Journal of Organizational Behavior

J. Organiz. Behav. 29, 455468 (2008)

Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.528

To prosper, organizational psychology

should. . . bridge application and
scholarshipy
WAYNE F. CASCIO*
University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

Summary

Academics and practitioners differ on so many dimensions that researchers have described
them as living in different thought worlds. That gap persists, and there are important
explanations for it, but a confluence of economic and organizational forces is driving
academics and practitioners toward each other. To date, much of the effort by academics
to reach out to practitioners has focused on the diffusion of scientific knowledge, not its
creation. This paper explores several promising strategies for improving both the bidirectional
diffusion of knowledge as well as its creation. It argues that for genuine change to occur, it is
necessary to modify academic reward systems and to promote much closer collaboration
between academics and practitioners. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction
Bridging application and scholarship, the doingknowing gap, is no less important than bridging
scholarship and application, the knowingdoing gap. It is not a new problem, as Rynes, Bartunek, and
Daft (2001) illustrated clearly with the following quotations.
There is a crisis in the field of organizational science. The principal symptom of this crisis is that as
our research methods and techniques have become more sophisticated, they have also become
increasingly less useful for solving the practical problems that members of organizations face
(Susman & Evered, 1978, p. 582).
Each August, we (academics) come to talk with each other; during the rest of the year we read each
others papers in our journals and write our own papers so that we may, in turn, have an audience the
following August: an incestuous, closed loop (Hambrick, 1994, p. 13).
More recently, Hambrick (2007) has argued that as a field, management journals place a
disproportionate emphasis on the development of theory, despite the fact that various types of
* Correspondence to: Wayne F. Cascio, The Business School, University of Colorado Denver, Campus Box 165, P. O. Box
173364, Denver, CO 80217-3364, U.S.A. E-mail: wayne.cascio@cudenver.edu
y
Originally prepared as a paper for the symposium, To Prosper, Organizational Psychology Should. . . (J. Greenberg, Chair).
Annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, New York, NY: 27 April 2007.

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W. F. CASCIO

atheoretical or pre-theoretical work can be instrumental in allowing theory to emerge or develop. This
is just one more argument on top of a considerable body of research that suggests that practitioners,
many of whom are executives, do not turn routinely to academics or academic research findings in
developing management strategies and practices (Abrahamson, 1996; Porter & McKibbon, 1988).
Likewise, academics rarely turn to practitioners or executives for inspiration in defining research
questions (Campbell, Daft, & Hulin, 1982; Sackett & Larson, 1990) or for insight in interpreting
research results (Rynes, McNatt, & Bretz, 1999). More disturbing is the recent analysis by Rynes,
Giluk, and Brown (2007) of bridge and practitioner journals that found very little coverage of topics
that HR researchers believe to be among their most important findings. When such findings were
addressed in the bridge and practitioner journals, the messages were often quite different from
those transmitted in the academic journals. Is it any surprise that a great divide exists between the
normative recommendations of organizational researchers and the actual management practices in
organizations (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000; Rynes et al., 2001)?
Some observers have concluded that the profound difference between the worlds of researchers and
practitioners affects their most basic assumptions and beliefs with respect to such things as the
following (Shrivastava & Mitroff, 1984):

The types of information believed to constitute valid bases for action.

The ways in which researchers and practitioners order and arrange information in order to make
sense of it.

Past experiences used to evaluate the validity of knowledge claims.

Metaphors used symbolically to construct the world in meaningful ways.
Johns (1993) noted that technically meritorious practices are sometimes not adopted for at least three
reasons (Johns, 1993). One, managers frame HR practices as matters of administrative style rather than
as technical innovations. Two, industrial/organizational psychologists often justify HR practices from a
technical perspective only, ignoring important social and contextual influences that affect the adoption
of innovations. Three, crises, organizational politics, competing sources of innovation, government
regulation, and institutional factors often overshadow technical merit.
Bottom line: clearly there is a gap between scientists and practitioners, although opinions differ
about whether it is growing (Hulin, 2001) or shrinking (Latham, 2001). As Muchinsky (2004) has
noted, scientists, for the most part, are relatively unconcerned about how their theories, principles, and
methods are put into practice outside of academic study. For the most part, practitioners are deeply
concerned with matters of implementation because what they do occurs in arenas not created primarily
for scientific study.
If the past truly is prelude, one might reasonably question the usefulness of exploring, yet again, the
topic of knowledge transfer between academics and practitioners. Yet this issue begs for reexamination
for one very big reason: the world has changed in ways that now make academics and practitioners
more receptive than ever to allying and learning from one another. In our next section, we will consider
some of the dimensions that define this change.

