Producing Useful Knowledge in Management Science—Facilitators and Barriers

In many conferences and meetings in management subjects today, some academic scholars blame themselves and their academic societies for not producing useful research. Here, usefulness refers to the type of a research that can be useful in real practice and lead to the improvement of organizations. Since the gap between academic research and industry practices has increased in recent years, there is a need to shed light on the causes of this issue and propose ways in which this challenge can be overcome. This is a critical step in enhancing applied science. This article analyzes the current trend in conducting management research and raises some issues that scholars should consider when implementing research to make their results practical. To this end, it utilizes institutional theory and introduces factors, which are mostly institutional, that needed to be considered in managerial studies in order to contribute to the practice. It introduces the factors which facilitate or impede producing useful knowledge. Additionally this article illustrates a network of academic researchers linked to industry and shows how the structural holes in the networks of academic scholars and industry can contribute to producing useful knowledge. The model of producing useful knowledge is proposed and the relationship between different methods of conducting research and the usefulness of the created knowledge for practitioners is illustrated in this paper

Collaborative improvement as an inspiration for supply chain collaboration

The battlefield of competition is today moving from the level of\ud individual firms to the one of the extended enterprises, that is, networks of customers and their suppliers. This paper discusses how learning and continuous improvement today take place in processes based on daily collaboration at intercompany level, i.e. Extended Manufacturing Enterprises (EMEs). The purpose of the paper is to present a preliminary theory on Collaborative Improvement (CoI), i.e. continuous improvement at the EME level. Based on a literature review on Supply Networks, and Continuous Improvement and on evidence from two explorative case studies, the paper proposes a model for Collaborative Improvement in EMEs and discusses a research approach based on Action Research and Action Learning to further develop preliminary theory and actionable knowledge on how to foster and sustain CoI in EMEs

Factors affecting the development of collaborative improvement with strategic suppliers

The research presented in this paper was aimed at increasing the current understanding of the process of developing collaborative improvement in Extended Manufacturing Enterprises (EME). Theory suggests a number of factors to affect that process, including shared sense of direction (i.e. vision), trust, power, and commitment. Based on action research of three EMEs involving a total of thirteen companies from five European countries, the present study identifies a number of additional factors. Factors exogenous to, but impacting, the collaboration are joint history and culture. Endogenous factors are approach to establishing the collaboration, project organisation, change and improvement competence, ways and modes of communicating, and political behaviour. Not only do these factors influence each other, they also strongly affect the development of collaborative improvement