Partnering Up: Including Managers as Research Partners in Systematic Reviews

Systematic reviews of academic research have not impacted management practice as much as many researchers had hoped. Part of the reason is that researchers and managers differ significantly in their knowledge systems—in both what they know and how they know it. Researchers can overcome some of these challenges by including managers as knowledge partners in the research endeavor; however, doing so is rife with challenges. This article seeks to answer, how can researchers and managers navigate the tensions related to differences in their knowledge systems to create more impactful systematic reviews? To answer this question, we embarked on a data-guided journey of the experience of the Network for Business Sustainability, which had undertaken 15 systematic reviews that involved researchers and managers. We interviewed previous participants of the projects, observed different systematic review processes, and collected archival data to learn more about researcher-manager collaborations in the systematic review process. This article offers guidance to researchers in imbricating academic with practical knowledge in the systematic review process.