Forces driving academics and practitioners toward each other

Rynes et al. (2001) described a number of environmental changes that have altered the climate for
collaboration between academics and practitioners. On the practitioners side, these changes include
the following:
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Intensified competition in global markets has made practitioners more receptive to any ideas
academic or otherwisethat might make them and their organizations more effective.

Many organizations have downsized their corporate research staffs, creating a void that is filled
increasingly by academic and government researchers.

Public policy has changed in ways that encourage industryacademic cooperation such as providing
tax breaks for corporate funding of university research and developing funding programs that require
industryuniversity collaboration as a condition of funding.
As a result of these developments, practitioners have become more heavily involved in the academy
through increased donations to higher education, expanded participation in academic advisory boards,
increased recruitment of academic researchers by private industry, participation in universityindustry
research consortia, and the location of corporate research and development centers near major
universities (Byrnes, 2005; Reed, 2008).
From the perspective of academia, as public funding for higher education (as a percentage of total
revenues) and federal research support per academic researcher have declined, universities have
become more dependent on the private sector both for research and for teaching support. Additional
competition for universities has emerged in the form of corporate and for-profit universities, together
with consulting firms that produce their own research, thereby competing with university-based
researchers. As a result of these changes, there appears to be a growing desire on the part of many
academics to interact with practitioners.

Changes in the broader economic and social environment

Three major forces that have had, and will continue to have, enormous effects on organizations
everywhere are globalization, changing technology, and demanding ownership. What recently was
good enough, big enough, advanced enough, fast enough, and cheap enough is not sufficiently
competitive today (Lawler & OToole, 2006). A fourth is the reexamination of management systems. In
the following sections we consider each of these briefly.
Globalization
The free movement of goods, capital, and equipment across national bordersoffers three benefits to
companies (Lawler & OToole, 2006). One, it offers the ability to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
365 days a year. This speeds up both production and design processes. Two, the ability to sell on a
global basis provides economies of scale that help offset the tremendous costs of developing and
producing new products. Three, by sourcing globally, organizations can get the very best deals on
materials, products, and labor.
Of course with the growth of the Internet and global telecommunications, many jobs can now be
done overseas (Foulkes, Vachani, & Zaslow, 2006), perhaps many more than we thought. For example,
Princeton economist and former Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder recently
completed an exhaustive study of this phenomenon (Wessel & Davis, 2007). He ranked 817 occupations
described by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in terms of how likely each is to go overseas. His
conclusion: 3040 million jobs are vulnerable, not the 34 million that have been proposed previously.
Offshoring is leading to a global dispersion of work that demands new approaches to organization
and management to coordinate global innovation networks and supply chains (Harkins, Giber, Sobol,
Tarquinio, & Carter, 2005). Consider just three of the worlds hot spots for offshoring: India, the
Philippines, and Russia. Companies outsourcing work to these locales include American Express,
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Citibank, General Electric, HSBC, Amazon, and Yahoo (India); ChevronTexaco, Procter & Gamble,
Accenture, AOL, and Fluor Daniels (Philippines); and Intel, Motorola, Sun, Boeing, and Nortel
Networks (Russia) (Cascio and Patel, 2007). Notice how offshoring spans a variety of industries. Here
are just five topics that are particularly important in managing a global workforce:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Recruiting and developing global leaders.

Global organizational learning.
Cross-cultural communication.
Global performance management.
Managing global careers and transitions.

