Abstract
The contemporary focus on academic impact primarily emphasizes initiatives undertaken by researchers that are potentially useful to practitioners. It pays very little heed to academics supporting practitioners’ initiatives to meet manifest societal needs. In this paper, we illustrate ways such support can be carried out. We do so by nominating six researchers from various disciplines for the award of “Best Researcher(s) in a Supporting Role”, defined as one or more academics who, motivated by compassion and taking their lead from how practitioners frame and pursue concerns that are important for society, support in scholarly ways practitioners in addressing those concerns. Our nominees are James Sulzer and Lindsay Karfeld-Sulzer, Denise Rousseau, multiple academics who have evaluated the success of the Imagination Library, Ann Burgess, Timothy Neale, and Hans Hansen.
Each year, the US based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents Oscar Awards “in recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership” (Academy Awards, 2024). One of the awards is for Best Actor (or Actress) in a Supporting Role.
What if the Academy of Management (AOM), or perhaps the Western Academy of Management that sponsors JMI, awarded an Oscar for Best Researcher (or best researchers) in a supporting role, a role in which researchers are distinctly not the prime impetus for a project that is important to society, but provide crucial research and scholarly support for important practitioner initiatives?
AOM gives awards each year for those essentially in starring research roles. It also gives a career distinguished service award, essentially for service to the AOM. But it doesn’t give awards for academics whose research primarily supports and provides developmental evaluation of practitioner-initiated achievements that provide major benefits to society at large, even at a time when the UN Sustainable Development Goals and discussions of grand challenges (e.g., George et al., 2016) have made the importance of such benefits salient.
Our aim in this paper is to advance the case for acknowledging and recognizing a Best Researcher—or Researchers—in a Supporting Role. To help accomplish this aim, we imagine here what such an award might encompass, initial criteria for it, and some researchers who might be worthy of nomination for the award. We envision this paper as the beginning of a conversation about and development of such an award—certainly not as the final word.
Below, we sketch out our initial rationale for the award, starting with a summary of some of the rigor-relevance debate and then focusing on contemporary discussions of impact that highlight meritorious actions originated by academics. We then summarize our criteria for the award and present an initial set of nominees.
Rigor and Relevance
There have been discussions, concerns, and debates at least since the 1950s (e.g., Gordon & Howell, 1959; Pelz, 1978; Rynes et al., 2001; Bartunek & Rynes, 2014; Bansal & Sharma, 2022) about academic-practitioner relationships, including gaps between rigor and relevance (e.g., Kieser & Leiner, 2009). Throughout the decades, several attempts have been made to bridge the gaps. These attempts have included, among others, insider/outsider team research (Bartunek & Louis, 1996), Mode 2 scholarship (Tranfield & Starkey, 1998) engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007), and involving academics and managers together as co-creators of systematic reviews (Sharma & Bansal, 2023). In each of these, attention has been paid jointly to practice and scholarly concerns and outcomes, typically consistent with a co-creation model of impact discussed by Reinecke et al. (2022, p. 10) in which “the motivation for theory development is problem-driven rather than paradigm-driven”.
Contemporary Emphases on Impact
Attention to co-creation has decreased in recent years. In particular, a largely one-way emphasis on the impact of academic work has been especially salient since the United Kingdom began to add impact, defined in its Research Excellence Framework (REF) as “an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia that comes from research” (REF Impact case studies, 2014) to its assessment of virtually every unit of each UK university. The REF, along with the UN Sustainable development goals that were adopted at a similar time (2015), and, more recently, awards for Responsible Research in Business and Management (https://www.rrbm.network/) have spurred attempts by academics to have an impact on society based primarily on their own research.
Reinecke et al. (2022, p. 6) described several pathways for academic impact that are quite different from cocreation. These include a transfer pathway (including theory dissemination and the instrumental use of theory) in which “Theory developed in academia is transferred/ translated into practice”, and a performative (including critical performativity) pathway in which “Impact emerges as theory is performed in practice.”
Many current impact attempts have focused primarily on theory dissemination, in which “scholars, or intermediaries, transmit theories to non-academic target audiences or the public-at-large who then utilize these theories in their practices” Reinecke et al. (2022, p. 5). Just a few examples of the many dissemination approaches that have emerged from the REF include podcasts that summarize implications of scholarly research conducted at Henley Business School (2025), a film produced by the Chartered Association of Business Schools that showcases the impact of multiple UK business schools on the economy and society (Chartered Association of Business Schools, 2018), papers that publicize the wide-ranging impact of research conducted at King's Business School (2025), and many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), such as those at the University of London (2025).
