Management's Science-Practice Gap: A Grand Challenge for All Stakeholders

Despite multiple high-profile calls-across decades and from multiple stakeholders -- to address the widening gap between science and practice, the relevance of research conducted in the management domain remains in question. To once again highlight this issue and, more importantly, identify solutions, we explore the grand challenge of the science -- practice gap by applying stakeholder theory. Using a grounded theory approach, we conducted a series of interviews (n = 38) and formed an interactive focus group with academics and practitioners (e.g., executives, entrepreneurs, government officials) in order to develop a set of theoretical models and propositions that extend stakeholder theory. We supplemented our inductive theory building approach with a survey of academics (n = 828) and practitioners (n = 939) and a qualitative content analysis to identify 22 grand challenges (i.e., eight shared, eight uniquely academic, and six uniquely practitioner). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and illustrate multiple directions for future research to build permanent bonds -- not just temporary links -- between science and practice.