18 THINGS CONSULTING ACADEMICS MAY RECOGNIZE THEY’VE GOTTEN WRONG OVER THE DECADES:
#3. “Framing [interventions] as part of the (tedious and misplaced) practitioner/academic divide/gap debate.” — Prof. Org Psych, [RB], UK
A popular Organizational Psychology professor and consultant in the UK recognized that corporate interventions employing academics as consultants are a common problem-solving practice to find effective and positive changes in organizational social interaction. But there are constraints of consequence.
What is the “practitioner-academic divide?”
On the one hand, academicians who consult with corporations may promote broad and ranging theories they’ve formed or learned about. They may even use those theories to frame their organizational consulting proposals in ways that purport to address large-scale societal or global problems. The additional dilemma for the academician as a consultant is that neither the practitioner nor academician may possess a specific organization’s data, i.e., evidence, necessary to connect the theories to corporate realities and shift into praxis mode to develop practical applied solutions. (What constitutes evidence will be discussed in future posts.)
On the other hand, manager-practitioners recognize an internal dilemma. C-Suites…
