NARROWING THE RESEARCH-PRACTICE GAP IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The Project Management (PM) area is a practice-oriented domain, but practice-based approaches remain underrepresented compared to theoretical and empirical studies. This scenario makes room for a better understanding of how to promote engagement among scholars and practitioners to study practice-relevant topics, which have a daily effect on PM stakeholders. This position paper aims to contribute recommendations concerning comprehensible forms of research engagement with practitioners that will address the research-practice gap in PM. The recommendations are grounded in the research-practice gap pointed out by Management and PM researchers. They are written as actions to foster the engagement of practitioners working with practical-oriented research designs, to draw the attention of editors and conference chairs to make practitioners part of the PM field literature, and fill the gap left by researchers neglecting contributions of practical utility. The recommendations are also associated with the research process and publication, writing theses, dissertations, papers, reports, and the PM Community. Thus, the paper has a twofold contribution: 1. Raising awareness about the emergence of research engaging practitioners and academic scholars by means of different research designs; and 2. Providing a compilation of actions for improving the engagement between practitioners and researchers.