The relationship between theory and practice has been discussed in the social sciences
for generations. Academics from management and organization studies regularly lament the
divide between theory and practice. They regret the insufficient academic knowledge of
managerial problems and their solutions, and criticize the scholarly production of
theories that are not relevant for organizational practice (Hambrick 1994). Despite the
prevalence of this topic in academic discourse, we do not know much about what kind of
academic knowledge would be useful to practice, how it would be produced and how the
transfer of knowledge between theory and practice actually works. In short, we do not know
how we can make academic work more relevant for practice or even whether this would be
desirable. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we apply philosophical, theoretical
and empirical perspectives to examine the challenges of studying the generation and use of
academic knowledge. We then briefly describe the contribution of the seven papers that
were selected for this Special Issue. Finally, we discuss issues that still need to be
addressed, and make some proposals for future avenues of research.
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