The popular press has labeled such research as fuzzy, irrelevant, pretentious . For many faculty and their schools, such attacks are exaggerated, unbalanced, and often untrue. But it is clear that business schools are under increasing pressure to develop what one panel of experts describes as a vision that seeks closer relationships between traditional research methodology and business practice. The business school is a professional school with obvious linkages to the business professions. Too often business school research addresses problems of little relevance or, equally damaging, fails to be tested in the world of practice.
Effective communications is another barrier to application.
Another prominant study claims that the cause of the breakdown in the application of research findings often can be placed squarely on the shoulders of those producing the research. Faculty many times appear either unable or, as is more likely the case, unwilling to frame their findings in such a way as to highlight managerial applicability. Fortunately, business faculty are becoming increasingly responsive to these concerns. According to data gathered in that same study business schools have indeed heard the criticism that a high proportion of business school research is too abstract and not, therefore, sufficiently applied. Research in information systems is not imune from criticism.