Bridging research to practice via action learning

ABSTRACT There is concern that management and business research favours rigour and theory over relevance and practice. There are pressures from funding councils for researchers to show more impact. The paper shows how the bridge between the academic world and the world of practice can be served by action learning. Consideration is given to the difficulties that sustain the disconnection of business and management research before recent ideas on theories of knowledge translation are presented. Using the example of an article published for an academic journal relating to futures and foresight in organisations, the paper shows how action learning provides a vehicle to complete the process of application. Two examples of the introduction of Futures and Foresight Learning are presented, including how impact was made during the Covid 19 pandemic.