The value of business school academic research

JH Oosthuizen PhD

Without a vibrant foundation in academic research and development, management practice will find
it difficult to cope in the “knowledge based” economy in the 21 st century. Unfortunately, the value of
academic research at business schools is generally underestimated in terms of the contribution it
makes to the world of work and the people engaged in solving managerial challenges faced in the
21st century business landscape.

To appreciate the value of academic research, an understanding of the process through which it is
produced is needed; an understanding that often lacks outside of academia. Generally, a research
project has its origin with industry-relevant questions that hold potential for industry practitioners to
better manage certain aspect of the organisation. The emphasis, however, is on rigorous inquiry,
because research that does not have rigor as foundation cannot be summarily trusted. The reliability
of a research report is therefore dependant on its degree of thoroughness and precision.

It is this depth and narrow focus that differentiates academic research from research conducted by
consultants and industry practitioners, which generally has to do with urgent resolve of current
problems in specific organisational settings and not intended to provide widely applicable principles
to related organisational problems. Academic research is more concerned with the long-term
understanding of the function, cause and consequence of phenomena within multiple business and
organisational environments. Thus, if taken in isolation academic research might appear irrelevant to
practice. Granted, no individual research project is likely to help managers improve business
decision-making. It is the cumulative body of knowledge resulting from a stream of research and
gets published as a series of reports that becomes relevant to management practice. The value of
academic research must therefore be seen from a holistic perspective, in that it is in this collection of
rigorous and organised investigations that access to valuable findings for application by management
practitioners are to be found.

In addition to research by academic subject-matter experts at business schools, the importance of

the dissertations of MBA students as contributors to the cumulative research output of business
schools is therefore also evident. Coming from industry, students have contextual experience and
can relate their dissertation research with problems or opportunities within that context.
Dissertations that meet the standards of rigorous inquiry also lend themselves to the extraction of
concise research papers for publication in journals where learning from multiple investigations is
distilled, and the emphasis is on contemporary relevance of the findings and concepts presented.
Because of the strict review and editorial processes followed by these journals, readers can place
confidence in the researcher’s claims.

In an age where innovation is at a premium and “knowledge based” solutions are being pursued for
economic growth, it is essential that support for academic research conducted through business
schools is strengthened. Business schools have the potential to be incubators of discovery and
innovation in business- and management sciences, thus fuelling advances in all sectors of the
economy.
That said, much more can be done to develop relationships between business schools and industry.
The reciprocal effect implies that business school academics must understand industry’s needs and
challenges, while industry should assist with setting the research agenda. This exchange can be
achieved by industry serving on the advisory boards of business schools, doing guest lectures,
allowing requests for research access and volunteering their companies for case study compilation.