Tent Poles, Tribalism, and Boundary Spanning: The Rigor-Relevance Debate in Management Research

Abstract

An examination of the gap that exists between business scholars who are concerned with producing work that is rigorous and scholars that are more concerned with work that is relevant. The author notes that this divide hinders both sides from producing the best business research, regardless of what its intention is. The author describes this gap as an artificial divide; however, he notes that when both sides exclude each other from their research and forums their own research ends up suffering