Is This Research Relevant? The Role of Scholars Practical Experience in Evaluating Managerial Relevance
Type
conference contribution
Date Issued
2026
Author(s)
Abstract
Marketing scholars routinely evaluate the managerial relevance of research during the publication process, yet little is known about how closely these evaluations align with practitioners’ assessments. Because managerial relevance is defined from a practitioner perspective, such evaluations may be challenging when scholars’ exposure to managerial contexts varies and is often limited. Usingpaired evaluations of submissions to a European marketing transfer journal—each independently reviewed by one scholar and one practitioner—we document that alignment between scholars’ and practitioners’ managerial relevance ratings is generally weak. Moreover, alignment is substantially higher when scholarly reviewers have recent practical experience and declines as experience becomes more temporally distant, a pattern corroborated by LOESS smoothing of the absolute scholar–practitioner rating gap. Together, these findings contribute to research on the academia–practice gap by identifying scholars’ recent practical experience as a key condition under which evaluations of managerial relevance more closely reflect practitioner assessments.
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Subject(s)
Division(s)
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Name
Is This Research Relevant_Abstract_ISMS2026.pdf
Size
40.76 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4205369ec65b773a05be0da22cd23642