Paper info

A qualitative study of IMP researchers? perceptions of ?managerial relevance?

Paul Ankers and Ross Brennan

The paper was published at the 20th IMP-conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2004.

The creation of new knowledge is the primary goal of the academic research community, including researchers into interaction and networks in business markets. There are other stakeholders besides marketing practitioners who have a legitimate interest in the efforts of business academics. Nevertheless, many business-to-business researchers feel an affinity for the managerial community, within which many of them have either worked, or plied their trade as consultants, or both. Accordingly, they believe that managerial relevance is an important consideration in the research that they undertake. For a variety of reasons, they do not believe that interaction and networks research has made as much impact on management practice as they would like. Most obviously, academic researchers generally feel obliged to write interminable, abstruse articles in journals that managers never read (indeed have seldom ever heard of). How might we go about improving this state of affairs?