Making and Mending your Nets: Managing Relevance, Participation and Uncertainty in Academic–Practitioner Knowledge Networks
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00556.x |
| Author | David Knights,Catrina Alferoff |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
Making and Mending your Nets:
Managing Relevance, Participation and
Uncertainty in Academic–Practitioner
Knowledge Networks
Catrina Alferoff and David Knights
School of Economic and Management Studies, Keele University, ST5 5BG, UK
Corresponding author email: d.knights@mngt.keele.ac.uk
Making and mending your nets is concerned to examine, from an actor–network theory
perspective, how the relevance debate concerning research and teaching is a significant
non-human actor in the development and management of industry–academic networks
associated with UK business schools. By significant, we do not imply the most important
because it is only one of many human and non-human actors that may arouse interest,
be problematized, enrolled and/or mobilized for such networks to become ‘obligatory
passage points’ and ultimately irreversible collective assemblies. The paper then utilizes
actor–network theory as a framework for examining our primary empirical research on
academic–practitioner knowledge networks – nets that require a continuous making and
mending in managing relevance, participation and uncertainty. We argue that the
actor–network framework is more compatible than alternative knowledge diffusion or
transfer models with the data we have collected on academic–practitioner knowledge
networks in the UK. In accounting for the dynamic instability and precariousness of
knowledge networks, it avoids raising false expectations about business knowledge and
its relevance or effectiveness. If knowledge in the physical sciences and engineering
unfolds slowly and unevenly in the face of many disputes, disruptions and setbacks, as
actor–network theory has claimed, then how much more likely is this to be the case in
the social sciences? Consequently there should be no expectations of one-to-one, direct
causal chains between knowledge production and application, as some business school
critics seemingly demand.
Introduction
In an effort to promote industry–academic
collaboration, the UK Treasury commissioned
Lambert Review argues that the biggest single
challenge lies in boosting the demand from
business, rather than in increasing the supply of
products and services from universities (HM
Treasury, 2003, p. 10). The report advocates the
development of forums that bring academics and
business people together in order to increase the
chance that people with common interests and
goals will find new ways to develop fruitful
The research for this paper was funded by the ESRC’s
programme on the Evolution of Business Knowledge
under Award RES-334-25-0009. We are grateful for
critical comments from Rolland Munro and Ken
Starkey on an earlier draft and to the anonymous
reviewers and editor of British Journal of Management
for their reviews of a number of drafts. An early draft of
the paper was presented at the joint Advanced Institute
of Management/ESRC Evolution of Business Knowl-
edge conference on the Future of Business Schools at
Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, 13
December 2005.
British Journal of Management, 20, 125–142 (2009)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00556.x
r2008 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
partnerships in terms of innovations (HM Treas-
ury, 2003, p. 31).
It is timely, therefore, to provide an investiga-
tion of their derivation, development and, where
appropriate, demise. There are, of course, reports
on single business-school-based academic–practi-
tioner collaborative networks (see Adler and
Norrgren, 2004; Benington and Hartley, 2004;
Garcia, 2004; MacLean and MacIntosh, 2002),
but no research has been carried out into the
variety of such networks and the processes of
their collaboration, conflict and contestation.
The objective of our research was to examine
business school academic–practitioner networks
through the lens of actor–network theory (ANT).
We have restricted our analysis to those aca-
demic–practitioner networks that are based in the
business school since this was the research remit
within our ESRC project on ‘The Dynamics of
Knowledge Production in the Business School’.
The business school has long come under
attack for lacking relevance to a business com-
munity (Bailey and Ford, 1996; Tranfield and
Starkey, 1998) that is ever hungry for whatever
promises to provide a competitive edge in an
increasingly knowledge- and information-rich,
networked society (Castells, 2000). Implicit in
most of the accounts is a notion that knowledge
should have useful effects on practice and, if it
does not, then that is good reason to question its
relevance. Consequently many of the critics have
been prescriptive, arguing for a move towards
more practitioner-oriented modes of research
(Bok, 1990; Starkey and Madan, 2001; Tranfield
and Starkey, 1998) or one fulfilling a knowledge-
brokering role (Starkey and Tempest, 2005) of
disseminating and perhaps translating diverse
knowledge to render it more accessible to
business practitioners.
Some of those seeking to resolve what is
perceived as the widening relevance gap between
academic output and managers’ ‘interests’ focus
on process while others concentrate on output. In
the former case, a remedy is a coordinating
mechanism that connects individuals from both
parties when framing the problem (Das, 2003).
Such a ‘bridging scholarship’ brings together
academics and practitioners in framing the
research project and in the process ‘synthesiz[es]
the particular and the general by utilizing
experience and theory, the implicit and the
explicit, induction and deduction’ (Aran and
Salipante, 2003, p. 189). Those focusing on
output argue that the design of research projects
requires an ontological shift on behalf of
academics whose approach to research should
be prescriptive, or solution-oriented, and in-
formed by an appreciation of managers’ ‘real
world’ problems (Van Aken, 2005).
An even larger and more inclusive group of
critics, and these extend beyond the confines
of business school research, support a breakdown
of the theory–practice dichotomy associated with
traditional ‘pure’ conceptions of science, the
restrictive academic disciplinary boundaries, and
the separation of knowledge production from its
application (Adler, Shani (Rami) and Styhre,
2004; Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny, Scott and
Gibbons, 2001; Pearce II, 1999). Some of those
supporting this closer link between academia and
business subscribe to the view that a much wider
array of stakeholders than just the shareholder
should be taken into account when making
management decisions (Hodgkinson, Herriot
and Anderson, 2001; Huff and Huff, 2001;
Starkey and Madan, 2001).
Yet another growing group of critics are those
who identify themselves with critical manage-
ment studies and following a much earlier
critique that depicted academics as the ‘servants
of power’ (Baratz, 1960) are fairly scathing of the
dominant ‘managerialist’ emphasis in business
school research (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996;
Clegg and Ross-Smith, 2003; Grey, 2001, 2004).
That is, they object to academics being subservi-
ent to the economic political and social interests
of organizations and their managers rather than
taking an independent critical line of evaluating
the conditions and consequences of their actions.
Summing this up, it may be suggested that
there is a continuum between, at one extreme,
those who think business school research is too
far removed from managers and their practical
business or administrative concerns and, at the
other, those who think it is much too close (see
also Currie, 2005). The first group take a
normative position that supports existing hier-
archical structures and identifies with manage-
ment’s concern to improve performance,
productivity and/or profit. Those that demand a
less managerial approach to business school
research may be divided between the liberals that
seek to constrain the pursuit of shareholder value
by encouraging a concern for other stakeholders
126 C. Alferoff and D. Knights
r2008 British Academy of Management.
To continue reading
Request your trial