RRBM Webinar: Cocreating Rigorous and Relevant Knowledge

RRBM Webinar: Cocreating Rigorous and Relevant Knowledge

Speaker: Dr Garima Sharma

November 12, 2020; 10 am (Eastern) / 3 pm (London)

In this doctoral webinar, Dr Garima Sharma discussed how management researchers can impact practice and help address grand challenges such as poverty and climate change. One way that researchers impact practice is by cocreating knowledge with managers such that the knowledge produced is not only rigorous but also relevant. However, research impact on practice is a desired but elusive goal. Research-practice knowledge cocreation is ripe with opportunities but also fraught with challenges. Research and practice have self-referential knowledge systems, such that researchers and managers are faced with tensions when they work together. In this seminar, Garima focused on her research and experience with knowledge cocreation. She addressed topics such as research-practice tensions and the process to navigate these, building theory that is rigorous and relevant, and claiming an identity as an impact scholar within institutional systems that may not be supportive of such an identity.

Recommended readings

• Bansal, P., Bertels, S., Ewart, T., MacConnachie, P., & O’Brien, J. 2012. Bridging the Research-Practice Gap. Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(1): 73–92. doi: https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2011.0140
• Bansal, P., & Sharma, G. In preparation. The role of management researchers in global crises: Insights from the innovation learning lab. To be published in J. M. Bartunek (Ed.), Global crises and the impact of social Science, Routledge.
• Bartunek JM, Rynes SL. Academics and Practitioners Are Alike and Unlike: The Paradoxes of Academic–Practitioner Relationships. Journal of Management. 2014;40(5):1181-1201. doi:10.1177/0149206314529160
• Sharma, G., & Bansal, P. In press. Partnering up: Including managers as research partners in systematic reviews. Organizational Research Methods.
• Sharma, G., & Bansal, P. 2020. Cocreating rigorous and relevant knowledge. Academy of Management Journal, 63(2): 386-410.
• NBS cocreation resources: https://www.nbs.net/cocreation

About the speaker:

Garima Sharma is an assistant professor and director of BIS in Social Entrepreneurship at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. Her research focuses on sustainability and related tension of purpose and profits. She is also interested in understanding how research impacts practice, and the topics of rigor–relevance and knowledge cocreation. Her research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, Organizational Research Methods and Organization Studies. She partners with Network for Business Sustainability to create resources for researchers to engage in cocreation. She has also co-organized the Impact Scholar Community, a community for early career scholars who care about impact of their research on practice.
https://www.garimasharma.info/
https://twitter.com/garimasharma11

Watch here the recording