Post on 04-Jun-2018
1999 Serendipity = Turnbull
2000 2001 Serendipity = Ankers
2002 2003 2004 Serendipity = Harker
IMP The Managerial Irrelevance of IMP
IMP The Pursuit of Relevance in Interaction & Networks Research
Jnl. Bus. Res. Sophistry, Relevance & Technology Transfer in Management Research
MIP SI Should we worry about an ac-prac divide in marketing?
Empirical study of IMP conference N=58
Qual. Study of 10 managers
MIP Managerial Relevance in Academic Research: An Exploratory Study
MIP SI Is there an ac-prac divide in B2B marketing?
Qual. Study of 8 academics
IMP A Qual. Study of IMP Researchers’ Perceptions of Relevance
2005 Serendipity = Baines
2006 Serendipity = Gill
2007 Serendipity = Brownlie
2008 2009 2010
AM Mind the Gap: The Skills Practitioners Want and the Skills we teach
MIP SI Mind the Gap: The Skills Practitioners Want and the Skills we teach
AM Perceptions of Research Relevance Among UK Marketing Academics
EBR SI Theory & Practice Across Disciplines: Implications for the Field of Management
EJM Perceptions of Research in Marketing
Two Qual. Focus groups
AM + MUBS Perceptions of Research in Marketing
Survey N=128 academics N=510 commercial
2011
2012
2013 Serendipity = Tzempelikos
2014 Serendipity = Lichtenthal
2015 2016
JBIM Improving Relevance in B2B Research: Analysis & Recommendations
JBBM Reflections on 21 Years of JBBM
Re-analysis of earlier data
The Managerial (Ir)relevance of IMP
Ross Brennan, Middlesex University
Peter Turnbull, Birmingham University
The lines of enquiry
• Sophistry/symbolism: whatever made you expect this stuff ever to be useful?
• Relevance lost: well, of course it was good stuff once upon a time, but now they’ve lost their way ... just need to get back to basics
• Technology transfer: a great scientific endeavour which has not effectively been converted into useful technologies
Line of enquiry 1: Sophistry
• Astley 1984: “management scientists fulfil largely symbolic, rather than directly practical, functions for managers ...the primary point of reference for scientists is not the objective reality of management practice, but the ideationally based reality generated through interaction with other scientists”
Line of enquiry 1: Sophistry
• sophistry = clever but fallacious arguments; concern for winning an argument rather than discovering the truth
• an alternative perspective
– the Sophists proposed that failure in rhetoric was a serious matter - skill in rhetoric being necessary to show the rightness of your ideas
– too little sophistry in the IMP tradition?!
Line of enquiry 2: Relevance lost
• Johnson & Kaplan 1987: “the isolation of existing courses, textbooks, and research from the interesting and challenging problems of contemporary practice”
• failure of management accounting to keep up with changing times
• leading to the “activity-based costing” approach
Line of enquiry 2: Relevance lost
• Why did management accounting systems become irrelevant?
– product lines expanded
– production technology changed
– product life cycles shortened
– global competitive conditions shifted
– great advances in IT occurred
• Cf. Ford (1998)
Line of enquiry 3: Technology transfer
• Transfer of technology from lab to industry is difficult enough with “hard science”, even harder for managerial technologies
• A preliminary list of barriers to TT based on literature ... – different attitudes towards research
– different perspectives on public dissemination
– incompatibility of reward & promotion systems, hence little exchange of people
Line of enquiry 3: Technology transfer
• Barriers to TT, continued ... – fundamentally different aspirations and goals
– cf. “source-recipient incompatibility”
– bureaucracy (perhaps inherent in this, different speeds of response)
– legal barriers (e.g. the exclusivity dilemma)
– reluctance to resource “linkage manager”
• Complication that IMP is a loose, international network , without “ownership”
Conclusion 1
• Sheth/Sisodia, JAMS 1999: “the surprising paucity of instances in which academic research in marketing ... has resulted in widespread change in business practice”
• perhaps the managerial irrelevance of IMP is but a microcosm of the greater managerial irrelevance of scholarly research in marketing?
Do we care about managerial relevance?
Anonymous IMP reviewer (recommending rejection) But the overall problem might be that there is no problem in the first place – as commented by one interviewee, “we do not care”. Interviewee 3 … those people who have been through the courses and have been exposed to the ideas, I think they do find them relevant. So the question is why has the IMP Group been so bad at selling its relevance? And the answer I suspect is we don’t care.
Do we care about managerial relevance?
Table 1: Perceptions of relevance among IMP conference delegates (Dublin, 1999)
Question % %
How enthusiastic are managers to adopt ideas
from business-to-business academic research?
