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Businesspeople: Academics need your help to make business research relevant

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  • Huffman, Brian
  • Benson, Joy

Abstract

In the last two decades, industry-university collaborations (IUCs) in research and development in the hard sciences have become increasingly more successful and common. In contrast, successful IUCs in softer social sciences, such as business, remain relatively uncommon. But business research requires an even higher degree of collaboration than research in the hard sciences if its results are to be relevant to businesspeople. Fortunately, business academics are becoming more and more interested in collaborating with businesspeople. The purpose of this article is to motivate businesspeople to collaborate as well. We do this by showing the businessperson the historical origins of business research’s irrelevance, by describing the benefits the business world could receive from collaborative research, by showing why collaboration is especially needed in social sciences such as business, and by showing why academics cannot do relevant business research without practitioners’ help. Specifically, we will show that the businessperson’s help is needed to ensure that their priorities are met, to formulate the right research questions, to provide relevant data, and to contribute their problem-solving inventiveness.

Suggested Citation

  • Huffman, Brian & Benson, Joy, 2021. "Businesspeople: Academics need your help to make business research relevant," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 553-562.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:64:y:2021:i:4:p:553-562
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2021.02.018
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joel Bothello & Thomas J. Roulet, 2019. "The Imposter Syndrome, or the Mis‐Representation of Self in Academic Life," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 854-861, June.
    2. Robert Rybnicek & Roland Königsgruber, 2019. "What makes industry–university collaboration succeed? A systematic review of the literature," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 89(2), pages 221-250, March.
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