A substantial body of literature discusses the so-called rigor-relevance gap
in management science and possible ways of overcoming it. A frequently
advocated approach, in line with Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartz, and
Trow’s “Mode 2” idea of creating “hybrid fora,” is the introduction of joint
academic–practitioner review processes in management journals. In an empirical
case study of one of the oldest management journals in the world, the authors
show that the demands of academic and practitioner reviewers are hardly
compatible, and, to some extent, inversely correlated. In contrast to other
studies, here the authors show that the reason for the tension between
academics and practitioners with regard to this issue does not lie in
differences in the evaluation criteria of each group. Rather, the different
worldviews of academics and practitioners lead to different interpretations of
these criteria and a striking incongruence between the two groups’ ideas of
practical relevance
