infonet-economy

Recently there has been a growing concern amongst organisation and management scholars about the practical relevance of their research. Yet, although many researchers talk about ‘relevance’ they hardly ever define what they mean by that. The term itself has different meanings, which often even contradict each other. This ambiguity is problematic as it implies different and even conflicting relationships between science and practice. Consequently, the various contributions to the debate on ‘relevance’ cannot meaningfully be related to each other before the underlying notions of relevance are clarified. This is particularly critical when it comes to questions about research policy: different notions of relevance lead to different policy recommendations. In this paper we try to elucidate the concept of relevance by developing a taxonomy of different forms of relevance. In addition to that, we assess the extent to which the different forms of relevance fit with the logic of science, and consequently what forms of relevance can justifiably be expected from organisation and management studies.