Gaps Between the Academic Research and Practitioner

¶ … gaps between the academic research and practitioner knowledge with respect to HR that are identified by Saari & Judge (2004) are: "the cause of employee attitudes, the results of positive or negative job satisfaction and how to measure and influence employee attitudes." The authors note this in context of the lack of understanding in practice with respect to employee satisfaction. Employers do not fully understand how employee satisfaction arises (cause of employee attitudes). They also have a lack of knowledge about the outcomes associated with positive or negative job satisfaction.

Some employers believe that happy workers are more productive, others disagree. Practitioners generally do not know the answer and are not familiar with current research in the area. The authors assert that practitioners generally are not able to measure employee attitudes, much less influence them. Saari and Judge point out that academic research has more or less answered each of these questions. Employee attitudes often derive from non-job factors, as noted in studies that show one's attitude towards work remains relatively stable over time, even across jobs.

Disposition is a powerful influencer because is affects the experience of emotional significant events at work. Culture influences job satisfaction levels as does the work situation -- matching employees to the right job goes a long way in determining job satisfaction. With respect to the second gap ("the results of positive or negative job satisfaction") the authors assert that research has clarified this issue significantly. The relationship between job satisfaction and job performance has been studied since the 1930s.

The correlation between these two variables has been determined to be relatively low. Job satisfaction does, however, correlate with organizational citizenship behaviors -- employees are more involved and engaged with their company when they are satisfied. In addition, research has found that there is a strong link between satisfaction and performance for more complex jobs. The research has also illuminated several concepts regarding the influence that employers have over employee attitudes. Job satisfaction is somewhat correlated with overall life satisfaction, for example.

Employers cannot override disposition as an influencer in job satisfaction, but can have some degree of influence by ensuring a good fit between employees and their jobs, as the work situation does have an influence on job satisfaction. As far as measuring employee attitudes, techniques have been refined for decades and today can be very sophisticated. Yet many employers do not take advantage of these resources, and as a result may be relying on poor measures.

Employers also seem unaware of the debates surrounding the different measures available and would be unable to make an intelligent decision between different survey methods and questions to determine employee satisfaction. Given this, they are unable to effectively measure employee satisfaction or accurately explain the significance of the findings. These gaps still exist. The concept of the gap relates to the difference between HR practice and the academic research.

The authors point out where the research has answered questions, but the article does not resolve the gap by virtue of its existence. The gap exists because HR practitioners typically are not familiar with the academic research, so an article published in a journal is not going to resolve that communication problem. Future research, therefore, cannot close these gaps if it takes the same form as the past research that is already being ignored.

Again, the issue of a knowledge gap between science and practice does not relate to the lack of information available, it relates to the practitioners not being aware of the information available. Further research, if published in journals that these practitioners do not read, is not going to resolve the knowledge gap. The way to resolve the knowledge gap is to bring the scientific knowledge out of the journals. This means getting the knowledge into more trade publications, getting it online, and into the mainstream press.

Only different means of communication can resolve a knowledge gap. Saari and Judge make this point clearly: "One important way to close the gap between research and practice is to be better informed about the research" -- the implied, orphaned pronoun referring to practitioners. The authors suggest that companies turn to professional organizations to either acquire the knowledge or to identify HR practitioners who are up to speed on the latest research. The authors also suggest upgrading the statistics skills of practitioners.

In the long run if business schools do this, it might have an impact. But the gaps would persist for generations -- an alternate solution would be that academics need to convey their ideas better. Studies featuring a blitzkrieg of regression and ANOVA outputs are not written for the practitioner audience, plain and simple, they are written for the academic audience. This implies that there is room for research that translates quantitative studies into plain language for the practitioner audience.

So that is one type of future research that can help narrow the gap between academics and practitioners. It is interesting that while the Saari and Judge article is a good example of translating the research for practitioner consumption, the authors essentially talk down to practitioners as though the academic community is not responsible in part for the knowledge gap. This is untrue -- the academic community contributes to the gap by writing for itself rather than for practitioners.

Remember, it is the academic community that perceives a problem and therefore has motivation to make changes. Practitioners who are ignorant do not perceive a problem and as a consequence are unlikely to lift a finger to address the knowledge gap. Another area of research -- only tangentially hinted at by the authors -- is in conducting studies that highlight the link between the performance of HR professionals who understand the research and those who do not. The authors proposed ROI as a principle that can be used in research.

Organizations hire HR professionals parrot debunked HR memes because they do not understand the value of having better-qualified people. If organizations understand the value in financial terms of having HR people who know the research well and.