In addition, there are approaches intended to foster impact in ways that are similar to Reinecke and colleagues’ instrumental use of theory. As Reinecke et al. (2022, p.7) state, “Whereas dissemination emphasizes the role of the researcher and intermediaries, an instrumental approach to impact highlights users. Scholars can facilitate this pathway when they communicate their research findings in a form and an outlet adapted to the needs of managers and other organizational actors.” Such outlets include the Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review, as well as magazines published by several business schools that emphasize the applicability of the research of their own faculty, such as Warwick Business School's Core Insights Newsletter, the UCLA Anderson Review, and BusinessThink at UNSW in Australia.
Further, multiple Associations, Communities, and Platforms aim to accomplish academic impact by means of the intended instrumental use of academic knowledge. These include, among others, the Academy of Management (https://journals.aom.org/journal/ami) the Behavioral Science and Policy Association (https://behavioralpolicy.org/), the HIBAR research alliance (https://hibar-research.org/), the Impact Scholar Community (https://one.aom.org/one/working-groups/impact-scholar-community), Impact Science (https://www.impact.science/), The Conversation (https://theconversation.com), and EIX (https://eiexchange.com/). Each one aims to share scholarly knowledge with practitioners in readable ways and invite practitioners into important conversations. These efforts have had positive effects. The Conversation, for example, has hosted multiple discussions among participants across several nations on topics such as climate change and the economy.
Reinecke et al. (2022) also identify a performative model of impact, in which theories have an impact to the extent that they are performed in practice or, perhaps, subverted. Performance of theory is challenging (e.g., Bartunek, 2020), especially with regard to such abstract visions as the UN sustainable development goals, regardless of how ultimately helpful they are intended to be in a particular setting. Attempts to perform actions consistent with such goals may well be undermined. For example, Bowden et al. (2021, p. 1909) showed “how climate change science (was) translated into a self-referential theory focused on property prices” in an Australian region situated near a lake and vulnerable to flooding. This is the type of setting in which climate change approaches would seem particularly valuable, but they were not treated as such.
Theories and research findings, even those intended to be helpful, may threaten potential end users. In addition, of course, research findings developed by academics may not align well with issues of concern to practitioners and their organizations. It is not always easy to determine what the appropriate practitioner questions are for already formulated research results and conceptual models, even those arising from problem driven theorizing (Reinecke et al., 2022), let alone how to implement those answers well while minimizing unintended adverse impacts (cf. Kerr, 1995; Wright et al., 2018a, 2018b). Further, these discussions often minimize the importance of personal relationships among academics and practitioners.
The Role of Relationships in Impact
The primary emphases on dissemination and the instrumental usefulness of academic knowledge have led to discussion among some scholars who are concerned that relationships between academics and practitioners have become less important than was the case in earlier academic-practitioner collaboration. MacIntosh et al. (2021, p. 56), emphasize the importance of mutuality between academics and practitioners for impactful research, and argue that “our badges of authority are not particularly relevant or helpful to effective dialogue, but our skills and willingness to empathize with others, to listen and to contribute are what is most helpful to the overall outcome” that leads to “shared outcomes rather than “ownership” of commodified ideas which can be exchanged.” Cunliffe and Pavlovich (2022, p. 879) also stress the importance of relationships between academics and practitioners in addressing meaningful societal problems. They argue that “at the heart of such an endeavor lie … the nature of the relationship between ourselves as scholars and community members; and second, the need to generate more situated and relational forms of knowing-from-within that address social and environmental issues.” Yet this has not been fully evident in recent years. For example, while Van de Ven's (2007) Engaged Scholarship emphasized academic-practitioner collaboration, Hoffman's (2021) The Engaged Scholar focuses more on how academics can have an impact on important issues during their careers.
Practitioner—Academic Relationships
MacIntosh and colleagues’ (2021) approach to relationships between academics and practitioners suggests a different approach than one that focuses on academic-driven impact or even one that focuses on academic-practitioner co-creation. It suggests the value of academics serving in a helpful relationship with practitioners, one in which they serve in scholarly capacities to further practitioner initiatives, rather than focusing primarily on their own.
Practitioner Initiatives
There are a wide range of occasions when practitioners identify and launch robust initiatives themselves. Practitioners and their organizations often create innovative practices and knowledge that foster academic understandings (e.g., Damanpour & Wischnevsky, 2006; Ployhart & Bartunek, 2019). Further, managers and other practitioners are more likely to be in a position to respond directly to such aims as the UN sustainable development goals than academics whose primary work is research (Bartunek, 2002).
