BRIDGING A SUPPOSEDLY UNBRIDGEABLE GAP: ELABORATING SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE FROM AND FOR PRACTICE

This article aims at advancing the still on-going conversations about the so-called research/practice gap. Some academics argue that it is not possible to develop knowledge that is both academically valuable and helpful for practice, while others hold the opposite view, justifying it on the basis of works published in top tier journals. The paper argues that the main reason scholars hold such contradictory views on this topic central to management science is the lack of explicitness of a number of founding assumptions which underlie their discourses, in particular the lack of explicitness of the epistemological framework in which the parties' arguments are anchored. The paper presents methodological guidelines for elaborating scientific knowledge both from and for practice, and illustrates how to use these guidelines on examples from a published longitudinal research project. In order to avoid the lack of explicitness pitfall, the paper specifies scientific and epistemological frameworks in which the knowledge elaborated in this methodological approach, when properly justified, can be considered as legitimate scientific knowledge.collaborative research ; constructivist epistemological paradigm ; sciences of the artificial ; organizational design science; rigor; actionability

You’re an organization development practitioner-scholar: Can you contribute to organizational theory?

Mainstream organizational theorizing and the work of organization development (OD) practitioner-scholars have followed somewhat separate paths during the past decades. Currently, however, as illustrated in the development of evidence-based management and as exemplified by Van de Ven’s Engaged Scholarship, there is considerable interest among management scholars in enhanced academic–practitioner relationships. The contemporary situation offers possibilities for OD practitioner-scholars to forge much stronger links between their work and academic theory by means of facilitating academic– practitioner forums and developing skills in theorizing about them. This paper suggests some means for doing this

Implied Volatility and Risk Preference From Option Prices.

This dissertation consists of two empirical studies on options. In the first study, an estimate of the constant proportional risk aversion parameter is implied from the equivalent martingale measure framework. Within this framework, we use call options as opposed to the traditional consumption data to imply our estimate. We compare forecasts of volatility for the asset underlying an option in the second study. Three methods have been used to forecast volatility in the past. These are an historical estimate, an estimate implied from the Black-Scholes European call option pricing model, and an estimate based on generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity. The first is an unconditional estimate whereas the latter two are conditional. Previous literature has compared the forecasting ability of the unconditional estimate with one of the conditional estimates. We focus on the comparison of the two conditional volatility estimates in our second study, in addition to the unconditional versus conditional comparisons

Organization change failure, deep structures and temporality : appreciating Wonderland

Organization change failure has typically been viewed as occurring when expected outcomes of change have not been met. This view downplays key, but frequently hidden organizational dimensions such as deep structures and temporality. In this paper, drawing inspiration from the story of Alice in Wonderland (Carroll, 2011), we distinguish between surface level intervention approaches to change, deeper process approaches and, deeper yet structuration approaches and suggest the different ways they approach change failure as well as the implications of these. On the basis of our exploration we propose a three-fold way forward: adopting a process-based, empirically grounded and reflective approach to understanding change and its often-failed outcomes; adopting methodologies that can capture deep structures and temporal dimensions; and incorporating expanded conceptions of time as a multi-level, nested construct. We illustrate our ideas of deep structures and temporality by drawing from a particularly important illustration of long term successful change that includes multiple short term failures, that of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States (NASA)

The gap between academics and practitioners is a reflection of the underlying tensions of academic belonging.

Jean M. Bartunek and Sara L. Rynes note the recent spike in journal articles across management scholarship seeking to address the divide between academics and practitioners. Whilst there remains relatively little empirical research focused on the issue of a gap, significant attention has been placed on understanding the variety of reasons for the divide. But what is being written probably reflects gaps within academia itself more than it reflects gaps between practitioners and academics. Discussion of the gap often signals underlying tensions about how much and where particular academics feel they belong or not

Loyal after the End: The Endurance of Organizational Identification

This paper develops and tests a model of the role of organizational identification in members’ propensity to express loyalty to a defunct organization through participation in activities that sustain its most valued elements. It also identifies four antecedent factors to organizational identification that can explain its persistence after formal organizational membership ends as well as the effects of loyalty behaviors. Survey results were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling procedures. The resulting model demonstrated strong fit with the data according to several goodness-of-fit indices

Impact and Management Research:Exploring Relationships between Temporality, Dialogue, Reflexivity and Praxis

This paper introduces the special issue focusing on impact. We present the four papers in the special issue and synthesize their key themes, including dialogue, reflexivity and praxis. In addition, we expand on understandings of impact by exploring how, when and for whom management research creates impact and we elaborate four ideal types of impact by articulating both the constituencies for whom impact occurs and the forms it might take. We identify temporality as critical to a more nuanced conceptualization of impact and suggest that some forms of impact are performative in nature. We conclude by suggesting that management as a discipline would benefit from widening the range of comparator disciplines to include disciplines such as art, education and nursing where practice, research and scholarship are more overtly interwoven