Entrepreneurs’ Taboo F-Word

Research Findings Are Not Reaching Business Leaders

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By Nick Keppler

There are now about 400 journals for management as an academic field, producing about 12,000 published articles a year in total. However, top decision-makers rarely learn anything from them, said Academy of Management Scholar Herman Aguinis of the George Washington University School of Business.

“Many of us are concerned that the research we do is not being used to the extent that we would like, and it’s called a research-practice gap,” Aguinis said. “Also, there’s a research-policy gap,” stemming from political leaders’ lack of familiarity with research produced in the field of management.

This gap is particularly frustrating, said Aguinis, because scholars on management and organizations have produced a wealth of scientifically sound research on issues that have dominated the news in 2025, including the downsizing of the federal government, the measurement of job performance, discrimination and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, and the implementation of AI in workplaces.

“If you want to build a bridge, you will talk to the top engineers, but management scholars are not consulted with the same regularity,” said Aguinis.

This is not entirely the fault of those who could potentially benefit from our research, Aguinis added. Academic journals are often insular and publish articles that only make small contributions to our understanding of critical organizational phenomena. Also, the compensation and reward systems motivate academics to write mainly for other academics, not managers, business leaders, and decision-makers.

“For several reasons, much of our research is not aimed at affecting practice,” Aguinis said. “If you read the typical article of, let’s say, 20 pages, you may find one or two paragraphs at the end saying ‘implications for practice.’”

The research is not lost on everyone. A small number of elite companies look to academia to improve performance. Google is well-known for hiring Ph.D. holders, not just for computer-science roles but also for management and creative jobs. Marriott is a sponsor of doctoral development programs.

These companies reap the benefit in reputation, said Aguinis, often appearing in lists such as Fortune Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” series.

“All of these companies, all of them, employ Ph.D.s who actually read the research, and they try to implement leadership strategies and management practices that are consistent with what research says aligns with best-practice evidence as published in scholarly journals,” he said.

Why Success Can Be the Enemy of Innovation in the Age of AI

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By Jason Collins

A new Pew Research Center report reveals that public optimism remains low regarding the potential impact of AI in the workplace. However, refusing to work with new technologies can cause even the largest organizations to fail as this technology changes the game across many industries.

Academy of Management Scholar Wendy Smith of the University of Delaware reveals that it isn’t the small businesses that are most at risk, but rather larger organizations that choose to rely on what they know works. Smith calls this the paradox of success.

“The companies who are at the top of their market have the most to lose and therefore don’t want to take risks and thus are the most entrenched in what they already do,” Smith said. “Researchers call this the ‘paradox of success’ where successful companies are the ones that fail to adopt new technologies and innovation.”

Because smaller organizations don’t have this burden, they have nothing keeping them from trying new things and adopting new technologies such as AI and robotic process automation. History shows us that success can be an enemy of innovation. Smith draws parallels to brands such as Kodak and Polaroid, which failed to make the digital photography transition.

“BlackBerry was this amazing early force of the smartphone but could not compete when brands like Apple came into the market with updated technologies,” Smith said. “Blockbuster Video couldn’t make the transition from VHS tapes and DVDs to streaming when Netflix then took over.

“So, we see that story happen again and again and again,” she said.

If the past has taught us anything, it is that relying on past success without monitoring new technologies, tracking consumers’ preferences, and cultivating boldness in strategic planning prevents innovation.

“I think we’re going to see the same thing now,” Smith said. “And so there is wisdom in ‘Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.’

“It’s totally new technology, but leaders should be learning from history what it means to innovate within an existing company,” she said.

Everyone Will Suffer in the Wake of Trump Administration’s Research Cuts

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By Paul Friedman

This year, the Trump administration has fired many government researchers, canceled scientific and medical research grants, and targeted leading universities, including Harvard, with debilitating funding freezes. Fear of reprisal has caused many scientists, doctors, professors, and university administrators to opt for silence instead of speaking up to defend the research that is getting the ox.

