午夜剧场

A few years ago, while conducting an interview at a certain company, I was told, "Isn't what you are doing just academic armchair theory?" In a field like management accounting that is directly linked to business, many people will pick up a business book if there is something they want to know. This is because such books seem to contain information that is immediately useful. On the other hand, research books and academic papers are often avoided because they are written using technical terminology and statistical analysis, making the content difficult to understand and the link to reality hard to see. The sentiment that many people likely hold—that research is an "armchair theory" (i.e., research is not useful for practice)—is a reflection of such attitudes.

This disconnect between practice and research has been recognized as the "research-practice gap." According to this discussion, a factor creating this gap is the lack of methods to explain research results in an easy-to-understand manner. Recently, as seen in terms like "evidence-based XX," the importance of decision-making based on evidence rather than relying solely on experience and intuition has been pointed out. In this regard, research can provide evidence, and it can be said that the importance of communicating complex research results clearly is higher than ever before.

What is necessary for that? It is to select research results (evidence) worth knowing from the vast number of studies produced daily and to interpret them correctly.

So, who will take on this role? The answer "researchers" will likely come back immediately. But what about others? Would an answer come to mind if asked that? If no answer comes forth despite the fact that research can increase the probability of success or decrease the probability of failure compared to relying solely on experience and intuition, it might be considered a worrying situation.

Of course, it will be necessary for researchers to play this role until the number of people who think research can be useful reaches a certain level. However, that alone will not change the situation. Even if people are passive at first, if that serves as a catalyst for people to spontaneously try to interpret research, a society that can utilize research may emerge. Such efforts will likely lead to the development of society as a whole.