ABSTRACT
There are two unspoken assertions to chapter 23: A scholar should want to see his or her ideas enter practice, and should make some effort to do so. Many good reasons support these values. The research we do is about people in organizations, and the practice of management is the formal process of influencing how people function in organizations. As a result, there is a natural relationship. Managers are interested in moving optimally toward whatever goals they set for themselves and their organizational sphere, and academic research is frequently an ideal unbiased way to discover which techniques are optimal. Managers are interested in solving problems, and our research provides a set of techniques to weigh alternative solutions. Common interest is apparent, but if that were not sufficient, successful contract research, consulting, and publishing in the practitioner media reward academics better than extra teaching and can assist in building scholarly reputations. Equally important, research within an organizational setting is more obviously applicable to management and far more interesting than research done at a distance with a survey or in a laboratory.
