Collaborate With Practitioners: But Beware of Collaborative Research

Collaborative research is seen as a promising approach for bridging the rigor-relevance gap. In this essay, the authors criticize that the proponents of this approach tend to downplay communication difficulties between practitioners and researchers. The authors apply psycholinguistic concepts of layperson-expert communication and system theory to demonstrate that it is extremely difficult to integrate knowledge that has been generated in the different contexts of science and practice. The authors argue that collaborative approaches like action research, consulting, or executive training are more effective than collaborative research in ridging the rigor-relevance gap. A critical review of reports on collaborative research projects discloses some evidence in support of their assumptions. We conclude by encouraging researchers and practitioners to inspire each other through different forms of collaboration. However, we argue that attempts to turn managers into coresearchers with the special responsibility for making sure that rigor is complemented by relevance are overvalued in the academic discourse.