Marketing's Theory Practice gap

30 years ago Dikinson (1983) wrote that “communication between business academics and the business community appears to be minimal…academics have little interest in practitioners and their ideas” (p51).  A number of other writers during the period from Dickinson to today have argued for the existence of the gap between theory and practice in management or marketing in various forms with and with various degrees of concern (Baker and Erdogan, 2000, Baron et al, 2011). It has been the subject at least three Academy of Marketing conference’s since 2000 (http://www.academyofmarketing.org/conference-history/conference-history.html)  To understand the nature of the gap we have to understand the various strands relating to the ‘gap’ theme.  These are varied and no single uniform theme underpinning the TP (theory practice) gap has emerged.  Significant strands include discussions on the academic practitioner divide (Brennan, 2004, Brennan and Ankers, 2004, Baker, 2001, McDonald, 2003b), the relevance gap (Bennis and O'Toole, 2005, Piercy, 2002) or estrangement from practice (Baker, 2008).  In their influential article published in the Harvard Business Review, Bennis and O’Toole (2005) argue that virtually no top ranked business would hire tenured academics because they lack a real world business track record.  Many of these arguments emerge from the academy’s need to publish and arguments are made that this creates a perverse incentive, prioritising rigour over relevance (Bartunk and Rynes, 2010, Baron et al, 2011)

In a comprehensive review of arguments surrounding the theory practice gap Fendt et al (2007) list nineteen separate arguments describing the nature of the gap.  Grouping these into the major issues provides an overarching view of the arguments put forward.  The groups are – predominance toward modernist reductionism, poor relevance, immature theatrical coherence, and different use of language.   This last point is supported extensively elsewhere in terms of Gibbons modes 1 and 2 knowledge, Polanyi’s tacit versus explicit knowledge as well as argument about knowledge for theory or for doing which will be explored later.  Other frameworks include Reed (2009) who discusses Van Den Ven and Johnson’s analysis of the 3 major ways in which the gap has been framed.  These are issues of knowledge transfer, conflicting philosophical views and as a knowledge production problem.  Ivory et al (2006) analysis of the nature of the gap characterises three main themes which he presents as dichotomous issues.

The effect of epistemic outlook has been the subject of research in a variety of academic versus applied contexts including Haggis (2004), Schon (2001) and Wilkinson and Migotsky (1994). Business studies is often criticised as vocational in nature and intellectually unchallenging, O’Hear,(1988), Tight (2002), and others.  Others talk of academics as spectators (Dewey, 1938a) emphasising rigour over relevance through an academic culture based on envy of traditional university subjects like Physics (Tapp, 2004). 

The influence of epistemologies on the outlooks of academics and practitioners has had only small attention.  Yet such influence could play a significant role in underpinning the gap.  As Kayes (2002) puts it, theorists need to be able to justify their teaching as relevant to management by asking the question “why is learning important for managers?”  In effect epistemology involves the development of a vocabulary that “constitutes legitimate knowledge in a profession” (Kayes, ibid) and informing curricula around a language that may lack practitioner relevance has significant implications.  

Soultions to thew problem seem to be less common than descriptions of the problem.  But these range from epistemological speculations such as those by Cook and Brown and Orlikowski, or Dewey's aarguemnts on warraented assertions, to more pragmatic arguments concermning the nature of knowledge.  These arguments are coveredd by Polanyi's tacit and explicit knowledges or modes 1 and 2 knowing by Gibbons.  Other formulations include Nonaka's models of knowledeg transfer.  Despite such numerous and significant research output the proble remains current and relativly intractable