Academic Assistance
At the same time, academics can sometimes provide substantial and perhaps necessary scholarly assistance to practitioner endeavors. They may serve in supporting roles to practitioners, using their conceptual and analytical academic skills to help practitioners carry out work they are not able to do themselves, often in service of important goals. That is, academics may serve as researchers in supporting roles, for which they may deserve an Oscar.
We initiate the attempt here to recognize the value of this type of work and to sketch out our initial ideas of what it can mean in practice. We do so both by describing an initial set of criteria for evaluating such contributions and by introducing nominees whose work we suggest embody such criteria.
Bases for our Discussion: The Academic- Practitioner Experiences of the Authors
Foundations for our discussion come from our reflections on our own experiences as academics sensitive to the concerns and contributions of practitioners. The first author, Jean Bartunek, has been involved in academic-practitioner relationships for decades. She helped to originate academic-practitioner team research (e.g., Bartunek & Louis, 1996), and has conducted several studies based on this approach. She has been impressed with contributions that practitioners sometimes make to academic theorizing (Ployhart & Bartunek, 2019), and she has edited a book, Social Scientists Confronting Global Crises (Bartunek, 2022), that includes chapters by both organization development consultants and academics concerned about practice. She also served as an internal consultant in a major organizational change effort she did not initiate (Bartunek, 1984), and was one of the authors of the book by MacIntosh et al. (2021) that emphasized the importance of relationships between academics and practitioners.
The second author, Peter Heslin, has expressed his concern for academic insights having real-world impact by translating academic scholarship for practitioners on topics such as career success, goal setting, recovery from stress, and strategic corporate social responsibility. He has done so in practitioner outlets including The Conversation and the journal Organizational Dynamics, including suggesting readily accessible, practitioner-oriented action steps to apply research findings (e.g., Heslin, 2005, 2021, 2025; Heslin & Klehe, 2023; Heslin et al., 2023; Heslin & Ochoa, 2008; Heslin et al., 2009; Heslin & Turban, 2016). Both of us value the contributions of practitioners and recognize the worth of the initiatives they may take as well as how researchers may sometimes further these initiatives.
Approaches That Highlight Researchers in Supporting Roles
Our proposed Best Researcher(s) in a Supporting Role Award highlights the importance of practitioners’ concerns and initiatives, as well as academics’ responsive assistance to such concerns and initiatives. Thus, we are defining the Best Researcher(s) in a supporting role as one or more academics who, motivated by compassion and taking their lead from how practitioners frame and pursue concerns that are important for society, support practitioners in scholarly ways in addressing those concerns. We do this by depicting some of what such action might mean in practice, as illustrated by our nominees and by the criteria we set out.
First, our nominees’ work starts with a foundation in an important problem or aspiration that practitioners experience, frame, and address, rather than with a “solution” based on prior scholarly theorizing or research. That is, it is people acting in a practitioner role who recognize and define important concerns and take the initiative to address them. Second, our nominees’ contributions reflect valuable scholarship that academics are particularly well suited to carry out. This means that the academics make scholarly contributions that support practitioners’ initiatives. Third, our nominees’ contributions spring at least somewhat from compassion (cf. Frost, 1999; Rynes et al., 2012; Worline & Dutton, 2017), something that is not raised in discussions of academic impact, but that is crucial relationally. Fourth, our nominees’ contributions require extended temporal engagement, over multiple years. They are not brief encounters. Fifth, our nominees’ work clearly contributes to and advances practitioners’ specific concerns in meaningful ways that also address important societal concerns. Individually, these characteristics are not necessarily novel. But together, they are.
To illustrate these criteria, we now present the initial set of nominees for this award. They are from multiple professional disciplines and, hopefully, expand the ideas of management academics about what might be encompassed academically in ways supportive to practice.
Nominees for Best Researcher in a Supporting Role
Nomination 1: James Sulzer and Lindsay Karfeld-Sulzer for Their Work to Educate Rehabilitation Researchers
James Sulzer (https://www.metrohealth.org/center-for-rehabilitation-research/researchers/james-sulzer) had been a rehabilitation researcher for two decades when, in the spring of 2020, his and his wife Lindsay's four-year-old daughter Livie sustained a severe traumatic brain injury while playing in their back yard. Once Livie returned from the hospital, James and Lindsay—who is also a rehabilitation researcher (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-sulzer-phd/)—struggled considerably with how best to care for her.
