Improving the Lives of Academia-Practitioner Boundary Spanners

There is an ongoing debate on how to what extent and with what outcome academics should seek to impact non-academic stakeholders outside academia. The paper departs from this discussion. It explores based on an empirical analysis of a business-focused PhD program at a research School at a Scandinavian university, which organizational processes and structures are necessary in "the academic scholarly back-office" in order to ensure that the "front office and frontline interaction between researchers and practitioner result in productive, meaningful interactions for all concerned. The paper concludes that to facilitate the individual researcher to successfully occupy and perform from an in-between position with a view to facilitate boundary-spanning behavior in researchers aspiring to improving lives of corporations,organizations and community must be proactively occupying a position between academia and practice.