Marketing's Theory Practice gap

Personal Epistemology 

 

Research on epistemological beliefs indicates that they underpin beliefs about the value of knowledge. Much of the divide between theory and practice is reflected in different views on knowledge and hence the basis of the gap can be framed as epistemic. The literature mainly addresses the issues through a series of argued frameworks, including tacit and explicit knowledge, knowledge creation, social or agentic gaps or simply gap brought about byacademics needs for validity in research rather than application. Few if any studies have attempted to identify whether a significant epistemic gap exist between practitioners and academics. Partly perhaps because epistemological views are difficult to measure, few studies have attempted to address this proposal in an structured statistical manner. However in the last decade several measures of epistemic belief have emerged and been used by a number of researchers to evaluate the effect of epistemic belief on some other agent. For example Bell (2006) looked at epistemological beliefs and learning achievement and Sitoe (1995) examined epistemological beliefs and perceptions of education. In my case I am interested in whether academics and practitioners share or diverge in their fundamental epistemological outlook and on what factors of that outlook they may share or diverge on.  

 

That beliefs and epistemic values are central to views on knowledge is argued strongly by many academics. Reybold (2002) puts this view strongly suggesting that “personal epistemology is more than a framework for knowing and understanding reality, epistemic assumptions cultivate corresponding behaviours and actions; individuals way “of knowing” predispose a way of being” (italics in original) or as Hofer (2004) puts it “beliefs influence learning”. Equally education itself affects epistemological development through linkage to the employment of higher-order thinking in personal and academic situations (Bendixen, 2003, Hofer, 1997, 2002, 1999, Schommer-Ailens, 2002). Epistemic thinking is also related to more than just educational learning, but is a significant component to lifelong learning in terms of how people evaluate new knowledge or resolve competing knowledge claims and hence strongly appears to address the inherent nature of the theory practice gap in business. Fundamentally, using Hofer’s argument (Hofer, 2001) in her paper on the implications of epistemic values on teaching and learning, epistemology is a context dependent influence which acts to shape people’s views on how knowledge is viewed and used. Without going too deeply into Hofer’s argument she suggests that the act of education itself influences meta-cognitive or meta-knowing approaches to learning and knowledge construction. Furthermore emergent work on discipline based knowledge and knowing suggests that epistemic differences are tangible, they also help define the discipline and the differences increase as expertise develops (Donald, 1990, Schoenfeld, 1992, Hofer, 2001). This suggests that elements of difference are influenced by an education process but that such shaping may or may not be appropriate for differing contexts of practice. For such reason exploring whether different epistemic values exist between academics and practitioners becomes important in allowing for academic reflection on the nature of the epistemology they wish to represent in the educational process.