distinction between conceptual, instrumental, and
symbolic relevance (Nicolai & Seidl, 2010), one reason being that it con-
founds with utilization (Weiss, 1979). But more important:
1. if we consider relevance to be an implication of usefulness (but not vice
versa!) as we argued, and
2. reserve usefulness for a particular user while relevance is of a general
nature
3. it is impossible to define relevance for the an individual user ex ante.
This opens up a hypothetical perspective, or fiction, in the words of
Rasche and Behnam (2009, pp. 249 250) which we find an original but
very fitting construct. Since neither the system of research nor the system of
 The Theory Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance 325

practitioners can ex ante judge the relevance, they both have to act (and
they do) “as if it were relevant.” “The system has to treat the knowledge as
hypothetically relevant prior to the actual application” is no other than say-
ing that both researchers and practitioners first have to acknowledge that
there is a possibility that scientific findings may have a bearing on the mat-
ter at hand, before there is a chance that they will find out through applica-
tion. Rasche and Behnam provide an example of the Black-Scholes option
pricing model. Perceiving research as relevant can motivate practitioners to
make it useful because they act as if it were useful and thus, by adapting
solutions inspired by academic knowledge to their specific contexts, make it
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useful. They can pick up a concept from an article or through seminars,

interpret it in their own way (this reinterpretation is more often than not
deviant from the original intention) and, by adding practical knowledge,
make it fit to a specific context (Rasche & Behnam, 2009, pp. 251 252). It
is the fiction of relevance that triggered action and in turn added to the
relevance for a whole community.
“We should value scientific knowledge for what it is: a basis for practical
fictions and not for what some want it to be, that is, directly applicable
knowledge” (2009, p. 250). Fiction leaves room for interpretation against a
context, for developing mental models of goal setting and goal attainment,
and it invites researchers as well as practitioners to think about what is rele-
vant for their task.
Relevance in this interpretation is no longer related to problem-solving
and subjective evaluation, but is assumed to be present in our endeavors
without distinction between researchers and managers.

CONCLUSIONS

Relevance, we have argued, is of a general conceptual nature. General

because it cannot be related to specific users, but only to a class of users,
also called systems. Conceptual because the nature of relevance is mindset-
ting, reframing.
Usefulness refers to the potentiality of application or utilization. It is
particular since it is dependent on a specific user. And is it of a practical
or instrumental nature because of its linkages to decision-making and
problem-solving.
Relevance is a material implication of usefulness: if it is useful, then it is
relevant. Something that is irrelevant is not useful, but a lot of constructs
 326 SIMONNE VERMEYLEN

can be relevant without being useful. There is no proof of irrelevance in

our definition, because there are no criteria for relevance except the view
that relevance is cognitive.
Although the model of inferential pragmatics may lead to a user-based
concept of relevance, we have rejected this on the grounds that relevance
and relevance assessment belong to two different categories the latter
“need” being misinterpreted in a psychological sense, leaving relevance to
idiosyncratic interpretations of particular users. Our distinction between
general relevance and particular usefulness has solved this problem.
The system-theoretical approach reaches the same conclusion as our
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complement of the cognitive-linguistic interpretation of relevance: that there

is no communication possible about “relevance” between two systems
in our case the research community and the managerial community.
Both actors in the system have to work “as if it were relevant” which will
trigger or irritate the mind and may lead to utilization via the belief of
usefulness.

NOTES

1. For a historical overview of the debate, see among others Gulati (2007).
2. We presume this for the sake of simplicity, but we acknowledge that there
are a lot of managers not having received formal training in management, and that
contrary to most other “professions,” the managerial job cannot be reduced to a an
agreed upon body of knowledge or technical skills.

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