Academy of Management (AOM) Scholar Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University says much of the research produced by him and his colleagues, including many AOM members, has a day-to-day impact on industry practitioners, including organizational leaders and managers. Cuts in federal funding for research will have a negative impact on industry, as well as researchers, colleges and universities, and other research institutions.

“What we publish in our primary journals have to be both theoretically important and have practical relevance,” Bamberger said. “It’s got to be interesting from a theoretical perspective and intellectual perspective, and it’s got to have some sort of surprising element—going against conventional wisdom—but it also has to translate that surprising finding into something that managers can do something about.

“And there are thousands of organizational consultants who read the findings published in our journals and then translate that into actual practice in organizations,” he said.

Bamberger points out that a great deal of research is specifically aimed at examining current practices by managers and their efficacy. Recently, he published a study of the managerial approach called design thinking, which focuses on understanding clients’ needs and designing innovative solutions.

“Design thinking has been around for about 10 years,” Bamberger said. “It’s an approach to create more innovative ways of boosting learning and finding innovative solutions to common problems or sometimes even really wicked problems.

“It became a fad and a lot of organizations adopted it, but no one ever bothered to actually assess whether or not it has an impact and whether this impact is any greater than other types of learning-oriented interventions, like team building,” he said.

Bamberger and research colleagues designed a field experiment to test the impact of design thinking as a team learning intervention. They compared over time what happens in terms of the efficiency and productivity of teams using different interventions.

“Is design thinking more efficacious than an alternative?” Bamberger said. “And we found out that in fact it is, and we actually demonstrate the mechanism by which it operates and why it’s more effective than other mechanisms.

“So these types of practical implications are useful to managers and to the extent that we don’t have funding necessary to do this type of research, everybody suffers,” he said.

Understanding Time to Manage It Better

By Daniel Butcher

Time flies when you’re having fun or in the zone at work, but it crawls when you’re in pain or doing a boring task.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that a key element of subjective time is people’s interpretation and perception of time itself.

“Working on the expense report, even 15 minutes probably feels like forever versus 15 minutes in a crisis situation feels like a blink of an eye,” Shipp said. “There are different ways in which we perceive time itself, the units of time, and that shapes how we structure our time.

“That could be things like deadlines—say you asked me, ‘Hey, can you get this to me by Thursday?’” she said. “That may seem like a very long deadline to you, but if I have a very busy week, maybe that feels like that’s way too soon.

“It has implications for how and when we work, especially how we work with each other.”

In Shipp’s and her colleagues’ research on different elements of subjective time, they looked at all the different ways in which people have studied time, and which aspects of it scientists haven’t studied. People who take time to examine how they perceive and interpret time may be able to improve their time management.

“We found was there are many gaps, both in how researchers and practitioners look at time,” Shipp said. “We found many ways in which you can better use your time if you think about it subjectively and not just objectively.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

Trade Tasks with Coworkers to Increase Meaningfulness

By Daniel Butcher

Many people want to be able to find meaning in their jobs, but fewer stop to take stock of their current roles and whether there’s anything that can be done to make them more meaningful.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that too many of us don’t slow down enough to think about the meaning of time at work and how we spend it.

“I don’t think people often stop and reflect about, ‘Is what I’m doing at work meaningful to me?’—not what’s prioritized in my job or for somebody else, but rather, ‘Is what I’m doing in my work meaningful to me personally?’” Shipp said. “Particularly if I have some choice—‘I get to work on this project’ or ‘I get to do this volunteer opportunity’—those things are more or less meaningful to different people, so finding ways to increase those activities can shape how meaningful your job is and help you to move away from meaningless tasks.

“Maybe do reports at your low-energy time of day, but do the meaningful activities at the time when you’re most productive and can most take them in. Then your work feels more fulfilling because you’re really synchronizing those things,” she said. “You also can offshoot or delegate things that you don’t find meaningful—quite frankly, I’ve done this with colleagues—you trade or swap tasks with somebody that you work with; maybe they do find those things meaningful, and so we can do a swap of job activities.

