The role of dialogue in addressing the theory practice gap in marketing

This paper examines findings in Ash (2014) that show a broad model of the personal epistemologies of marketing academics and practitioners. There is diverse debate about the nature of the gap ranging from Dewey’s... [ view full abstract ]

This paper examines findings in Ash (2014) that show a broad model of the personal epistemologies of marketing academics and practitioners.

There is diverse debate about the nature of the gap ranging from Dewey’s argument about the true nature of knowing to contributions based on epistemic adolescence, ontological differences and more pragmatic suggestions about different tribes and structural. Others include the perverse incentive argument or rigour versus relevance issue, failures in curriculum or pedagogy and a clash between modernist and postmodernist epistemologies. Polanyi’s description of tacit versus explicit knowledge further extends the debate as do issues of knowledge creation and dissemination..

Factor analysis based on the DEBQ a personal epistemology instrument developed by Hofer extracted a common set of factors for the domain of practice and academic marketers (Ash 2014). A further factor with an underpinning structure relating to dialogue emerged. Correlation analysis showed that academic propensity to engage in dialogue with practice correlated with academic factor scores moving towards those of practitioners. This shows that dialogue has a clear role in both perpetuating the gap in its absence or reducing it.