Theory or Practice?
My friend Robert Smith and I used to work together at a large, privately held company here in Minneapolis. Almost daily, we held fascinating discussions on all things workplace. (hmm…that should be a blog name!). Our conversations ranged from organizational development topics, his specialty in PhD studies at the University of Minnesota, to employee engagement to the difference between leadership and management. Our usual point of contention was my view that academic study without practical application was nice, but not useful to a business practitioner. His view is that without the many studies, research, books, journal articles, and workshops, there would be nothing practical TO apply. As you can imagine, our discourse was rife with creative tension (and quite fun)! After some of our “library lunches” we joked that we learned more in our lunch conversations by accident than other places by design.
The Issue
Which is more important to the success of your business? Theory or practice? Yes, you might answer both: on a Saturday afternoon, relaxing in your favorite chair or at a company ‘offsite’. Reality is, what we use every day, what we focus on, is what we find important. As long as academics and business managers have existed, there has been a tension between disciplines.
Managers want help and practical application RIGHT NOW. They have customers, bosses, shareholders, direct reports: everyone wanting everything right now. No time to review trends, ‘best practices’, or platitudes from a star CEO or ‘academic’. They would have to attempt to synthesize the myriad generalities and all the while their inbox and voicemail are f-u-l-l.
Academics want to study trends, long term views, and discrete data. They need to ‘publish or perish’ and tend to apply their work wherever it will be read versus where it could be applied outside academia.
Recently, Robert brought to my attention a phenomenal book titled
“Engaged Scholarship” by Andrew Van de Ven.
Let’s see what it is all about.
Are Our Worlds Really So Different?
Managers, for all their comments about wanting practical applications RIGHT NOW, sure do buy a lot of business books. Few of these books give practical, prescriptive ways to handle daily business issues. There appears to be a craving for knowledge, but little attempt (abilitiy?) to synthesize and apply the theories.
In their rush to bring in the quarter, to raise revenue and cut expenses, managers are taught to practice with a short-term focus. This creates a divide between theory and practice since most research has a high-level, longer term view.
Academics, for all their comments about wanting to be taken seriously by the real world, sure spend a lot of time studying esoteric, long-term trends, theories, and hypotheses instead of speaking to practicing managers. There seems to be a craving for real world experimentation and seeing theories come alive, but little attempt. In a “publish or perish” world, professors are putting their best efforts towards what gets published, not what may be directly applicable to any real world situation.
According to Van de Ven, ““Because such research is not grounded in reality…it often results in trivial advancements to science and contributes to widening the gap between theory and practice.”
Engaged Scholarship
Managers need to see the forest for the trees. Academics need to spend a bit more time walking amongst the trees in the forest. How can you help? As a manager, try speaking at a local university class. Engage a professor when you do strategic planning. As a professor, study more in the field. Many companies would welcome the opportunity to have you as a resource. Ask!
Van de Ven writes, “By involving others and leveraging their different kinds of knowledge, engaged scholarship can produce knowledge that is more penetrating and insightful than when scholars or practitioners work on the problem alone.”
Our debates will continue – therein lies the opportunity for us to grow, learn, and challenge long-held beliefs. What do YOU think about all this? What could you do to narrow the gap between theory and practice?
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Want more information? Check HERE for a great summary of the book by Katy Holmgren. Robert Smith would also love to get your views: you may reach him at: smit2018@umn.edu .
Stumble it!
Joe Raasch :: Nov.13.2007 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 6 Comments »
Joe,
It’s refreshing to see Andrew’s approach to the practical use of theory.
I left academia because of the difficulty in getting practical solutions to the most common of situations. Every conversation was a dissertation defense.
But that really served me well in the manager and consulting role. It forced me to take the theoretical model in my head and keep my mouth shut until I could say, “Here’s how to do this.”
Looking forward to reading Andrew’s book…thanks fort the heads-up!
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing your experience! It is great to hear from someone who has worked both sides of this issue.
The successful consultants and guides, the ones that get called back, would do well following your lead, “…keep my mouth shut until I could say, ‘Here’s how to do this.’ “
Hi Joe,
This is a fascinating subject that deserves all the critical attention it gets.
I agree that managers often need to see the forest for the trees. My only problem with the converse of this is that I’m not really sure what academics, generally, see at all. I’m afraid there are too many instances of their either simply summarizing surveys or observations taken in the workplace, most of which hardly constitute the unearthing of new “science” unavailable to most managers, or developing lofty sounding but essentially insubstantial Aristotlian concepts almost wholly divorced from reality.
The best thinkers in my view, from Follett to Mintzberg, carefully and meticulously combine the two, teasing theory out of close and unpretentious observation, and identifying forests that had evaded everyone’s notice – then testing these either against their subjects or anew in the wider real world. Others (far too few) engage in classical scientific speculation, generating hypotheses which they then subject to experiment, like McGregor did, rather than back-sifting the “data” to support their conclusions.
I, too, look forward to reading Andrew’s book – thanks, Joe, for a great presentation of this important topic.
Hi Jim,
You’ll love the book. Van de Ven is advocating for that connection between academic research and practical application.
It does appear that academia has become a business unto itself, potentially researching themselves into that insular ‘ivory tower’ or worse, into irrelevance. As you astutely wrote, “essentially insubstantial Aristotlian concepts almost wholly divorced from reality.”
Thanks for your continued insights, relevance, and focus on sharing that unique blend of classic thinking with real world application!
Joe,
Thanks for a great summary. In my opinon there can be no doubt that a divide exists between the academic and management worlds both in terms of how each look at and approach the world. Actually I think that divide is a healthy one because the aims of academia and management are, and should be, different.
That said, I think the difference between theory and practice is very small and tends to get overblown, in part because of the differences between academia and management I mentioned previously. Theory is fundatmentally nothing more than an explanation of how things work. Sure, some academics dress it up in fancy terms and sometimes use difficult to understand language but that’s the essence of it. We all have our personal ‘theories’ about how work should be performed or what management styles work best. Sometimes we call them “best practices” but at the end of the day, we operate in fundamentally theoretical ways whether we realize it or not.
Theory appeals to me and probably most academics because they/we like to know how and why things operate in the ways they do. When we are able to find this out, we can put in place systems and structures to get the outcomes we desire. That’s where theory meets practice. In the words of famed psychologist and one of the fathers of modern-day organization development, Kurt Lewin, “Nothing is as practical as a good theory.”
Hi Robert,
Thanks for stopping by and adding your scholarly input to the conversation!
Maybe the reason business books sell so well is the view you posit, “theory is fundamentally nothing more than an explanation of how things work.”
If only we could somehow solve the problem of practitioners who cannot seem to synthesize and apply theory!
Now everyone gets a feel for what our discussions could be like – creative tension. I look forward to our next meeting!