Building theory that practitioners use
Ileana Stigliani, ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ College Business School, with Kevin G Corley, ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ, and Dennis Gioia, Pennsylvania State University. Published in the Journal of Management Inquiry, 2025.
Problem
Scholars have been writing about the gap between academic research and real-world practice for more than thirty years. The gap persists because the way academics build theory has not changed and the incentives reward safe, incremental work that satisfies journal reviewers, not work that is useful to the people it is supposed to serve.
Science
We proposed a new approach to building organisational theory grounded in the principles of design: built around understanding the user, testing ideas early, iterating based on feedback and imagining futures rather than just describing the present. We applied those same principles to the process of theory building itself, developing a four-phase model we call design theorising. The four phases are: Resonating, which means understanding the problem from the practitioner's perspective; Reframing, which means synthesising that understanding into new insights; Reimagining, which means generating future-oriented theoretical possibilities; and Realising, which means testing and refining those possibilities through provisional frameworks shared with practitioners for feedback before they are fully developed.
Outcome
Our work provides a structured, replicable model for building theories that practitioners can use. We tested the model, showing how the four phases produce insights that are both academically rigorous and practically relevant. The model directly addresses the science-practice gap that has persisted in organisational research for over three decades, offering scholars a concrete alternative to the incremental, reviewer-driven approach that currently dominates the field.
Change
Design theorising does not ask researchers to choose between rigour and relevance. It shows how the principles of design make both possible at the same time. For practitioners, it signals a shift in what to expect from business school research: not just descriptions of how organisations behave but frameworks built with and for the people who run them.