Sulzer had expected that his academic specialty would be helpful. However, what he learned and reported in a Boston Globe article (Sulzer, 2024, p. 67) was that: Rehabilitation engineering is utterly unaware of the real problems of families affected by neurological injury and the academic system is missing real input from the people on whose behalf we are working. This problem is especially true in the rehabilitation community, where researchers often do not have personal experience with the disability they are studying and thus cannot sufficiently understand the problems of those affected. I know this because I was one of those researchers.
Sulzer and Karfield-Sulzer leveraged their personal anguish into concrete guidance for enhancing the end-user-oriented development of their field. For instance, in their scholarly paper, Sulzer and Karfield-Sulzer (2021) sought to inform and motivate rehabilitation engineering researchers by advancing a set of questions for designers to consider as they create and evaluate new technologies for pediatric rehabilitation. Besides this article being accessed over 2900 times in the ensuing months (as of this writing among the highest number of times for the journal in which it was published), Sulzer has continued to present his insights through large numbers of conference presentations and grand rounds on this topic at medical schools and the US National Institutes of Health. Those presentations have prompted rehabilitation engineering researchers to home in on the concerns of traumatic brain injury patients and their caregivers (Sulzer, personal communication, 2024).
As one example, Parise et al. (2023, p. 6) note that the affordable intervention they developed to help children with neurological disabilities carry out activities of daily living “addresses several of the questions to developers of rehabilitation technology made by Sulzer and Karfeld-Sulzer”. As another example, Fernandes et al. (2024, p. 2), in a systematic review of parents’ experience of children with brain injury undergoing rehabilitation, note that “as described by Sulzer and Karfeld-Sulzer, parents describe an ambiguous loss as they do not know to what extent their children will recover, which makes their grieving process more challenging.” They added that “To our knowledge, no previous review consolidated parents’ experiences of their child's neurorehabilitation journey during the first year following ABI, hence this systematic review… (which) “aimed to explore parents’ experiences while their children with ABI are accessing neurorehabilitation services during the first year following injury.”
Nomination 2: Denise Rousseau for her Research and Theorizing Inspired by her Father's Employment Experience
Denise Rousseau is the H. J. Heinz II University Professor of Organizational Behavior and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and the Tepper School of Business. Her father Edward: “was a cable splicer for the telephone company, a job he started a month after being discharged from the US Navy in 1946. He was a smart guy who read two newspapers a day, loved history, the San Francisco Giants, and coaching Little League. Needing to support his mother and family, he went straight to work after the war when he would rather have gone to college to become a history teacher” (Rousseau, 2020, p. 3).
Rousseau (2005, p. 191) noted that “although his work as a telephone company lineman and then cable splicer … was physically somewhat hard, it was the political and abusive behavior from telephone company foremen and managers that my father talked about at dinner”. She (2020, p. 3) added that “… my siblings and I share stories of what we did whenever the foreman would call the house trying to get my dad to work overtime. Dad avoided answering the phone at night and on weekends: If the company called, he would have to go back to work—turning down a direct request to do overtime wasn’t an option”. He would often say, “There has to be a way to keep work from grinding men down, grinding men down, grinding men down” (2005, p. 191).
Edward's demeaning experience inspired Rousseau's academic quest to explore how employees’ working lives might be improved. That is, his dissatisfaction with his job and career “led me to focus on the work lives of workers, and especially of employees, those who work for somebody aside from themselves” (2005, p. 191). She (2005, p. 192) “began wondering how employers could be helped to anticipate the impact of their actions on workers, and what workers might do on their own behalf”. She pursued this curiosity through extensive interdisciplinary reading and discussions with scholarly colleagues, executive MBA students, and employees about her emerging understanding of relationships between supervisors and employees.
Rousseau eventually formalized what she learned in her Psychological Contract Theory about the beliefs individuals hold regarding the terms of exchange agreements between themselves and their employers. Her 1995 book Psychological Contracts in Organizations won the George R. Terry Book Award from the AOM. Rousseau (2020, p. 10) “dedicated it to my dad and gave him a bound preprint for his 70th birthday”.
Psychological contract theory supports employees’ lives at work in multiple ways. These include enabling employees to explore and understand mutual expectations with their employers, and perhaps even negotiate idiosyncratic deals (Rousseau, 2015), that provide for personally preferred arrangements regarding their pay, tasks, career development, and flexible work options. Rousseau has contributed decades of productive scholarship focused on directly supporting and enhancing the quality of employees’ lives at work (e.g., Barends & Rousseau, 2018) and has presented and published it widely in outlets for practitioners as well as academics (e.g., Rousseau, 1995, 2004).
