The Scholar-Practitioner within Management - Perspectives and Prospects

The Scholar-Practitioner has been defined as “an ideal of
professional excellence grounded in theory and research, informed
by experiential knowledge, and motivated by personal values,
political commitments, and ethical conduct” (McClintock, 2004,
p.393). Whilst such professionals emerged in the medical sciences,
the idea has gained increasing traction within business and
management contexts. This PDW will present the perspectives
on the scholar-practitioner concept as it relates to: management
education; management research; and business executives teaching
within business schools; as well as the meaning the concept has
acquired in other professional disciplines.
This PDW speaks to the perennial interest in the theory-practice
interface for business and management schools. Since 2014 the
Research Excellence Framework (REF) has placed significant
emphasis on the impact of academic research. The newly instituted
Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) will also require business
schools to present the case for the impact of their teaching. In the
discourse surrounding the REF and TEF, a sharp division of academic
work between research and teaching seems increasingly untenable.
Indeed Stern’s review of the REF argued that the “REF impact
element [should] more broadly recognise the impact of research
on teaching” (HEFCE, 2016, p. 31). It is our contention that these
debates relating to research, teaching and professional practice
are embodied in the ideal of the scholar-practitioner. We argue that
discussing the meaning of the concept, and case studies of actual
professional practice, are of important contemporary interest.