The gap between rigour and relevance appears to grow bigger and there is an opportunity to build bridges perhaps making academic research more relevant to business organizations and practitioners. This workshop is an attempt of cross-fertilising the two developing ways to enhance the relevance of academic research to practice. Conversely, the practitioners will have the opportunity to share their needs and concerns and will learn how researches work and how they can have access to their findings.
Main questions to be addressed by this workshop:
- How can we translate research into real world impact?
- How can we foster research on what really matters to executives who can put research results into practice?
- Are the findings of practical utility and significance?
- How can the field management research develop its own distinctive point of view?
- How can the field of management research inform core disciplines (i.e., how to avoid a “one way street of knowledge flows”, Weber)?
- How can we increase the impact of research (Kimberly, J. R. 2007)?
Management research is generally perceived to have limited influence on management practice. An article in the Financial Times (Schiller 2011) debated the paradox Rigor vs. Relevance, stressing the overlap of the first, the academic rigor, given the devaluation of the importance of knowledge to the practice of management. This issue has been the focus of attention, not only from the business press, but also the scientific community.
Challenges
Current constraints that suffers research management:
1. How can we foster studies that are important to reality?
2. How can we promote the relevance of the knowledge produced?
3. How long will it take for the findings to be available in the public domain?
Academic research and the real world of practicing managers:
1. How can we translate research into real world impact?
2. How can we foster research on what really matters to executives who can put research results into practice?
3. Are the findings of practical utility and significance?
To discuss these challenges, this workshop will try to bridge practice and academia in management research. Designed for doctoral students and early career academics (PhDs and early career researchers) and practicing managers, the workshop aims to facilitate learning from each other experiences and points of view.
This will also be an opportunity to share work in management research and to develop insight from the needs of managers. Specifically, this event will give participants an opportunity to:
- Discuss research, rigour and relevance for researchers and practitioners in the field of management and organisations.
- Give and receive feedback on research subjects and their relevance to managers
- Learn from managers which are their main constrains in accessing relevant knowledge that could help them.
- Discuss how can managers pass on to academics their research needs and the role of academy in that process.
Keynote Speaker
JEFFREY PFEFFER
is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business,
Stanford University where he has taught since 1979.
Jeffrey Pfeffer has published extensively in the fields of organization theory and human resource management. His current research focuses on the relationship between time and money, power and leadership in organizations, economics language and assumptions and their effects on management practice, how social science theories become self-fulfilling, barriers to turning knowledge into action and how to overcome them, and evidence-based management and what it is, barriers to its use, and how to implement it.
He is the author or co-author of 14 books including:
- The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First;
- Power: Why Some People
• Have It – and Others Don’t; - The Knowing-Doing Gap:
• How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action; - Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management;
- And more than 150 articles and book chapters.
Pfeffer currently serves on the board of directors of the nonprofit Quantum Leap Healthcare and on the advisory board for Collective Health. Pfeffer has presented seminars in 38 countries throughout the world as well as doing consulting and providing executive education for numerous companies, associations, and universities in the United States.
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Monday, 15th May
08.30Morning Coffee and Registration
08.45Opening Address:
Prof. Fátima Carioca, Dean of AESE Business School
09.00Group discussion based on a research paper previously read
09.45Morning Coffee
10.15Group presentation and discussion
on four different topics based on the paper
11.15Break
11.30Keynote Speech
12.30Lunch
14.00Group photo
14.15Cultural event
15.15Individual reflexion
15.30Individual sharing
Tuesday, 16th May
09.00Researchers presentations in groups:
Discussion circles on “research topics” in management for groups of around 8-10 per circle. Academic work-in-progress where authors will receive and contribute extra feedback. Discussions last for 45 minutes and will be repeated once.
10.30Break
11.00Practitioners presentations in groups:
Discussion circles on “practitioners’ issues” in management for groups of around 8-10 per circle. Discussions last for 45 minutes and will be repeated once.
12.30Lunch
13.30Groups discussion linking academics and practitioners
15.00Break
15.30Groups presentation about linking academics and practitioners
17.00Closing remarks
The two days’ workshop shall run from 15th and 16th of May 2017 at AESE Business School, Lisbon, Portugal.
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To enrol
For academics we would ask for a five-page abstract presenting work in progress, how it relates to practice and the expected impact on practice.
For managers we would ask a one-page description with a practical issue they have faced and how they addressed it and what did they learn.
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Fee
Limited number of participants.
There will be no workshop fee, and no charge for lunch, coffee breaks, reception, lunch and dinner for participants.
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More information
Abdel Gama