Not enthusiastic
Slightly enthusiastic
31.6
Moderately enthusiastic
Very enthusiastic
68.4
How important is it that academic research should
be of potential practical value?
Not important
Slightly important
17.9
Moderately important
Very important
82.1
Of how much interest would your current
research be to managers?
None/little
8.6 Moderate/substantial
91.4
Of how much practical value would your current
research be to managers?
None/little
6.9 Moderate/substantial
93.1
Overall, how relevant would you say your current
research was to management needs?
Not relevant
Slightly relevant
6.9
Moderately relevant
Highly relevant
93.1
Findings from qualitative study
“To provide leading edge knowledge to society but if that society chooses not to use it I don’t think it is our job to beat up on them and say ‘you’re idiots’. You can put the water in the trough and bring the horse to the trough, but if they don’t want to drink then that’s not an academic’s problem.” (Interviewee 1)
“I see it as my role to be relevant to practitioners … I see my role, and I see the role of (employing institution) to be positioned between theory and practice.” (Interviewee 2)
On the role of the academic researcher
The latter position more characteristic of interviewee responses
Findings from qualitative study
“I think it works two ways in the sense that business is often in front of the academics. By going out and talking to business we bring that back and begin to put frameworks around it and we model it and we play with it and we tease out and dissect (the underlying meaning of business concepts).” (Interviewee 6)
On knowledge transfer and barriers
“The biggest barrier is probably the reward structure, it does worry me how we are rewarded for publishing research … I understand the rules of the game, we play the game, that doesn’t mean I like the rules. The kind of research that would get me published in ‘A’ rated journals is not the kind of stuff that managers find useful. When is the last time that you spoke to a manager who ever read anything in the Journal of Marketing or the Journal of Marketing Research?” (Interviewee 3)
Don’t we all feel like that sometimes??
Perceptions of Research in Marketing
Perspectives from the Academic and Professional Marketing Research
Communities
Paul Baines, Cranfield University Ross Brennan, Middlesex University Mark Gill, Ipsos MORI
Rationale
• The overall rationale for the project is to contribute some valuable empirical data to the debate about the relevance of academic research to marketing practice
• Additionally, we investigate the mutual perceptions of academic and professional marketing researchers
Ac/prac divide & relevance debate
• McAllister (2005:131): “I am worried about the field of marketing. It seems to me that we are becoming very narrow and that we are moving away from relevance.”
• Reflects wider concern within practice-related fields about relevance of academic research to practice
• So what? Does relevance matter?
The case for relevance
• Piercy (1999; 2000; 2002) & Tapp (2004) – What research do marketing managers value?
– What media do marketing managers use?
– Piercy: relevance in research involves significant career-related risks
– The RAE (amongst other things) encourages irrelevance
• Marketing academics should seek to benefit the marketing practitioner community
The contrary case
• Stakeholder argument – Marketing practitioners are only one out of several stakeholders
– Generally with their own substantial resources
• Timescale argument – Do practitioners have too short-term a focus?
• Marketing theory/marketing knowledge argument – Academics as curators of marketing knowledge?
The ‘relevance debate’ (personal highlights)
• Astley, W Graham (1984), "Subjectivity, Sophistry and Symbolism in Management Science," Journal of Management Studies, 21 (3), 259-72.
• Brennan, Ross and Peter W. Turnbull (1999), "The managerial (ir)relevance of IMP," in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the IMP Group. Dublin: University College, Dublin.
• Starkey, Ken and Paula Madan (2001), "Bridging the Relevance Gap: Aligning Stakeholders in the Future of Management Research," British Journal of Management, 12 (Special Issue), S3-S26.
The ‘relevance debate’ (personal highlights)
• Grey, Christopher (2001), "Re-imagining Relevance: A Response to Starkey and Madan," British Journal of Management, 12 (Special Issue), S27-S32.
• Cornelissen, Joep (2002), "Academic and practitioner theories of marketing," Marketing Theory, 2 (1), 133-43.
• Piercy, Nigel (2002), "Research in marketing: teasing with trivia or risking relevance?," European Journal of Marketing, 36 (3), 350-63.
• Brennan, Ross (2004), "Should we worry about an academic-practitioner divide in marketing?," Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 22 (5).
