Research-Teaching-Practice linkages: A challenge for Business Schools

Changes in the global business environment are driving changes to the way business schools deliver higher education. However, the long debated gap be-tween academia and industry (research-practice) remains unsolved. This paper explores the integration of research-teaching activities as an alternative to over-come the sometimes conflictual relationship between research and teaching and, more importantly, as a mechanism to reduce the research-practice gap. The aim of this research is to evaluate the extent to which it is feasible to integrate re-search-teaching in higher education. The practical suggestions to reduce the re-search-teaching gap proposed by Burke and Rau (2010) are tested in this paper through action research. This research provides empirical evidence on the rela-tionships between research, teaching and practice which could help to improve academic performance, produce better managers for industry and consequently, build a bridge between academics and practitioners.Research-teaching, Research-practice, Business schools, Manage-ment research