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Journal of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

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Pure and Applied Research in Business How Shall the Twain Meet?

Volume 17, Number 3 Article by K Sankaran September, 2005

Pure and Applied Research in Business How Shall the Twain Meet? :

While the purpose of management research is to bring about positive fundamental change, there is always a nagging suspicion that research is antithetical to practice. This article argues that the traditional view of pure/applied research as a linear idea-application continuum has created an unnecessary standoff between the theoretical and practical standpoints, and proposes a more positive conceptualisation of business research.

The theory-practice continuum has three principal custodians _ the practitioner, the consultant and the researcher each with its separate referents: the situation, corresponding to first level knowledge or immediate, tactical level expertise; the organisation, corresponding to second level knowledge, required for making pre-meditated moves; and the idea, corresponding to third level knowledge, which is the ability to act in the light of the larger picture. While no institution or individual would strictly correspond to such archetypal role definitions, they help clarify the domain of the consultant as applied research and that of the researcher as pure research. Managers are called upon to exercise all three types of knowledge at different points. Each feeds into, and draws from, the others. The responsibility for generating knowledge depends on the knowledge referent in each case.

This view has implications on such matters as breadth and depth of research, research methodology, analytic induction and enumerative induction, mutuality of pure and applied research, primacy of referents, and expedient practice versus patient theory building. By clarifying the roles of the consultant and the researcher, it paves the way for a more fruitful collaboration between the two, and the marrying of theory with practice in more creative and productive ways. This will in turn allow practitioners to better reap the benefits of research.

Reprint No 05308