S Y M P O S I U M Bridging the Research–Practice Gap by Pratima Bansal, Stephanie Bertels, Tom Ewart, Peter MacConnachie, and James O’Brien Executive Overview Management research often bears little resemblance to management practice. Although this research– practice gap is widely recognized and frequently lamented, there is little discussion about how it can be bridged. We partly remedy this problem in this paper by describing our experiences with the Network for Business Sustainability. Our experiences showed that the paradoxes underlying the relationship between research and practice make bridging this gap difficult. We argue that the reason why the research–practice gap endures is that bridging it is beyond the capabilities and scope of most individuals, and we call for the creation of intermediary organizations like the Network for Business Sustainability. We close by outlining some of the activities that can be undertaken by these boundary-spanning intermediary organizations, with the hopes of better aligning management research and practice. I t is an article of faith that management research intends to inform practice. In reality, however, it is an open secret that most of what most man- agement researchers do utterly fails to resonate with management practice. Even the captains of our Academy of Management have featured this concern prominently in their outgoing presidential addresses (Hambrick, 1994; Mowday, 1997; Pearce, 2004; Rousseau, 2006). They have described our research as “arcane” (Walsh, Tushman, Kimberly, Starbuck, & Ashford, 2007) and its implications for practice “ceremonial” (Bartunek & Rynes, 2010). Ghoshal (2005) even argued that the effect of man- agement theory on practice is potentially harmful. The research–practice gap has motivated sev- eral special editions of journals 1 and has also made mainstream news. The Financial Times (Schiller, 2011, p. 13) reported that “with critics continuing to query the real-world value of research and teaching, relevance has remained an issue for [business] school administrators.” The Economist (2010) cited Bennis and O’Toole, who “criticis[e] MBA programmes for paying too much attention to ‘scientific’ research and not enough to what current and future managers actually needed.” Even though the research–practice gap is widely We would like to thank Jean Bartunek, Denise Rousseau, Andy Van de Ven, and Jim Walsh for their comments on previous drafts, and Tim Devinney for his editorial guidance. We would also like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous funding. The authors are listed in alphabetical order. 1 Van de Ven and Johnson (2006) listed Academy of Management Journal (2001), Academy of Management Executive (2002), Administrative Science Quarterly (2002), British Journal of Management (2001), and the Journal of Management Inquiry (1997). This list could be extended to include Human Resources Management (2004) and the recently founded journal Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, which “focuses on interactive exchanges on topics of importance to science and practice in our field [emphasis added].” Pratima (Tima) Bansal (tbansal@ivey.uwo.ca) is a Professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, and the founder and Executive Director of the Network for Business Sustainability. Stephanie Bertels (stephanie_bertels@sfu.ca) is an Assistant Professor at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University. Tom Ewart (tewart@nbs.net) is the Managing Director of the Network for Business Sustainability, located at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario. Peter MacConnachie (PMacConnachie@suncor.com) is a Senior Sustainability Issues Manager at Suncor Energy Inc. in Calgary, Canada. James O’Brien (jobrie3@uwo.ca) is an Assistant Professor in the Aubrey Dan Program in Management and Organization Studies, University of Western Ontario. 2012 73 Bansal, Bertels, Ewart, MacConnachie, and O’Brien Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amp.2011.0140