Nomination 3: Multiple Researchers for Their Evaluations of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library
Dolly Parton (https://dollyparton.com/), an extremely successful entertainer, wanted to give back to her community in East Tennessee from the time she became a successful performer. She and some close collaborators established the Dollywood Foundation (https://imaginationlibrary.com/the-dollywood-foundation/) as a means to do this.
Parton explored with the Foundation staff members how to do something that would foster education in a way that would honor her father, who had never learned to read. She and the foundation staff members considered and tested different ideas. Eventually, according to the film The Library that Dolly Built (Geidner, 2020), Foundation staff asked kindergarten teachers: “What's the one factor that when children come to kindergarten that can dictate their success in kindergarten or their lack of success in kindergarten and here locally, it was unanimous. It was, has a child been read to or not on a frequent basis? …Then it was pretty easy to connect those dots to say, well, we can provide the books to inspire the parents to read to their children so the children can come to school better prepared to learn.” This was the rationale for what became the Imagination Library.
The Imagination Library (https://imaginationlibrary.com; Conyers, 2012) is a book gifting program accompanied by a well-articulated strategy (https://imaginationlibrary.com/news-resources/research/) for accomplishing short term (an enhanced home literacy environment), intermediate (increased emerging literary skills), and long term (kindergarten literacy readiness) impacts in fostering literacy. Starting in 1995 in Sevier County in East Tennessee (USA) where Parton was born and raised, it mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five—no matter their family's income, race, or other demographic variable —in the cities, counties, states, and countries where it operates. As of 2025, it is established in parts of all 50 US states and four other (English-speaking) countries (Australia, Canada, Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom). As of February, 2025, it had gifted more than 270 million books to children around the world (https://imaginationlibrary.com/over-270-million-free-books-gifted-as-of-february-2025/).
A large number of academics not previously affiliated with the Imagination Library (e.g., Galea et al., 2024; Harvey, 2018; Neyer et al., 2021; Prahl, 2023 Ridzi et al., 2017; Samiei et al., 2016; Skibbe & Foster, 2019; Waldron, 2018) have conducted evaluations of how well the Imagination Library fosters children's kindergarten literacy readiness as well as other potential benefits for families and their communities. They have done so in a variety of settings in the US, including Syracuse, NY (Ridzi et al., 2017), Memphis, TN (Samiei et al., 2016), northwestern Pennsylvania (Waldron, 2018), Grant County, NM (Harvey, 2018), in central New York State (Singh et al., 2015), and in a central Texas county (Prahl, 2023). All of them find positive impacts of the Imagination Library program on kindergarten age literacy. In addition, Galea et al. (2024) examined the effects of the various reading practices that result from the imagination library in Tamworth, Australia, and found very positive outcomes there as well.
Most of these studies pay particular attention to children from families that have less access to resources such as books than is the case for most middle-class white children. These studies include Harvey (2018; low-income students and a large Hispanic population); Prahl (2023, low-income families); Singh et al. (2015; refugee children), Skibbe and Foster (2019; lower SES families) and Waldron (2018, low-income families). Their studies' outcomes make a compelling case that the imagination library benefits the great majority of the children it reaches who are less well off, and thus support its ongoing mission.
Nomination 4: Ann Burgess for her Contributions to the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI
Ann Burgess is a Psychiatric Nurse Clinical Specialist on the faculty of the Connell School of Nursing at Boston College whose work has focused on victims of trauma and abuse (https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/cson/faculty-research/faculty-directory/ann-burgess.html). She has been particularly concerned about victims of rape (e.g., Burgess & Holmstrom, 1974). While she started her career focusing on victims, in the 1990s she was drawn into studying the perpetrators of crime by the newly formed Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) of the FBI (Douglas & Olshaker, 1998).
Members of the BSU were trying to understand what makes someone become a violent criminal. With no training, they began interviewing some notorious prisoners using an informal approach and recording the interviews. But they recognized that they did not know how to understand or categorize the information they collected. One of them, Roy Hazelwood, knew of the work Burgess had done on rape and its psychological consequences, and thought she could help them. Burgess later recounted that when he contacted her he said (Burgess & Constantine, 2021, p. 23): I suspect we've been looking at this whole problem backwards. We wind up with statistics that help measure the scope of a problem. Whereas you managed to drill down into the human element of what's going on and I'm interested to know how you did that. I'd like you to come (to our office) to give a lecture on your research. I think that would go a long way in helping our agents learn something valuable about victimology and violent sexual offenders.’