While the academic literature contains a great deal of useful information about these issues
(Bjorkman & Stahl, 2006; Briscoe & Schuler, 2008; Engle, Dowling, & Festing, 2008; Evans, Pucik, &
Barsoux, 2002), many practitioners are either unaware of this body of work or else they choose not to
consult it (Rynes, Colbert, & Brown, 2002).
In the latter paper, HR professionals who responded to a survey displayed some glaring gaps in
knowledge between scientific research findings and HR practices. For 12 of 35 HR practice-related
items in areas such as staffing, performance management, training, and compensation and benefits,
fewer than 50 per cent of the respondents correctly identified whether a statement about an HR practice
was true or false. Well-established research findings in the academic literature provided a clear answer
to each statement. These survey results are troubling. At the very least, they suggest that management
practices that run counter to established research findings prevent organizations from performing
optimally (Burke, Drasgow, & Edwards, 2004).
In contrast, different methodological and theoretical perspectives converge on the conclusion that
basing HR practices on established research findings contributes positively to outcomes such as
corporate financial performance (Borucki & Burke, 1999; Cascio & Boudreau, 2008; Huselid, 1995),
customer service (Schneider & Bowen, 1995), and occupational safety (Zacharatos & Barling, 2004).
There is, therefore, a pressing need to connect scholars and practitioners because, if anything, pressures
to bring out the very best from all organizational resources will grow more urgent over time.

Technology
It is no exaggeration to say that modern technology is changing the ways we live and work. The
information revolution will transform everything it touchesand it will touch everything. Information
and ideas are keys to the new creative economy, because every country, every company, and every
individual depends increasingly on knowledge. People are cranking out computer programs and
inventions, while lightly staffed factories churn out the sofas, the breakfast cereals, the cell phones.
Technology has made astounding leaps in productivity possible. In fact, gains in manufacturing
productivity have outstripped those in the overall economy by 50 per cent over the past 30 years (Byrne,
2000; Cascio, 2006).
In the creative economy, the most important intellectual property is not software or music. It is the
intellectual capital that resides in people. When assets were physical things like coal mines,
shareholders truly owned them. But when the most vital assets are people, there can be no true
ownership. The best that corporations can do is to create an environment that makes the best people
want to stay (Coy, 2000). Therein lays the challenge of managing people in organizations.
Talent has become the worlds most sought-after commodity, and the changing nature of work makes
knowledge workers ever more critical to organizational (and national) competitiveness (The
Economist, 2006). To illustrate, consider three types of jobs:
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Transformationalextracting raw materials and converting them into finished goods.

Transactionalinteractions that can be scripted or automated.

