Value Management Research by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

No matter how good a communicator you are, if you ask the wrong questions and pose them in the wrong areas then no amount of accessible or skillful communication will produce any sort of impact.

There is some skepticism throughout the management community about the value management research- who listens, who notices, what consequences does it have? This is something that scholars and also potential users of management research are increasingly concerned about. How can research into management issues be both of high scholarly quality and of real use to practitioners? How do we give management research "scholarly impact"?There are four considerations:

The first is that scholars in the area should have the aspiration to do both scholarly and practical research work- to tackle the "double hurdle".

The second, the quality of the relationships of the academics and their ability to sometimes work through "knowledge brokers", or intermediaries.

The third is the quality of ideas.

Finally, the co-production of research by scholars and practitioners.

The Double Hurdle

Research into management often seems to have a dual basis-you either have an impact on scholarship, or you have an impact on the worlds of policy and practice. However, we should aspire to meet a double hurdle, where we seek to do work that has both a quality of scholarship and a practical impact.

The reality is that people diverge and define themselves either as a scholar, spending all their time writing articles and books; or others who define themselves as applied researchers or consultants. These don't worry too much about where their work is published, but are much more concerned about who they can influence in the "real" world. It's rare to find people who want to produce work of the highest scholarly quality and deal with practical issues at the same time. we should encourage people to try to do this.

This will involve a cultural change to shift scholars focus from publishing output, writing articles and books-which to me is an "intermediate good"- to the final good., which is having scholarly and practical impact. A lot of incentive systems in academia have unwittingly focused people on the intermediate good. Published research is valuable, but somehow we have to turn people's efforts from this intermediate good to the final good. That will not be easy.

Relationships
There is the problem of engaging with potential users of research. The one thing we know about user engagement is that very often it depends on how particular issues are regarded at the time by potential users-are these issues rising or falling in their list of priorities?

Often, too, they become interested in something because they know, or have heard of , the academic involved. It's really about brands. For example, a famous writer can become a "brand" and , therefore , what he or she says is likely to generate interest and to be accepted as authentic. The same is true of some research centers and other institutions that have gained general acclaim. These, too, can be characterized as a brand.

Potential users of research can be fickle because they are so influenced by branding, and by reputation of individual academics or of the centers where they work.

User receptivity is unpredictable and person -dependent. It's built on relationships. If the director of an institution changes, something may go with them. Some users may walk away because their allegiance was to that person.

It's also dependent on context and timing. As an academic you can come up with really great concept or idea-let's say it's about technological change -and then find that there's absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. Three years later something has stirred up people's consciousness and everybody is fixated with technological change. This means that academics have to be visible over the long term. They have to have sustainable long term-relationships.

What this means for younger scholars is that they not only have to develop social capital. Some of them may know this intuitively. But generally they don't go out and deliberately build networks. If you want your work to have impact , then you must be a networker; not only build relationships, but also know how to sustain and exploit them.

These networks must be global. One of the the problem at the moment is that some are becoming rather self-concerned with their own academic institutions. This is fine. But if it is at the expense of neglecting other institutions, then it is a mistake. Networks must be global; building networks in North America and other areas is particularly important to this.

Network should also extend to the corporate world. If you are an expert in say, the financial services, you need to know chief executives, senior people, strategy people and other financial businesses. It also means having network inside the government, knowing senior civil servants, consulting firms, think tanks, even journalists, who often act as translators and amplifiers of academic work in the management field. The fact that someone writes about your work in, for instance , the Times, makes people interested.

The Quality of Ideas

Another issue is the belief that some people have that publication is impact: "If only I could write or talk better, then there wouldn't be a problem. We are such a dreadful communicators but if only I could spread the word better then there wouldn't be a problem."

This is a fantasy and trivializes the problem. We cannot deny the importance of skill writing or talking; we are in the influence business and people are influenced through the written and spoken word. But no matter how good a communicator you are, if you ask the wrong questions and pose them in a wrong areas then no amount of accessible or skillful communication will produce a sort of impact.

Dissemination is not impact. You can't guarantee impact just by writing and talking well. You have to ask the right questions, pursue the right themes at the right time. Accessibility on its own is not enough. We need to ensure our message is really understood.

Co-Production

This leads on to key proposition of co-production.

I can sit here and work on my own or with other academics and that's fine. But if I say I want to work with the major consultancy on something, it doesn't mean setting up an advisory group so that they come here and give me advice.

Co- Production here is that early and continuous engagement increases the probability of impact. There is no set model for co-production , and it is encouraging that many scholars are now willing to experiment with various forms of engagement to see which works most effectively.

The complete opposite of co-production is what one might call "smash-and grab" research, which amazingly enough, is still going on. Smash -and -grab research is where a scholar can gain access to an organization; grab the information and data, and then write it all up in scholarly isolation.

Not only is this unfair to other scholars, who may come along later and be refused access to the same organization, because of the poor behavior of their predecessors.

Co-production is involvement in the whole research cycle from inception  to publication. This increases the probability of impact; you can't guarantee it, of course. But people should experiment in the co-production of knowledge.

Co-Production depends on relationships. You can's do it if you don't get out beyond the boundaries of the university. Go and meet people, engage with them, talk to them and develop good personal relationships so that they say " well I don't mind working with this guy, it sounds OK, we might get something good out of it". It's fundamentally about building relationships and a willingness to experiment.

The corporate world is much more open to this kind of thing than might be imagined. But again it's often very person specific. You can go to any number of people in a big company, most will be indifferent, but you will find some who see the value in what you are proposing.

They see the value because they are going to learn from direct engagement with the scholar. They will be capturing the finding earlier, not waiting to read a great academic tome three years down the track. If you're working as a team then you are capturing the value as it is being created rather than waiting for it to materialize.

Other thing you can do, if you are engaged like this, is to help shape the project: that increases the commitment of people to the process. They are also much more likely to co-fund if they co-produce. This has been going on for ten years in areas such as engineering, it's nothing new, it's not some great invention.

This may be seen by some academic as very close to a form of consulting, as not "pure" research but becoming an applied researcher.

But it need be. Academics can fashion and shape the work so that all the interests of the various parties are met without compromising the important academic values of independence. It is perfectly possible for scholars to manage the dual activity of high involvement with users, and high independence form those same users. In doing double-hurdle research it is important that we maintain the capacity for mold  breaking and challenge.

My own experience of working with people in business is that they are interested in ideas and concepts in their own right. They are quite willing to be challenged with important ideas on important subjects.