The Relationship between Theory and Practice
The relationship between theory and practice in the field of organizational learning and knowledge creation has shifted over the past decades. The early conceptual thinking was solidly rooted in case studies. Subsequently, however, a division emerged between largely conceptual writing and attempts to satisfy demand for immediate practical advice. Pressure to provide recipes' for success intensified in the late 1980s and during all of the 1990s. Practitioners became involved in the field. For ex- ample, managers opened their companies for case studies, and some tried to turn their companies into 'learning organizations', and this period was a heyday for consultants. Quite a few academics took on two hats and engaged in consulting. Ideally, such engagements should allow in-depth research because consultants gain extensive access to people and data in organizations during interventions, and they can be present at meetings to which external researchers are only rarely admitted. However, few theoretically meaningful studies ternal researchers are only rarely admitted However, few theoretically meaningful studies have been published after consulting interventions (Argyris 1993 is one of the exceptions), possibly because time pressures cut projects short or because companies prefer to keep the research results for themselves.