Tacitcomplex interactions involving a high level of judgment. Tacit knowledge is personal and
context-specific, and it is difficult to formalize and communicate (Rynes et al., 2001).
McKinsey & Company (cited in The Economist, 2006) argues that over the past 6 years the number
of jobs that emphasize tacit interactions has grown 2.5 times as fast as the number of transactional
jobs, and 3 times as fast as employment in general. These jobs now make up 40 per cent of the
American labor market and account for 70 per cent of the jobs created since 1998. The same thing is
bound to happen in developing countries as they get richer (The Economist, 2006). Technology enables
faster knowledge transfer and more effective knowledge management, the urgency of which will grow
as tacit jobs become more widespread in the global economy.
Moreover, as the half-life of knowledge and technology gets shorter and shorter, corporate
executives have come to see the ability to change and to implement process innovations as keys to
corporate survival, and that has made them more open to ideas from any quarter, including academics.
The goal: to equip their organizations to respond rapidly to whatever changes may occur next in the
competitive environment.
Despite the fact that the ability to manage change effectively is widely seen as a key lever in
organizational success (Beer, Eisenstat, & Spector, 1990; Beer & Nohria, 2001), it is one of the least
well-understood aspects of organizational life, as evidenced by numerous failed initiatives (Caldwell,
2007). Academics have contributed much to the existing base of knowledge about how to manage
change (Amis, Slack, & Hinings, 2004; Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Burke, 2002), yet much of that
knowledge fails to be applied in organizational settings by practicing managers. This is a clear example
of one area where application and scholarship can and should feed off each other. In a later section, we
will examine some promising strategies for doing that.
Demanding ownership
Among publicly traded companies, a third factor that has reshaped the economic and social
environment is the rise of institutional stock ownership (Lawler & OToole, 2006). In the 1970s,
corporations largely were owned by individual shareholders. Today, the dominant stockholders are
financial institutions, in particular, private- and public-sector pension funds.
As Lawler and OToole (2006) note, this change has led to a re-conceptualization of corporate
capitalism, the most profound consequence of which has been Wall Streets heightened emphasis on
short-term performance. This has led to a shift in economic values in which the responsibility of
publicly traded corporations to create shareholder wealth now takes precedence over their
responsibilities to other stakeholders, in particular, to their employees (Christensen & Anthony,
2007). As a result, organizations are flatter, more decentralized, and fewer employees are working
longer and harder to make them successful. Downsizing, employee buy-outs, and other forms of
planned workforce reductions continue (Cascio, in press). This phenomenon is reshaping work,
careers, and the attitudes of every generation in the workforce (Uchitelle, 2006). There is considerable
interest among practitioners in managing such restructurings well, and academics and practitioners
both have much to learn from each other in this area (Cascio & Wynn, 2004).
Reexamining management systems
In their book, The War for Talent, McKinsey consultants Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth
Axelrod (2001) told companies that they should do everything in their power to recruit and promote the
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very best talentthose at the top of the bell curve. The message was clear: having better talent at all
levels is how you outperform your competitors.
Enron was the ultimate talent company (Gladwell, 2002). Indeed, Enron did everything that the
McKinsey consultants recommended. It recruited the best and the brightest, hiring 250 MBAs a year at
the height of its fame. It applied a rank-and-yank system of performance evaluation, showering the
A players with gold and firing those at the bottom of the distribution. It promoted talent much faster
than experience. In 2001, it collapsed in a wave of scandal.
While the causes of Enrons collapse are complex, one explanation is that it failed, not in spite
of its talent mind-set, but because of it (Gladwell, 2002). Enron believed in stars because it did not
believe in systems. [Yet] companies work by different rules. They dont just create; they execute and
compete and coordinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most
successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star. . .The talent myth assumes that
people make organizations smart. More often than not, its the other way around (Gladwell, 2002,
p. 32).
To be sure, there is ample evidence that the system is the star at many leading organizations
Southwest Airlines, Procter & Gamble, and the United States Navy, just to name a few. The special
magic that sets those organizations apart is that through their systems of organization and management,
they take ordinary people and enable them to do extraordinary things (Gittell, 2003; OReilly & Pfeffer,
2000). Today, practitioners are particularly receptive to ideas about organization and management, and
scholars have much to say about how to establish systems that work.

Efforts by Academics to Reach Out to Practitioners

In recent years, there has been a noticeable effort by academics, through their professional societies and
journals, to translate academic research into actionable knowledge by practitioners. Here are just two
examples.
The mission of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, a legally
separate affiliate organization of the SHRM, is to maximize the impact of the HR profession on
organizational decision-making and performance by promoting innovation, education, research, and
the use of research-based knowledge (SHRM Foundation, 2007). One of the products produced under
the auspices of the Foundation is a series of reports called Effective Practice Guidelines. Created in
2004, current reports include those on performance management, selection-assessment methods,
employee engagement and commitment, reward systems, and succession planning and leadership
development.
To create each report, a subject matter expert with both research and practitioner experience distills
research findings and expert opinion into specific advice on how to conduct effective HR practice. The
report is then reviewed by a panel of academics and practitioners to ensure that the material is
comprehensive and meets the needs of HR practitioners. An annotated bibliography is included with
each report as a convenient reference tool.
A second example is the Winter, 2004 issue of the journal, Human Resource Management, which
was devoted entirely to closing the gaps between scholarship and application and understanding the
contributions of psychological theories and research findings in nine areas. The papers brought together
pairs of scientists and practitioners to address sciencepractice knowledge gaps in the areas of
recruiting and selecting workers, managing performance, training and developing individuals,
managing groups and teams, compensating employees, leading others, assessing employee attitudes,
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managing diversity, and managing downsizing (Burke et al., 2004). Each paper was organized into four
major sections: identification of one or more gaps between science and practice, review of the scientific
research or methods about the topic, practical steps for implementing the scientifically based findings,
and steps for evaluating and enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the practices implemented.
Together, these papers provide a rich body of information for understanding the contributions of
psychological theories and research findings to HR management, and, consequently, for closing
sciencepractice knowledge gaps.
In the field of medicine, considerable efforts are being made in the United States and in the United
Kingdom to translate biomedical research from the benchbasic research in which scientists study
disease at a molecular or cellular levelto the clinical level or the patients bedside (Medical
Research Council, 2007; NIH Roadmap, 2007). Such translational research from bench to bedside is
actually a two-way street. Scientists who do basic research provide clinicians with new tools for use in
patients and for the assessment of their impact, and clinical researchers make novel observations about
the nature and progression of disease that often stimulate basic investigations. As we shall see, similar
opportunities are available in the field of management and organization science.

