Revisiting the academic–practitioner divide: Evidence from computational social science and corpus linguistics

Abstract

As a design science, public administration is focused on addressing real‐world problems. However, within public administration argument and evidence on the relevance of academic research to practice agendas is equivocal. We investigate the “academic–practitioner divide” using computational social science techniques to identify the topics of “academic,” “academic–practitioner,” and practitioner corpora over a 25‐year period. Topic modeling results of the 50 topics identified in each of these corpora suggest that the topics of academics and practitioners have more differences than similarities: nearly seven‐tenths of the identified topics differ between the practice corpus and the academic and academic–practice corpora. Corpus linguistics analysis is applied to contrast the keyness of topics over time, and the results confirm the largely different agendas of the corpora albeit with some convergence on governance and outcomes. Corpora examined in this article is largely suggestive of a lack of relevance of academic research to practice agendas.

Writing impactful reviews to rejuvenate public administration: A framework and recommendations

“…Network governance has been adopted into the management and organization sciences vocabulary in explaining development, functioning, and effectiveness of organizational networks. Walker et al (2023) scientifically explore one of the more enduring concerns in our discipline's history: the relevance of research to practice. Walker et al (2023) investigate the "academic-practitioner divide" using computational social science techniques to identify the topics of "academic," "academic-practitioner," and practitioner corpora over a 25-year period.…”

“…Walker et al (2023) scientifically explore one of the more enduring concerns in our discipline's history: the relevance of research to practice. Walker et al (2023) investigate the “academic–practitioner divide” using computational social science techniques to identify the topics of “academic,” “academic–practitioner,” and practitioner corpora over a 25‐year period.…”

“…Walker et al (2023) scientifically explore one of the more enduring concerns in our discipline's history: the relevance of research to practice. Walker et al (2023) investigate the “academic–practitioner divide” using computational social science techniques to identify the topics of “academic,” “academic–practitioner,” and practitioner corpora over a 25‐year period. Topic modeling of 50 topics identified suggests that the topical focus of academics and practitioners are divergent, with 70% of the identified topics differing between the practice corpus and the academic and academic–practice corpora.…”