Move Your Research From The Ivy Tower To The Board Room: A Primer On Action Research For Academics, Consultants, And Business Executives

Abstract

Today there is a large divide between the vast majority of management research that is conducted and the opportunities for doing work that is useful for both research and practice. Action research offers a great opportunity to bridge the divide, with benefits for all involved. For academic researchers, action research can increase access to important research sites that otherwise would remain off‐limits, while simultaneously increasing the relevance and scope of the research issues addressed. For researchers and practitioners who work in organizations, and for external consultants, action research offers a way to scientifically evaluate important organizational issues using scientific methods. These methods provide a type of external validity and support for actions that otherwise could be dismissed as representing a biased internal agenda. Moreover, internal researchers who engage in action research enable the sharing of insights that can benefit practitioners in other organizations as well as the research community. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Conducting Mode 2 research in HRM: A phase‐based framework

“…The theoretical premises of the HRM field are already favorable to Mode 2. The problem of relevance is at the forefront in HRM scholars’ discourses, with several studies calling for an expansion of the conceptual research orientations and methodological tools used by HRM academics (Cohen, ; Deadrick & Gibson, , ; Gopinath & Hoffman, ; Huselid & Becker, ; Latham, ; Rynes, Giluk, & Brown, ; Subramony, ; Yeung, ; Zhang et al, ). The field has started to experiment with diverse knowledge‐creation processes (e.g., Harley, ; Jackson, Schuler, & Jiang, ), discussed “new” principles that partially overlap with Mode 2, and some articles informed by Mode 2 principles have been recently published (for an overview, see Zhang et al, ).…”

“…Mode 2 orientations can significantly improve the practical relevance of HR research, once academics become firmly embedded in contexts of application, and practitioners become strongly involved in the research process. HRM academics have indeed shown increasing sympathy for Mode 2 research, once they have also been reassured about its rigor (Hayton, ; Zhang et al, ). Yet, very few HRM studies have fully and knowingly implemented Mode 2.…”

Workforce analytics: A case study of scholar–practitioner collaboration

“…On the other hand, as it is usual in the retail industry, stores are fully devoted to sales, and this makes it difficult to use time from store managers or the rest of the staff. Within this context, additional data collection in the form of surveys or focus groups is very difficult to accomplish, as is the case for many other organizations (Zhang et al, ).…”

The action research cycle reloaded: Conducting action research across buyer-supplier relationships

“…On the other hand, scholars can extract and abstract a massive amount of information about practitioners, praxis, and practice with the aim of generating knowledge (e.g., Zhang et al, 2015). In doing so, scholars can participate actively in organisational life and people from the system can participate actively in research (Pasmore et al, 2008).…”

“…On the one hand, some Mode 1 scholars claim that collaborating with practitioners may bring a lack of rigour to the research process (e.g., Kieser and Leiner, 2009). On the other hand, Mode 2 scholars show how, in the last decade, much of the management research appearing in top-rated journals has been of little relevance for most practitioners (e.g., MacLean et al, 2002;Bartunek, 2011;Zhang et al, 2015).…”