Scientific Knowledge: Creation Versus Diffusion

The creation and diffusion of knowledge are two critical underlying processes for knowledge transfer
(Choo, 1998). The previous section described commendable efforts by academics to translate academic
research into actionable knowledge by practitioners. Those efforts focus on the diffusion of knowledge,
not its creation, and they are based on objective, declarative information. Empirical research suggests
that information presented in this manner may not synchronize well with the ways that practitioners
prefer to learn. Rather, face-to-face interaction is the best way to transfer knowledge between
groups with widely different perspectives (Boland, Singh, Salipante, Aram, Fay, & Kanawattanachai,
2001; Mohrman, Gibson, & Mohrman, 2001). As the latter study found, the mere fact that researchers
investigate a topic that is important to practitioners may not necessarily mean that the researchers are
able to comprehend what the topic means to practitioners, and vice versa. This is because academic
researchers and practitioners come from different worlds of thought.
Indeed, creating a social system that nurtures collaboration between the thought worlds of academics
and practitioners may violate the norms of both communities (Bartunek, 2007). It is not easy to bridge
that gap, and it might cause frustration for members of both communities (Amabile et al., 2001). Thus,
interviews in the Mohrman et al.s (2001) study revealed that some practitioners expected to receive
definitive answers from a research project, and did not want to invest the time to build the relationship
and go through interpretation and self-design processes. Conversely, interviews also revealed that some
academic researchers have grave reservations about conducting research in close collaboration with
practitioners and their organizations for fear of violating objectivity and jeopardizing the ability to
generate truth.
At the same time, empirical findings from both studies (Amabile et al., 2001; Mohrman et al., 2001)
revealed that a close relational context may be necessary if research is to be perceived as useful by
practitioners. Mohrman et al. (2001) found that practitioners perceive research results as useful when
they are interpreted jointly with researchers, and when they inform self-design activities (shared
learning, active dialogue among organizational members, and action planning). Bartunek (2007)
termed this approach a relational scholarship of integration.
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An additional barrier to diffusion

The diffusion of research findings also can be accelerated or retarded by the choices academics make
about where to publish their research (Rynes et al., 2001, 2007). For example, Offerman and Spiros
(2001) found that almost a third of practitionersmany with doctoral degreesrejected empirical
journals once they entered the world of practice (a point also made by Hyatt et al., 1997). On the other
hand, those who reported that they derived value from at least one empirical source also tended to report
better short-term performance outcomes with respect to teams and team-development activities. Hence,
while empirical work published by academics is potentially valuable to practitioners, the pace of
diffusion will be very slow if few practitioners read that work.
Conversely, if few academics publish in journals read by practitioners, journals that are often not peer
reviewed, their work, and their own interpretations of its implications, will not reach practitioners.
Academics will have to rely on others, such as staff writers, freelance journalists, or consultants, to do
that for them. As noted earlier, Rynes et al. (2007) found that when that happens, the message
transmitted in bridge or practitioner journals often differs from the one transmitted in the original
academic papers. On the other hand, comments like the following, which recently appeared in a popular
business publication, do not encourage more widespread readership of academic papers.
Have you ever tried to read a research study or academic journal? Theyre overwritten, irrelevant,
convoluted, and have poor sentence structure (Gore, 2007, p. 12).
In terms of relevance, both Aldag (1997) and Offerman and Spiros (2001) emphasized that research
relevance not be sought in ways that jeopardize basic research or enhance organizational fads in the
name of relevance. Basic research is not inherently irrelevant. Rather it is the responsibility of
researchers to communicate effectively the relevance of both basic and application-oriented research to
their likely consumers. Consistent with this theme, findings reported by Spencer (2001) with respect to
the high-technology industry suggested that academics striving to make their research directly relevant
for firms should target journals that frequently publish advances by corporate researchers. Doing so
made academics research almost as influential as the research published by practitioners, at least in the
United States (but not in Japan).