Research method for this paper
• Online survey delivered via …
• Email with web link
• To membership list of UK Academy of Marketing
– Augmented by web site analysis
• 128 responses from 1484 emails sent out
– 8.6% (terrible)
Table 1: Sample demographics
Frequency
%
Gender
(n=128)
Male 81 63
Female 47 37
Age
(n=128)
Less than 34 19 15
35-44 30 23
45-54 52 41
55+ 27 21
Position
(n=128)
Professor/Reader 29 23
Lecturer/Senior/Princi
pal
85 66
Research Position 5 4
Other 9 7
Highest academic
qualification
(n=128)
Undergraduate 8 6
Master’s 56 44
Doctorate 58 45
Other 6 5
Table 3: Academic research activity
Frequency %
Articles published in peer-reviewed
academic journals during your career
(n=119)
0 22 19
1-10 49 41
11-20 14 12
21-30 11 9
31-40 10 8
41-50 5 4
51+ 8 7
Articles published in peer-reviewed
academic journals in the last 3 years
(n=105)
0 27 26
1-5 53 50
6-10 19 18
11-15 3 3
16-20 1 1
21+ 2 2
Amount of time in hours per week (averaged
across teaching & non-teaching periods)
spent on academic research in marketing
(n=117)
0 20 17
1-10 52 44
11-20 25 21
21-30 13 11
31-40 3 3
41+ 4 3
Table 4: Relevance of academic marketing research to managers
Frequency
%
How interested do you think managers would be
in your current research?
(n=88)
Not at all interested 2 2
Not very interested 10 11
Fairly interested 48 55
Very interested 28 32
How relevant to managers will your current
research be in the short term (next 12 months)?
(n=87)
Not at all relevant 1 1
Not very relevant 8 9
Fairly relevant 52 60
Very relevant 26 30
How important is it that academic research in
marketing should be of practical value to
managers?
(n=103)
Not at all important 1 1
Not very important 12 12
Fairly important 40 39
Very important 50 49
What risk of conflict between practical relevance
and academic rigour in academic research in
marketing? (n=106)
No risk at all 13 12
Slight risk 28 26
Moderate risk 35 33
Substantial risk 30 28
Table 9: Differences in perceptions of relevance between Professors & Lecturers
Professor
mean
score
Lecturer/
Senior/
Principal
mean
score
T
value
Significance
level
How interested do you think managers
would be in your current research? 3.4 3.0 2.1 .038
How relevant to managers is your current
research in over 5 years 3.6 3.1 3.0 .004
How enthusiastic are marketing managers
to adopt ideas from academic marketing
research?
2.6 2.3 1.9 .060
How important is it that marketing research
should be useful to managers? 3.0 3.3 2.1 .042
How important is it that marketing research
should be business-focused? 2.9 3.2 1.9 .064
Conclusion
• Note limitations
• Marketing academics at British universities generally believe that their own research is of interest and relevance to managers, and they consider it important that academic research should be relevant to managers.
• When respondents claimed that their own research would be of interest and relevance to managers was it wishful thinking, or was it based on considered evidence?
• Perhaps: ‘most academic marketing research is pretty irrelevant stuff, but of course the work that I do is relevant’
-19%
-2%
+74%
+56%
USEFULNESS OF SOURCES…
Academic journals
% “net” useful
How useful do you find the following as sources of professional information? (Practitioners)
Newspapers
Professional magazines
Web sites
Base: 510 marketing research practitioners. Fieldwork: 8 September – 29 September 2006
2%
3%
7%
10%
16%
72%
KNOWLEDGE OF JOURNALS…
IJMR
% know a fair amount/great deal
How much, if anything, do you know about the following marketing journals? (Practitioners)
Jnl Cons Research
Jnl Marketing Research
European Jnl of Marketing
Base: 510 marketing research practitioners. Fieldwork: 8 September – 29 September 2006
Jnl of Marketing
IJPOR
PERCEPTIONS OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH…
Academic research is…
Base: 510 MR practitioners and 128 MR academics. Fieldwork 29 June – 29 September 2006
Practitioners Academic Researchers
Accessible
Useful to managers
High standard
Published quickly
Impartial
Business-focussed
Good value for money
Comprehensible
Useful for govt
Professional
Not accessible
Not useful to managers
Low standard
Published slowly
Biased
Not bus.-focussed
Poor value for money
Incomprehensible
Not useful for govt
Amateur
5
-64
-13
31
-26
-3
62
37
1
47
-69
-75
-50
-51
40
-14
-37
27
27
34
Balance of opinion (%) (7+6+5) - (3+2+1)
PERCEPTIONS OF COMMERCIAL RESEARCH
Balance of opinion (%) (7+6+5) - (3+2+1) Commercial research is…
Base: 510 MR practitioners and 128 MR academics. Fieldwork 29 June – 29 September 2006
60
30
-9
-57
-6
4
21
92
64
68
49
87
83
91
73
69
90
51
39
64
Practitioners Academic Researchers
Not accessible
Not useful to managers
Low standard
Published slowly
Biased
Not bus.-focussed
Poor value for money
Incomprehensible
Not useful for govt
Amateur
Accessible
Useful to managers
High standard
Published quickly
Impartial
Business-focussed
Good value for money
Comprehensible
Useful for govt
Professional