Luc Lagrandeur and Denise Fortier
academic community as well as for practitioners. Indeed, managerial problems as defined by real‐world practitioners provide relevance for the ensuing research life cycle, namely from problem identification to theoretical development, all the way to data analysis and communication of the findings. As purported by Benbasat and Zmud( 1999), academics can define the“ fundamental issues” of our discipline with the insights from practitioners. By exploring the real‐world managerial problems faced by practitioners, we as academic researchers can then engage in research that has not been discussed in the academic literature. This provides relevance for the academic realm by identifying knowledge deficiencies, and for practitioners by providing useful prescriptions.
1.1 Research relevance for information system research
Thomas and Tymon( 1982) first began to articulate the general properties or requirements of research relevance. Essentially, they point out that two‐way interaction is necessary between researchers and practitioners: the researchers acting as knowledge producers and practitioners acting as knowledge users. Thus, relevant knowledge flows in both directions, between researcher and practitioner for the contents of information as well from practitioner to researcher to guide relevance. Accordingly, research can meet the necessary conditions for theory to be useful to practitioners, namely descriptive relevance, goal relevance, operational validity, nonobviousness, and timeliness( Thomas & Tymon 1982).
“ Descriptive relevance refers to the accuracy of research findings in capturing phenomena encountered by the practitioner in his or her organizational setting. […] Goal relevance refers to the correspondence of outcome( or dependent) variables in a theory to the things the practitioner wishes to influence. […] Operational validity concerns the ability of the practitioner to implement action implications of the theory by manipulating its causal( or independent) variables. […] Nonobviousness refers to the degree to which a theory meets or exceeds the complexity of common sense theory already used by a practitioner. […] Timeliness concerns the requirement that a theory be available to practitioners in time to use it to deal with problems.“( Ibid, pp 346‐ 349).
Benbasat and Zmud( 1999) present dimensions of relevance and propose guidelines as to how to achieve these. Basically,“ an article describing research that is interesting, applicable, and current has the potential to be useful for practitioners”( Ibid, pp 12). Accordingly, the foremost important criterion to attain relevance is to implicate the practitioner as the key stakeholder in topic selection. This results in a research topic that is more attuned to the needs and interests of practitioners and enables the academic community to take a more proactive role in“ discussing the key research areas of the discipline by taking into account the benefits that will accrue to practitioners from research in these areas”( Ibid, pp 8). For research programs to be fruitful in producing useful theory, researchers should follow as many of Benbasat and Zmud’ s recommendations( Lee, 1999). Thus, it is suggested that the production of more high‐quality, highly relevant management research is achievable when researchers 1) study questions that challenge both existing scientific theory and conventional management practice early in the research process, and 2) understand the practitioners’ perspective and let methodological choices be guided by the parameters of practitioner experience( Baldridge, Floyd & Markoczy 2004).
1.2 An extension to Rosemann and Vessey’ s research life cycle
As previously indicated, we propose an extension to Rosemann and Vessey’ s( 2008) applicability check approach. They argue that a first step in aiding researchers to improve the relevance of their research is to conduct applicability checks on research objects with practitioners, either prior to‐ or following‐ engagement in the research process. Thus, the purpose of applicability check is to ensure relevance of the research topic for the practitioner. Accordingly, research will be important for practitioners, solutions will be suitable for them, and the resulting article or communication of the research results will prove accessible to practitioners.
In order to develop a way to determine the importance of research to practice, Rosemann and Vessey show that applicability check should occur between two instantiations of the research life cycle; see figure 1 for the extended research life cycle as presented by Rosemann and Vessey( 2004) from a timeline perspective.
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