Bridging Academia and Practice with Digital Boundary Objects

Extant research emphasizes the need for research artifacts to span the academic boundaries, to result in societal benefits. Digital boundary objects (DBOs), with their inherent ability of boundary spanning, are the key to translate research artifacts for non-academic audiences like practitioners. We explore the creation and dissemination of DBOs as a mechanism to bridge the epistemic divide between academics and practitioners. We employ the Gioia methodology and conduct in-depth interviews, netnography and archival data analysis. This method is apt, given our exploratory research objective of understanding the creation of DBOs through the lens of Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory. Our findings reveal a three-phase cyclical process model, termed epistemic framing for DBO creation. We identify DBOs as key in bridging the epistemic divide and the novelty of our research lies in identifying the iterative epistemic framing process model that helps in knowledge translation for societal advancement.