“Maybe I join a committee because it gives me a lot of meaning and I love it but that you think is not very meaningful, and vice versa.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

An Overlooked Challenge of RTO Mandates

By Daniel Butcher

It may be counterintuitive, but if leaders and managers are willing to be more flexible in how employees manage their own time, then they may get more productivity out of them. That goes against the grain as the U.S. federal government, tech giants including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and financial-services titans including J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock have all issued return-to-office (RTO) mandates.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on the how we experience time with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that the subjective nature of how we perceive time and the variance of which hours people are most productive at work are factors that contribute to the “square-peg-in-a-round hole” awkwardness of requiring employees to be in the office five days every week from nine to five.

“That’s why things like the return-to-office mandates can be challenging. Even things as simple as saying, ‘We’ll do a hybrid schedule, but you’ll need to be in the office during these hours on these days of the week; here’s when we’ll be back,’” Shipp said.

“That assumes that schedule works for everyone, and it’s hard to meet individual needs while you impose collective schedules,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about it; it means, in fact, we should think about it more–but it takes a lot of talent to do this.”

People appreciate flexibility

“First of all, we have to be aware that people need individual flexibility, so from a leadership perspective, we have to start asking employees, ‘What do you value? When do you like to work? What’s meaningful to you? What’s your background about time management?’” Shipp said.

“I don’t think a lot of leaders do that, because if they don’t know their own personal views and uses of time, they’re certainly not assuming that employees are different from them,” she said.

“My research would indicate that individuals could be very different about people’s scheduling preferences and time-management habits, yet leaders make those assumptions and never have them become explicit.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

There’s More than One Way to Manage Time Effectively

By Daniel Butcher

While managers often set rigid work schedules, to-do lists, and deadlines, more flexibility can enable workers to prioritize tasks in ways that help them manage their time more effectively.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on the subjective experience of time with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that there’s no one-size-fits-all method of time management that’s effective for everyone.

“Our research on how people perceive and interpret time makes us stop and question fixed time-management suggestions: ‘Start your day in this way,’ or ‘Work at this pace and do these things,’ or ‘Here’s how you focus 100% of the time,’” Shipp said. “Those hacks can be great if you need them, but for some people, that’s not what they need.

“For many people, quite frankly, what we need is more thought into questions like, ‘What do I subjectively perceive about time, and where did I get my understanding of time?’” she said.

Shipp said that she began thinking about how work influences our perception of time when looking at her parents’ schedules, as well as her own early work experiences.

“My dad was a banker, so he had bankers’ hours, and then my very first job was at a government facility where we had to track our time to the 10th of an hour and charge it to different accounts, so I became really aware of time,” Shipp said. “It’s hard for me to step away from the office at three o’clock, because I think, ‘Nope, this time must be allocated in this way until after five o’clock.’

“When we start to question those socialization influences, we say, ‘Is this assumption about time helping me or is this harming me?’” she said. “That’s what subjective time brings in, the awareness of different ways to perceive the passage and meaning of time in concert with objective time: clocks, calendars, and schedules.

“If we think of time subjectively, we can better manage our time and our energy in ways that are fulfilling and productive, both for our work and for ourselves.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

The Mindfulness vs. Mindlessness Debate

By Daniel Butcher

Mindfulness—attention and awareness of experiences in the present moment—certainly has its benefits, but mindlessness—a mental state characterized by thoughts that are disconnected from the situation at hand—is an overlooked source of creativity and innovation. Sometimes stepping away from your desk and going for a walk or a jog while letting your mind wander is the best way to come up with a solution to a problem.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that mindlessness is underrated.

“There’s a real big push right now for mindfulness, and I’m a huge proponent of it—I have a mindfulness meditation practice myself,” Shipp said. “But we also know that mindlessness, letting your brain wander, that’s the source of creativity.