Why more academics do not publish in bridge or practitioner-oriented journals

To a large extent, the current situation stems from the reward system in academia, and, to a lesser
extent, from two other factors. One, it is a different style of writing from the one that most academics
have been trained to develop, and two, some practitioner-oriented journals actually discourage
publication of academic research in the belief that it will not be of interest to their readers.
In terms of the reward system in academia, scholars are no different from other people, in that
incentives channel and focus their behavior quite effectively. After all, motivation theory argues
persuasively that people do things that will bring them rewards that they value (Locke & Latham, 1990;
Luthans, 2008). Rewards in academia (promotion, tenure, increases in pay) result largely from
publishing in highly rated, peer-reviewed academic journals. Little emphasis is placed on the
usefulness of the work to organizations (Hyatt et al., 1997). Indeed, in some quarters, publishing in
bridge or practitioner-oriented journals is viewed pejoratively as surrogate consulting. It bestows
little or no prestige on an academic researcher. Given limited time for writing and research, is it any
surprise that academics choose to publish in outlets that will lead to important rewards that they
personally value (prestige, approval from peers, rewards from their home institutions)?
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A second barrier is that writing for an audience of practitioners is not the same as writing for an
audience of academics. Most graduate students are taught to write in the style appropriate for
publication in a journal published by the Academy of Management, the American Psychological
Association, or one with a similar academic orientation. A standard four-part approach is to include an
introduction, followed by sections on methods, results, and a discussion. Writing for a practitioner
audience is considerably less structured, less detail-oriented, breezier in style, and it may include
quotations, anecdotes, and numerous company examples. It requires substantial reorientation to switch
from an academic to a practitioner-oriented writing style, and many academics either cannot or choose
not to make the effort to do that.
Given the difficulties noted above, at least some editors of practitioner-oriented publications discourage
publication of academic research. When asked why, they typically respond that academic writing is too
formal, too detailed, uses too many technical terms, and it relies on complex statistical methodology that
their readers do not understand. Why publish work that will be of little interest to their readers? Doing so
might drive readers elsewhere, and that might cause a drop in circulation. Despite these impediments,
some academics do manage to bridge the gap with practitioners very effectively.