Burgess met with the BSU agents and listened to the recordings of the interviews they had conducted. She told them that there was a lot there but added (Burgess & Constantine, 2021, p. 27): There's a lot missing at this point: background information, upbringing, history of violence… but all of that can be fixed by formalizing your approach and coming up with the right methodology. Thus, I began by developing a data instrument that was made up of five separate sections on fifty-seven color-coded pages that included 488 items per individual criminal and that would address everything from offender demographics to victim characteristics, assailant motives, victim selection, assault tactics, assault characteristics, and myriad other forensic details.
She added that “The resulting data collection tool was deftly simple. It looked like a questionnaire, and it read like a questionnaire, but its true function was to subtly guide the conversation while keeping the agent in control.”
Douglas and Olshaker (1999, p. 27), speaking on behalf of the FBI's BSU, related that “Ann also developed the parameters and rigorous standards that helped us transform our anecdotal forays into this heart of darkness into a real and useful study.” She also contributed considerably to a substantial crime classification manual (Douglas et al., 2013) that has been widely used by law enforcement agents, a “landmark accomplishment” comparable to the Diagnostic Standards Manual used by Psychologists, but for types of crimes (Kocsis, 2016). Further, a documentary series, “Mastermind: to think like a killer” (Fuller, 2024) that focuses on Burgess's work with the FBI is being broadcast by Hulu.
Nomination 5: Timothy Neale for his Ethnographic Research Illuminating and Propagating Australian Indigenous Approaches to Fire Management
Timothy Neale is an anthropologist and Science and Technology Studies scholar at Deakin University in Australia. His research addresses the politics of settler and Indigenous relations to lands and waters, and his work in this realm has focused to a considerable extent on fire management. This work is important, because Indigenous people on the Australian continent have used fire as a land management tool for tens of thousands of years (Gammage, 2011), shaping ecosystems across the continent through practices often referred to today as cultural burning. Such fire regimes involve low-intensity, small-scale burns, carefully timed and placed to promote biodiversity, regenerate landscapes, maintain cultural sites, and sustain food sources. Fire is understood not as a threat, but as an integral part of caring for Country, woven deeply into Indigenous knowledge systems, spirituality, and Law (Gammmage, 2011; Pascoe, 2014).
Despite the depth and success of Indigenous practices, colonial settlement beginning in 1788 disrupted traditional fire management, replacing it with Western models that treated fire as destructive, and sought to suppress it. Over recent centuries, Indigenous fire knowledge has been largely ignored within mainstream land management (e.g., Buizer & Kurz, 2016). This is the case even though multiple studies show its practices are more effective means of fire management than mainstream approaches (Bird et al., 2016; Russell-Smith et al., 2013).
Neale, a non-Indigenous Australian anthropologist, has contributed significantly to documenting and amplifying Indigenous fire practices in modern academic and policy contexts. His research approach, relational ethnography (Desmond, 2014; Neale, 2023) is notable in this regard. Relational ethnographers do not focus attention on one group or place, but on relationships, connections, and influence patterns between and among groups. Neale's (2017) research has critically examined how settler colonialism systematically displaced Indigenous fire knowledge, framing it as backward or dangerous. He has also analysed the structural barriers — such as risk-averse bureaucracies and rigid regulatory frameworks — that continue to limit the reintroduction of Indigenous-led fire management (Neale, 2018). Finally, he has discussed and humanized practices associated with cultural burns as non-Indigenous actors seek to engage with them (Neale et al., 2019; Neale, 2023). He advocates for the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty over fire governance and stresses that cultural burning should be led by Indigenous knowledge holders, whose practices are based on a profound and enduring relationship with Country.
Neale has elevated awareness of the wisdom of Indigenous fire management approaches into broader public, academic, and governmental discourse. He has also helped enable Indigenous-led initiatives such as the Firesticks Alliance, https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-10/firesticks-alliance-indigenous-corporation-case-study.pdf, which exemplify how ancient cultural practices can address modern challenges of ecological restoration, climate resilience, and bushfire risk reduction.
Nomination 6: Hans Hansen for his Contributions to Reducing Use of the Death Penalty in Texas
Hans Hansen is an Associate Professor in the Rawls School of Business at Texas Tech University. As he notes in his book, Narrative Change: How Changing the Story Can Transform Society, Business, and Ourselves (Hansen, 2020), from which much of this description is drawn (along with other articles that flesh out related dimensions of this work, e.g., Adler & Hansen, 2012; Hansen, 2011; Hansen & Trank, 2016), early in his career he was expecting and hoping to be a “hermit” professor focused on getting tenure (p. 13). However, he received a cold phone call that fundamentally changed the course of his career, not always comfortably.
