Editorial Introduction: The Requisite Bridge from Theory to Practice

This chapter philosophically identifies a widening of the gap between theory and practice across the spectrum of business research, and highlights the imperative of scholarly works to bridge this gap in a temporally ‘synchronous’ fashion, as opposed to the more ‘cyclical’ one diachronically adopted. The chapter is positioned against an incessantly shape-shifting global business environment, in which mainstream, time-honoured strategies are becoming increasingly irrelevant and incapable of dealing with new realities. It proposes that, while scholars and practitioners appear fully aware of these changes and are decisively geared towards successfully, albeit erratically, adapting to these, they also appear to have missed a critical factor of success underlying this process: namely, the rate of change of the business world measured against the rate of interrelationship between theory and practice. The authors specifically pose that the lack of congruence and the temporal relation of theory and practice in business, which constitute a diachronic inherent weakness of the field, are quietly and elusively becoming the Achilles’ heel of contemporary scholarly business research and, by extension, of business in general. They thus suggest a composed and equalised approach to theorisation of practice and, reversely, a practicability of theory that signifies a potential new approach to scientific works.