Academic research for impact

Relevant research is of great interest. I have commented on this topic over the years. For example, I spoke recently on the importance of research relevance in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants/Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (AICPA/CIMA) Academic Research for Impact Webinar Series (To view the recorded webinar, please see AICPA/CIMA Academic Research for Impact Webinar Series, Part 1 - https://sway.office.com/kbtAGFpCsoDn9bRT?ref=Link). I have also spoken about it at several doctoral seminars around the world; written about in the European Accounting Association (EAA) Newsletter (Van der Stede, 2012); and debated related challenges on an AICPA panel of the American Accounting Association (AAA)’s 2019 Management Accounting Section meeting (Make Management Accounting Research Happen: Opportunities, Challenges and Evidence from Attempts to Achieve Research Impact, Fort Lauderdale, 4 January 2019). The issue of research relevance is multifaceted and can be debated from numerous angles. In this editorial, I will take one particular angle - that is, by thinking about impact more explicitly in terms of how our research can seek to better connect with practice and the practitioner. Thus, I will not reflect on what research impact or relevance means or implies for a researcher’s career or how it is rated, “measured”, or debated in the academic community, including in universities and by the scholarly journals. Instead, I am taking a “practice view” on impact rather than an institutional view (e.g., what it means in terms of academic careers, university funding, etc.) or an epistemological view (e.g., what it means in terms of the nature of knowledge, publishing etc.). As a further general disclaimer, this piece should be read in the context of the “administrative sciences” (or management) as an applied science to the social sciences. That is broad enough, but obviously not all encompassing, and thus, readers should be cautioned about potentially misguided generalizations to other sciences.