The phone call came from Michael Block, whose job involved organized continuing education training for lawyers seeking to become death penalty qualified in Texas. Because the pool of attorneys capable of serving as effective counselors in death penalty cases in Texas was so small, Block was starting a new “permanent death penalty defense team,” (p. 24) and was looking for “anyone who knew anything about team building” to help create the team. This team would replace the current court-appointed defense system, which had not worked well. That is, at that point in Texas, in capital trials, murderers were sentenced to death (rather than life in prison with no possibility of parole) more than 90 percent of the time (p. 12). Further, race (of the victim and of the defendant; p. 20), more than any aspect of a crime itself, was the primary determinant in whether someone was convicted of murder and received the death penalty (p. 59).
To help the new death penalty defense team challenge the judicial proceedings in death penalty cases, and to save prisoners’ lives, Hansen helped the team develop a novel narrative approach. This approach included a major change in how defense attorneys interacted with trial judges. That is, the team began “the courtroom practice of requesting written rulings on every motion and objection. It seems small, but this one tiny practice gave us two chances to save our client's life. … Because the judge knew that the rulings would be reviewed, the judge quit automatically ruling for the prosecution every time. … They knew we were going to force them to explain themselves, a departure from current practice, so they had to be more considerate in their rulings” (Hansen, 2020, pp. 16–17). In addition, this practice “made every legal rationale “visible” and available for appellate courts to reconsider. …. If the legal rationale was problematic, or the wrong case law was cited, the ruling could be overturned by higher courts. It could result in a retrial (p. 69)”. “We were not really arguing the motions for this judge anyway. We were … looking way ahead, arguing to the Supreme Court, which might eventually review this death penalty case.” (p. 70)
Over the years, Hansen also helped the team develop other uses of narrative, such as teaching jury members how to deliberate in a case so they didn’t feel they had to agree with others. For example, he helped the team learn to convey to jury members a metaphor of a group going out for dinner, where everyone is expected to make their own dinner choices, as opposed to going to a movie, where everyone has to make the same choice. One result of all this was that by the time Hansen's engagement with the team ended after six years, its “record was 70 wins (i.e. life in prison) and 1 death sentence” (p. 8), a radical change from what had been the case before.
Discussion
The Initial Criteria for Award-Worthy Research in a Supporting Role
In Table 1, we summarize the categories that comprise our initial criteria for supportive research as they are exemplified by our nominees. This table makes evident both the importance and variety of possible academic contributions to important practitioner initiatives.
How Our Six Nominees Met the Criteria for Best Researcher in a Supporting Role.
Reflections on the Nominees and the Initial Criteria Summarized in Table 1
First, in all six cases. it was practitioners who defined the problem and then took steps to respond to it. This could include academics in a practitioner role, sometimes with regard to family members. In the Sulzers’ case, they were parents dealing with their daughter who suffered a traumatic brain injury. In Denise Rousseau's case she as a daughter was recognizing the suffering of her father at work. Dolly Parton's Imagination Library came about to a considerable extent because of Parton's recognition of the serious problems encountered by those living in her county–especially her father–who could not read. Two of the cases illustrated others expressing concerns and contacting the academic. In Ann Burgess’ case, it was the FBI Behavioral Science Unit identifying a need to determine characteristics of violent criminals and recognizing that they did not have the skill to do this. In Hans Hansen's case, it was a request by the founder of the new permanent death penalty defense team for help in team building. One case made evident how academics’ research may foster appreciation of longstanding practitioner concerns; Timothy Neale's research on how societies manage environmental risks revealed that mainstream environmental governance and practices largely ignored the long, sophisticated histories of proactive Indigenous land care.
Second, in each situation, the academics involved made scholarly contributions. Sulzer and Karfield-Sulzer wrote scholarly papers that reflected their own experiences with rehabilitation research and asked new questions of scholars in the area, questions that have led to new types of academic inquiries. Rousseau developed psychological contract theory and idiosyncratic deal theory as a way of addressing the concerns of people in similar situations to her father. The multiple researchers who have investigated the effects of the imagination library have carried out evaluations that have contributed to scholarship about developing literacy in children, especially those who were less well off, as well as indicating the success of the imagination library. Burgess taught the FBI Behavioral Science Unit how to conduct interviews and analyze responses and also helped to develop protocols for determining the characteristics of serial murderers. Neale published anthropological research that explored and highlighted deeply contextual Indigenous fire practices and also helped Indigenous people's attempts to be recognized. Hansen helped the death penalty defense team develop and implement creative approaches based on narrative theory in, literally, life or death situations.