“The way in which we perceive time matters for how we manage it—we should be able to manage time and get the most out of it,” she said. “We can miss opportunities for just sitting, thinking, and daydreaming that really result in innovation.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

The Benefits of Reflecting on the Past

By Daniel Butcher

When people engage in “mental time travel,” they often think about the future and imagine what it might be like. But focusing on the past and thinking through what we could’ve done differently may pay dividends in terms of making better decisions going forward, including navigating career paths.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of Henley Business School, said that many people tend not to think about the past very much.

“Particularly in the United States, we are socialized to be present-focused, carpe diem, or future-focused, that is, to plan; the message is to make strategic plans, have a five-year plan for your life and career plans,” Shipp said. “We are very much socialized from the beginning to always be looking forward, or maybe to enjoy the moment.

“We aren’t really socialized to do things that they are doing in other countries, which is to reflect back—what’s our history? What have we learned?” she said.“That approach misses opportunities for people to stop and see, ‘Where have I made progress? What have I learned?’”

Being overly future-focused also causes people to overlook “accumulation.”

“One of my papers found this: If things don’t change dramatically, they tend to creep up on us, such as when we don’t realize we’re in a job that isn’t stimulating or a good fit for us because the change has been gradual,” Shipp said.

“However, by the time we started talking to people about where they work and asking them, ‘What elements of things at your work fit you and what don’t?’ they said, ‘Wow, I’ve been here a really long time; I hadn’t realized I was so unhappy until I started talking to you,’” she said. “Those experiences were accumulating beneath the surface and reached a tipping point.

“Overall, it’s important that people intentionally think about the past, because that’s an element that in the United States, at least, we don’t do naturally for the most part.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

The Benefits of Flexibility about How We Spend Time at Work

By Daniel Butcher

Set-in-stone schedules and fixed deadlines might not be a good way to help with planning and coordinating with colleagues. How everyone in an organization thinks about time—including work schedules and deadlines—has a huge impact on well-being and morale. Flexibility is likely to help boost productivity and quality.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that having a predictable schedule can help some workers with planning, but being too much of a stickler for a rigid schedule—can backfire.

“We can be so focused on the future that we obsess over what might happen instead of savoring the current moment—we focus on the future at the expense of the present,” Shipp said. “In terms of how we allocate our time, it’s important for us to plan, but we also need contingencies, because the future is so ill-defined.

“I think in terms offinding ways to bothlook ahead but also be flexible—that’s a real key skill that we don’t have,” she said. “Some people say, ‘I’m not strategic; I don’t think long-term but I’m very into the present moment.’

“In contrast, other people do plan for the future very well but may struggle to adapt when such plans don’t materialize—we need people to navigate both, to be able to look ahead, but also be flexible.”

Shipp said that we need to redefine the ways in which we think and talk about time, especially in the workplace.

“We need to reimagine things that we think are fixed in objective time, but they’re not, for example, work schedules,” Shipp said. “When do we take breaks, whether it’s to get lunch or coffee or tea or go to the bathroom? What do deadlines mean?”

An early bird might be most productive from 6:00 to 11:00 a.m. while a night owl might be most productive from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m., neither of which aligns with a standard nine-to-five workday.

“Let’s say I start a new job in a structured office. We get here at 8:00. Most people take an hour-long lunch from 12:00 to 1:00. They leave by 5:00,” Shipp said. “But if my biological clock doesn’t work like that, I may want to work until 1:00 or 2:00, or maybe I break for only 10 minutes at lunch, and later in the afternoon, I take a break of 50 minutes.

“Rethinking some of these things that we think are more fixed and structured can pay dividends,” she said. “Maybe we can go more with the flow—instead of saying, ‘I’m going to work on this project from 8:00 to 10:00’ or ‘I’ve worked an eight-hour day,’ say ‘If I’m done after working from 9:00 to 4:00, then why can’t I leave a little early?’

“It certainly benefits workers and managers alike to be a little bit more flexible with time.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile