Operationalizing Deep Structural Sustainability in Business: Longitudinal Immersion as Extensive Engaged Scholarship
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12201 |
| Author | Paul Nieuwenhuis,Peter Wells |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 45–63 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12201
Operationalizing Deep Structural
Sustainability in Business: Longitudinal
Immersion as Extensive Engaged
Scholarship
Peter Wells and Paul Nieuwenhuis
Centre for Automotive Industry Research, Cardi Business School, Cardi University, Cardi CF10 3EU, UK
Corresponding author email: wellspe@cardi.ac.uk
This paper oers an innovative perspective on engaged scholarship as multiple, cumula-
tive interactions between academia and externalorganizations in the b usiness and policy
realms. A definition of longitudinal immersion is positioned relative to the extant litera-
ture on academic engagement as a dialectic relationship between academic research and
the praxis of business and society. Using a case study of a specific academic theoretical
concept, we seek to demonstrate howover a period of some 25 years the ideas and practice
of deep structural sustainability have co-evolvedthrough a process of reflexivity. Drawing
from critical management studies and design science we give a dierent perspective on
the processes and mechanisms of engagement and the question of the nature of impact.
Notwithstanding the challenges thus presented to researchers in nurturing the ability for
informed creativity,it is concluded that future opportunities for engagement and impact
may be captured by a longer-term, value-driven and less episodic approach to the entire
research process.
Introduction
For many years there has been a strong undercur-
rent of concern about the roleand purpose of busi-
ness academic research, expressedas a gap between
theory and practice, or as a failure of engagement
or relevance (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2013; Ev-
ered and Louis,1981; Fendt and Kaminska-Labb´
e,
2011; MacLean, MacIntosh and Grant, 2002). In
this paper ‘longitudinal immersion’ is presented
as a reflexive meta-methodology both for research
and for engagement, building on and then moving
beyond a range of existing alternativemethodolog-
ical approaches in the literature, and combining in-
sights from critical managementstudies and design
science. In this manner the paper shows how over
an extended period of time engaged research has
resulted in innovative solutions that are now at the
leading edge of the design, manufacture and use of
cars that are more durable, and of lower environ-
mental impact, and produced in businessesthat are
more attuned to their social value.
As explored in the next section, management
scholars have been adept at achieving innova-
tive theorization and methodological robustness,
but rather less so at achieving applicability, lead-
ing some to call for a ‘new public social science’
(Delbridge, 2014) and others for a cohesive pro-
fessional discipline (Romme et al., 2015). The call
for ‘Mode 2’ research (van Aken,2005) has not re-
solved the concerns. It is proposed here that im-
pacts with so-called ‘deep sustainability’ solutions
are likely to be diverse, dynamic and socially con-
structed, and hence contingent to place and (the
passage of) time (Foster, 2001). In turn this sug-
gests that in seeking to understand (and indeed
promote) large-scale systemic transformations in
business structures, markets and consumption
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
46 P. Wells and P. Nieuwenhuis
under a broad sustainable consumption and pro-
duction agenda there is a need for academic re-
searchers to develop richly textured grounding in
specific rather than necessarily immediately gener-
alizable industrial contexts. The inter-weaving of
academia and practice over an extended time pe-
riod in longitudinal immersion is presented in the
following section as challenging both the process
of academic theory building and testing, and the
process and purpose of user engagement. The ex-
tended case study presented in the sections entitled
Longitudinal immersion and Deep structural sus-
tainability illustrate that the interaction between
theory building, data acquisition and engagement
with industry and other research beneficiaries is
convoluted, intermittent and non-linear. The re-
search process therefore combines both instru-
mental and reflexive knowledge (Burawoy, 2004;
Robinson and Kerr, 2015), but adds to this the
idea that ‘...scholarship as a product is gener-
ated across a career of research, user-group en-
gagement, teaching and professional citizenship’
(Thorpe et al., 2011).
The section Longitudinal immersion therefore
provides a contextual overview of the immersion
process of long-term involvement by the authors
and their research centre within a specific indus-
trial sector. In the section Deep structural sustain-
ability there is a narrower focus on what is here
termed ‘deep structural sustainability for business
model innovation’, with a case study on how the
concept of micro factory retailing (MFR) evolved
over time and in interaction with diverse practice
communities. A diculty in presenting this ap-
proach is accounting for the source of ideas and
the sequence by which such ideas may be encoun-
tered, imagined and either adopted, adapted or
dismissed. An attempt is made here to illustrate
the dialectic and sometimes dissonant interplay
between academic research and business practice
with a timeline narrative of interactions and pub-
lications ‘events’ that can be regarded both as in-
dicators or milestones of progress and as forms of
impact. In so doing we take impact to have many
possible forms within the broader concept of con-
tribution emergent discourses around our themes
of business, automobility and sustainability. The
penultimate section considers the processes and
mechanisms of longitudinal immersion, drawing
in part from the ideas of Bourdieu (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992; Swartz, 2002). In the conclud-
ing analysis in the last section we draw together
the lines of discussion and return to the issues of
relevance and engagement, and argue for a more
forward-looking and visionary approach to busi-
ness and management research informed by syn-
thesis and the wisdom gleaned by immersion.
Business and management research: the
critique in the literature
Critics of academic business and management
research argue that practitioners find little valuein
academic research (McKelvey, 2006) and that busi-
ness research lacks high impact outcomes (Alves-
son and Sandberg, 2013). There is a considerable
literature on the ‘divide’ between rigour and rel-
evance, or between management science and the-
ories on the one side and practical application on
the other (Fendt and Kaminska-Labb´
e, 2011; Gu-
lati, 2007; Gulatiand Bartunek, 2007; Hodgkinson
and Starkey, 2011; Starkey,Hatchuel and Tempest,
2009; Van de Ven and Johnson, 2006). Moreover
issues such as theoretical rigour or research impact
are notoriously dicult to measure in the social
sciences (Bastow et al., 2014; Greenhalgh and
Wieringa, 2011). Aram and Salipante (2003) frame
the research−practice gap as an emergent prop-
erty of the dichotomy between generalizability
on the one side and particular application on the
other. Thus, generalization is likely to obscure the
particularities of a specific case, while alternatively
case studies may provide contextual detail but
lack connectivity to other instances and settings.
For Ketokivi and Choi (2014) case research
validity is established by attention to idiosyncrasy
(what makes the case special) and transparency
of reasoning (how generalization is made from
the case). Hodgkinson and Starkey (2011) see in
this debate an unhelpful bifurcation into rigour
versus relevance which can be traced back to the
epistemological foundations of much business
and management research. Interestingly, Mingers
(2015) explicitly links the sustainability ‘agenda’
to the relevance gap in business and management
research and to the need to adopt a critical and
ethically committed perspective (see also King
and Learmonth, 2015). Such a stance may make it
dicult to undertake collaborative research, sup-
ported by Shani and Coghlan (2014) for example
as one solution to the rigour and relevance divide.
There is some evidence that business and man-
agement research has become more accepting
© 2017 British Academy of Management.
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