Co-Creative Action Research Experiments—A Careful Method for Causal Inference and Societal Impact

Arjen van Witteloostuijn, Nele Cannaerts, Wim Coreynen, Zainab Noor el Hejazi, Joeri van Hugten, Ellen Loots, Hendrik Slabbinck and Johanna Vanderstraeten
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Arjen van Witteloostuijn: School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Nele Cannaerts: Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Wim Coreynen: Antwerp Management School, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium
Zainab Noor el Hejazi: Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium
Joeri van Hugten: School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Hendrik Slabbinck: Department of Marketing, Innovation and Organisation, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Johanna Vanderstraeten: Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Social Sciences, 2020, vol. 9, issue 10, 1-28

Abstract: The rigor-versus-relevance debate in the world of academia is, by now, an old-time classic that does not seem to go away so easily. The grassroots movement Responsible Research in Business and Management, for instance, is a very active and prominent advocate of the need to change current research practices in the management domain, broadly defined. One of its main critiques is that current research practices are not apt to address day-to-day management challenges, nor do they allow such management challenges to feed into academic research. In this paper, we address this issue, and present a research design, referred to as CARE, that is aimed at building a bridge from rigor to relevance, and vice versa. In so doing, we offer a template for conducting rigorous research with immediate impact, contributing to solving issues that businesses are struggling with through a design that facilitates causal inference.

Keywords: rigor; relevance; research design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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