As Management Academics Can / Should we IGNORE the gaping cleft between Industry and Academia?

Yes, there is a gap, and the reason, I believe, lies in the way we work at both ends. I work in the field of advertising and recently met a few experts to gain insights on a concept that I am working on presently. During my talks with them, I could categorize them into three types, in terms their orientation to academics.
* While some of them are aware of what's going on in the academic end of the field, they are wary of applying our recommendations because they can't think of how to operationalize them.

* The 2nd group was unaware of what happened in academia. Believe me these were celebrated creative heads in big advertising companies, and they knew what they were doing. When I pressed on "how do you know what to do and what not to do?", the almost unanimous reply was, "we have a 'gut-feel' that is pruned by years of experience".

* Finally, the 3rd kind was experts who thought that we hunted down research problems since we didn't have anything better to do. As much as I disliked this, I couldn't ignore them completely when I looked at how consistently successful they were, w/o our help, and when they pointed out how theoretically fine but operationally inapplicable quite a bit of our work was.

Solution? During the 70's, Prof. Little set the example of working on a problem and stripping it down to the level where it becomes, well manager-oriented, if we may call it that. Sharing the views expressed by some friends, Mr. Denis and Prof. Erera, "Dumbing down the report or presentation is NOT the answer". While we select a problem for research, we must screen it through the relevance filter, permitting proposals that would be of worth to practitioners in the field. Of course we can work on hypothetical ideal situations, which can serve as the reference levels for ensuing normative work. However, we shouldn't forget to add the bit where we elucidate on the "How to apply it to problems stacked up on the managers' desk".

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Can we Know the Truth?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his famous work ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’, enunciated that there is ONLY ONE TRUTH that occurs with mathematical certainty (e.g. 2+2 =4); if we can’t speak it we’d rather be mum about it. I believe him. There is ONE OBJECTIVE REALITY; going round-and-round uttering otiose statements about a phenomenon, claiming them to be subjective explanations of the same, is akin to gibberish to me. However, I disagree at the last bit of his argument.

Wittgenstein argued that the world is made of independent atomic facts or elementary states of affairs from which larger and composite facts/ phenomena are constructed. Language however, begins from the atomic state like the world itself, but then conglomerates into complex propositions following logic. Finally, thoughts are generated as expressions in language to capture the aforesaid facts. Like some screenshot?

So what Wittgenstein’s work propagates is:

If your thoughts aren’t able to picture the elementary states of affairs, or the ultimate truths, they are not worth being expressed. A commendably bold statement! Don’t you think? But, I have a little tussle in my head about this. How do I know that my thoughts mirror absolute truth, unless I test it out? And how do I test them if I don’t express? When I started reading Wittgenstein, I was impressed, and believe me, he’s worth reading. Not once, but multiple times; well, I say that based on my experience with his work. Going by the intellectual abilities I hold, I didn’t get him all at once, but I was hungry for more. He keeps you panting and lusting for truth. What is the ultimate reality? But it all moves like a suspense thriller, sans the revelations in the end. Disappointment? No! What I experienced was an eagerness to read it again, hoping to unravel more this time. However, this time the rush that I felt was different. At the 1^st read I was amazed, almost bowled over but his masterpiece, his ways of thinking; now I didn’t agree at many points. Well I didn’t have the alternative bits of absolute truth, but I could prove by contradiction that what was expressed was not absolutely true. While I agree that subjective musings are not permissible unless one is sincerely trying to construct explanations to phenomena, bit-by-bit, I don’t agree that if you aren’t expressing absolute truth, all at once, you should practice silence.

Now I feel that I’m going gibberish! hehe....

The only thing I’d like to say before concluding is that as a researcher it is the constant expression of my work, irrespective of the accurateness of arguments, to guides and peers that is pushing me closer and closer to the construction of an explanation of truth. Everyday, I begin by testing my reasonings and 100-lines of scribbles with my guide. I express and he points out the flaws in reasoning. I go back and reattempt to bust it, using logic, of course. I talk to peers, we brainstorm at the little flawed expressions that we have thus far, with an invincible optimism that we’ll find the explanation.

Wittgenstein was a genius and I almost cherish the moments when I read him and felt almost enlightened. However, I believe that it is only persistent and humble Expression and not Silence that has the potential to pave the way to the ultimate revelations of truth.