Accelerating the pace of knowledge transfer

In terms of impact, several authors (Dunnette, 1995; Offerman & Spiros, 2001) have suggested that the
most influential organizational experts publish in scientific as well as in technical or practitioner
journals in order to reach the broadest audience and to transcend academicpractitioner gaps. They also
promote their knowledge to business executives through face-to-face forums. When academics and
practitioners spend time learning together and from one another, they are likely to produce some form
of shared mental model, metaphor, analogy, or culture that then can serve as a framework for moving
forward (Rynes et al., 2001). That kind of engagement is likely to promote mutual understanding, the
exchange of tacit knowledge, and a faster pace of bi-directional knowledge transfer.
The framework described above has guided the composition of the SHRM Foundation Board,
namely, one-half academic members and one-half practitioner members (those who work in companies
as well as consultants), and it has led to the highly successful Effective Practice Guidelines series
described earlier. The same framework also guides the funding of major research projects that have a
direct and practical impact in advancing the HR profession. Based on responses to requests for
proposals (RFPs) to the research community, a combination of academic and practitioner members of
the Foundations Board evaluates proposals that have been submitted. To do that, members use a set of
LIVE criteria (among others), namely, projects must demonstrate the following qualities: Leverage,
Impact, Visibility, and Enhances the profession.
Summary
If research is to be genuinely useful, therefore, it is important to pay careful attention to the relationship
between researchers and practitioners, not simply to the content of the research (Bartunek, 2007;
Mohrman et al., 2001). This implies more than one-way communication from researchers to
practitioners. It requires bidirectional influence so that both parties can understand each others
perspectives, have an opportunity to make each others concerns known, and enable researchers to
comprehend issues that are important to the context in which practitioners operate (Amabile et al.,
2001; Argyris, 1999; Mohrman et al., 2001). Schon (1983) expressed the point well: the development of
an action science cannot be achieved when researchers are removed from action contexts or when
practitioners are not able to reflect on their expertise and to share it in order to generate research that is
meaningful in a practical sense.
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Frequent team- and trust-building sessions, facilitated by e-mail exchanges and face-to-face
interactions, joint sense-making sessions, and conflict-resolution procedures can help members from both
communities to get to know, appreciate, and understand each others values and the constraints under
which they operate. In short, research is most likely to be perceived as useful by practitioners when it is
informed by joint interpretive forums mutual perspective-taking, and self-design shaped by research
(Mohrman et al., 2001). Joint interpretive forums that offer discussions about topics about which there is
shared interest among academics and practitioners have been used successfully at the annual conferences
of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). Others might focus on understanding
the implications of findings in journal papers for practice (Bartunek, 2007).

How researchers can improve practice and vice versa

To some extent, we have already answered this question in the preceding paragraphs, but in addition to
understanding each others thought worlds more deeply and more thoroughly, there are other, more
specific steps that the parties can take. From the perspective of practitioners, survey results indicate that
the best way researchers can improve practice is to include a more applied focus (Offerman & Spiros,
2001). Doing that means orienting research toward practice in context: using real-world situations, field
studies, longitudinal designs, and writing reports in plain language that includes how tos and when
tos. For example, in its Effective Practice Guidelines on employee engagement and commitment,
the SHRM Foundation includes call-outs with specific, research-based recommendations on how to
increase employee engagement and commitment in areas such as recruitment, staffing, training and
development, compensation, and performance management (Vance, 2006).
The strategies and suggestions noted above will enhance collaboration when academics and
practitioners are already working together. In many instances, however, academics have only scant
knowledge (if any at all) about the problems facing organizations. Nor do they realize who in industry is
amenable to conducting research on specific topics. Practitioners are often unaware of the expertise
available in universities and how their own work might benefit from some type of collaboration. The
result is that academics and practitioners rarely work together to develop mutually beneficial outcomes.
To overcome these problems, Hyatt et al. (1997) suggested the following steps, among others.
Use the websites of professional organizations to connect academics and practitioners
For example, Websites of the SIOP and the Academy of Management (as well as its divisions) could
serve as forums where practitioners could describe problems to inform academics of the issues they are
confronting. Academics looking for opportunities to engage in collaborative, applied research could
then contact the practitioners to explore possibilities.
Sabbaticals in industry
Academics might consider spending 6 months or a year working inside an organization meeting and
working with practitioners and learning about current constraints, concerns, and opportunities for
research. After they return to their universities, having built relationships and mutual trust, they can
continue to engage in research projects developed to address the issues the organization faces.
Likewise, the organization would also benefit from exposure to the newest scientific techniques as well
as an external perspective. There are benefits for both parties under this plan.
Involve practitioners in graduate education
At the very least, practitioners could be involved as guest lecturers, a practice that students often
endorse, and also as leaders or co-leaders of advanced seminars and practical training. Doing so will
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465

