Strategizing Activities and Practices SAP

This PDW responds to calls to explore the bridge between research and practice in the management field through new perspectives, and to move beyond the current discussion, which tends to put the emphasis on barriers between academics and practitioners at the expense of the exploration of possible "bridging" solutions. In this PDW, we will explore how a specific stream of research on the "performativity of scientific knowledge" – a perspective initially developed in sociology to account for the "transformative" power of economics on the economy – can change our understanding of the relationship between management academics and practitioners and help the management community create concrete mechanisms to connect its different stakeholders. Specifically, in order to explore the ways in which the performativity perspective can help reframe the discussion around the relevance of academic theory for practitioners, the participants in this PDW will (1) provide an introduction to the main message, insights and findings of the "performativity of scientific knowledge" perspective as used in sociology and in management / organization studies by means of presentations of current performativity research; (2) discuss the value of such perspective for renewing our understanding of the relationship between academics and practitioners in the management field.