Third, all of the nominees demonstrated compassion. Dutton et al. (2006, p. 60) define compassion as “noticing, feeling, and responding to another's suffering”. Sometimes compassion was demonstrated for family members, as was the case for Sulzer and Karfield-Sulzer, Rousseau, and Parton. Sometimes it was for children with less access to reading resources, as was the case for researchers of the Imagination Library. Sometimes it was for victims of crime, as has been the case for Burgess, whose work has shown compassion towards victims throughout her career (Szulecki, 2017). Sometimes the compassion was for disenfranchised Indigenous people, as shown by Neale. And sometimes it was for victims of the criminal justice system, as shown by Hansen.
Fourth, each of the researchers’ engagements unfolded over extended time periods. Sulzer and Karfield Sulzer have been involved since their daughter's TBI in 2020, Rousseau and Burgess for decades of their careers, the Imagination Library researchers since at least the early 2000s, Neale for the last decade, and Hansen for a six-year engagement (during most of which he was untenured, and worried about whether the work would prevent him from getting tenure. He did receive tenure). This deep, sustained involvement clearly extended well beyond standard academic approaches to impact.
Fifth, each of the researchers made meaningful contributions to practice that were also meaningful contributions to society. By developing new questions for designers to consider as they created and evaluated new technologies for pediatric rehabilitation, Sulzer and Karfield Sulzer have drawn attention to larger issues of dealing with traumatic brain injuries that have inspired subsequent research (e.g., Parise et al., 2023). Rousseau's work on psychological contracts and idiosyncratic deals not only helps practitioners to improve specific organizations, but has also revised taken-for-granted assumptions in society about relationships between employees and employers (e.g., Kraak et al., 2024). The researchers studying the impacts of the Imagination Library have made salient a very important way of fostering literacy in children whose families have had access to comparatively few resources (e.g., https://imaginationlibrary.com/news-resources/research/). Burgess's work has helped develop ways to determine the characteristics of violent criminals and thus foster the FBI's ability to capture such criminals. Neale's research and advocacy have bolstered Indigenous respect and authority
Some Implications of the Nominees’ Contributions
Some of what we have discussed is quite consistent with contemporary approaches to academic work and impact, such as making sound scholarly contributions that address important societal issues. But much of it differs from such standard approaches.
First, it is practitioners who are recognizing and taking initiative in relation to a concern, including, perhaps people who are or become academics who in their personal lives are taking the initiative with regard to some serious situation of personal concern. Second, we have focused on the central role of compassion for people who are deprived, suffering, or marginalized. Compassion is virtually never discussed as a crucial part of impact, let alone of rigorous scholarship. In fact, scholars have typically been encouraged (Kitcher, 2001; Merton, 1973) to be dispassionate and objective when conducting research. As we have shown here, however, the research itself may be objective, but the motivating impetus for it may be compassion for other people. Perhaps being in a supporting role makes it easier for scholars to approach impact with compassion but still maintain a level of objectivity that helps offer evidence-based, useful counsel. Third, our proposed award emphasizes the importance of engagement over an extended period of time. There is no such expectation in REF-based approaches to impact.
Finally, our examples come from many fields, not just management. This is in part because we are trying to imagine a broad range of supportive research beyond what we is typically expressed in our own field. We want to stimulate new ideas, not provide definitive answers. Some of our examples also foster awareness of how someone who is an academic by profession also has a fundamentally human side.
Invitation to Readers
We encourage readers to build on and more fully specify both criteria for this award and scholars who should be nominated for it. We also urge scholars to consider how you might personally engage in a potentially nomination-worthy supporting researcher role, and practitioners to reflect on how you may collaborate with scholars to refine and amplify your initiatives in ways illustrated by our six nominees. In addition, prior to choosing the first Researcher(s) to whom this Oscar will be awarded, we invite readers to think about:
Are there surprises in our list of nominees? Are there obvious snubs? Are YOU worthy of nomination and, possibly, winning this award?
Drumroll
It is now time for readers and members of our Academy (that is, the readers of this article) to cast our ballots. Which nominee gets your vote to win the inaugural award for Best Researcher(s) in a Supporting Role?
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the assistance and helpful comments of Dave Hannah, Maryanne Loughry, Michael Smith, Richard Stackman and an anonymous reviewer on earlier drafts of this paper.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.