Interweaving Scholarship and Practice: A Pathway to Scholarly Impact

We contribute to debates on the nature of scholarly impact and question the largely uncontested framing of impact that posits a gap between the research outputs of academics and their effect on management practice. We examine how, by distancing ourselves from this concept of a "relevance gap" to be crossed by academics translating their research outputs for practice, additional modes of scholarship may lead to impact. We present the findings of a multimethod qualitative study of the management practices of DBA graduates and add to an understanding of scholarly impact, proposing that through teaching, academics can develop managers who generate impact without requiring a translation of original research or without an academic working alongside them. Our theoretical contribution is a processual view of the interweaving of scholarship and practice, drawing on the ontological stance of Mary Parker Follett. This conceptualization of interweaving leads to a new understanding of the scholar-practitioner that eschews current dualist framings of scholarship plus practice to one of scholarship with practice. We also add to the literature on the DBA by showing that graduates of the program have the potential to be these scholar-practitioners.