afford graduate students the opportunity to understand the contextual constraints under which
practitioners operate.
Another approach that may enhance theory and relevance is to combine consulting with research.
Doing so may provide researchers with the opportunity to access actual organizational data, while
increasing the clients motivation to participate, to offer feedback, and to apply findings. The
application of qualitative research methods (Barley, 2006; Marshall & Rossman, 2006) might also lead
to findings with genuine organizational impact.
To date, much attention has been devoted to strategies for improved diffusion of knowledge to
practitioners and their organizations, but considerably less to the potential benefits of practical
knowledge for researchers and for the advancement of science (Rynes et al., 2001). Surely this must
occur in order for organizational psychology to prosper. Amabile et al. (2001) published one of the few
papers that address the issue of knowledge creation through joint practitioneracademic collaboration
over a long (3-year) time span, and that offers guidance on this issue. They suggest that participation by
practitioners is likely to enhance the eventual quality of research in several ways. In their study,
practitioners contributed directly to research quality by generating additional study participants,
facilitating high response rates, and contributing to improved content-coding schemes.
Practitioners also contributed to the quality of research by providing alternative interpretations of
research results, by pressing for greater participation (thereby permitting contributions by a more
diverse group of people), and by pushing for early results in order to demonstrate value at every stage of
the research process. In many ways, bridging application and scholarship is akin to crossing a great
cultural divide. It is by no means easy, but the potential payoffs make the effort a worthy goal to pursue.
Given the rapid changes that are occurring in the broader economic and social environments,
opportunities have never been greater to bridge application and scholarship and to conduct relevant,
meaningful research that will improve the performance of organizations and those who work in them.

Conclusions
Despite profound differences between the worlds of researchers and practitioners, numerous forces
are driving academics and practitioners toward each other. These include intense global competition,
downsized research staffs, changes in public policy that encourage industryacademic cooperation, and
decreases in public funding for higher education and federal research support. At the same time,
changes in the broad economic environment (globalization, technology, demanding ownership),
coupled with a renewed emphasis on the application of sound management systems, are encouraging
managers to seek help from any quarter that will help them to improve the performance of their
organizations. Together, these forces are operating in concert to create a set of conditions that will
facilitate the bridging of the great divide that separates academics and practitioners.
To date, much of the effort by academics to reach out to practitioners has focused on the diffusion of
scientific knowledge, not its creation. For diffusion to be effective, evidence indicates that close
relations and collaboration between academics and practitioners may be necessary. This implies
increased face-to-face interaction (with associated trust-building activities), as well as a willingness on
the part of academics to publish in practitioner-oriented journals, and for more practitioners to publish
in peer-reviewed journals. For that to happen, however, the reward system in academia will need to
assign some degree of positive value to publishing in practitioner-oriented journals, and academics will
need to reorient their writing styles to practitioner-oriented audiences. These are serious challenges, but
failure to do so leaves the diffusion of important academic findings to others, and that can lead to two
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W. F. CASCIO

potentially undesirable outcomes: incorrect translation of knowledge to practitioners, and a glacial

pace of knowledge diffusion.
As for the creation of new scientific knowledge, practitioners have important roles to play, for
example, by generating study participants, facilitating high response rates, contributing to improved
content-coding schemes, providing alternative interpretations of research results, pressing for greater
participation from diverse perspectives, and pushing for early results in order to demonstrate value at
every stage of the research process. Evidence indicates that important academic findings in
organization science and applied psychology are not being transferred routinely to management
practice. Both academics and practitioners have powerful incentives to change that. If each is willing to
reach out to the other, the payoffs for both parties can make the effort a win-win for all.

Author biography
Wayne F. Cascio (Ph.D., University of Rochester) is US Bank Term Professor of Management at the
University of Colorado Denver. He has published 21 books, and more than 135 articles and book
chapters, including Investing in People (with John Boudreau, 2008), Managing Human Resources:
Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits (7th ed., 2006), Applied Psychology in Human Resource
Management (6th ed., 2005 with Herman Aguinis), Costing Human Resources: The Financial Impact
of Behavior in Organizations (4th ed., 2000), and Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable
Alternatives to Layoffs (2002). He is a former president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, Chair of the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation, and member of the
Academy of Managements Board of Governors. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of
Human Resources, the Academy of Management, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva in 2004 and has
consulted with more than 150 organizations on six continents.

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