Marketing's Theory Practice gap
The Academic versus Practitioner Divide is an issue long discussed by business academics and by business leaders. For business practitioners the context of the discussion is usually based around a critique of the preparedness of business graduates for business practice, based either on their competencies or the traits they exhibit In respect of the needs of business. With academics it is the above but it is also research relevance and the purpose of the business school in terms of whether it is an academic social science faculty or a school preparing students for professional management (Starkey and Tempest, 2009). In fact the debate about practical relevance versus academic rigour gap is over 60 years old when in 1949 Merton (Dess and Livia, 2008) asked social scientists to “more carefully consider the usefulness of their work”.
My doctoral thesis addressed this issue of the theory practice gap in marketing. A subject which concerned me from the time I left marketing practice and joined the academic community. The topic has been a major issue for many years and despite hundreds of papers, conferance special themes and other intiatives, seems to be intractable. It has also been the subject of hundreds of academic papers. And the thoery practice gaap is not only in marketing. Research into the gap includes areas like nursing, law, management, education and marketing and many others. The gap is explored theorugh a numerous themes. Fendt et al (2007) listed nineteen seperate themes relating to the theory practice gap and its causes. Some of the significant papers and writers on the topic are shown below.
Theory Practice Gap - some papers
Moving from practice
to the academy brought a number of surprises. Few if any academics talked much about practice. Talk was about theory or papers but almost never about he issues that had concened me in practice. Online marketing has emerged almost entirely from parctice. Little if any use of theory underpinned its emergence and usage. And another example is the recent emergence of metrics as an area of study. In practice my experiene was that the use of metrics was pervasive and essential but the academy ignored it until forced to recogonise its use by weight of practice, demand for numerate graduates and the work of Roger Best.