When business conversations improve the research question

At Lemke & Lemke, much of our work begins with a simple observation. The first question someone brings to a conversation is not always the question that deserves answering.

That is true in coaching and advisory work. It is also true in research. Many conversations about research impact begin surprisingly late.

The study is complete. The findings are written up. Perhaps the journal article has already been accepted. Only then does someone ask: "How do we bring this research to business?"

Communicating research beyond academia is important. But engagement with organisations can contribute earlier and in a more intellectually useful way. It can improve the research question itself.

Practitioners experience problems while they are still developing. They see implementation difficulties, contradictions and unexpected consequences that may not yet be prominent in academic literature. Researchers contribute something different. It is, for instance, theory, comparative evidence, methodological discipline and enough distance to question the first diagnosis.

The most productive exchange begins when neither side simply accepts the other's question.

A company may ask how to increase sales, when the deeper issue concerns customer understanding, trust or value creation. A supply-chain organisation may ask how to become more resilient. The initial discussion might concentrate on inventory or operational capacity. Yet organisations experiencing disruption may identify communication between partners, coordination, workforce capability and the ability to alter routines as equally important.

Research into the dairy industry during Covid-19 illustrates this. Examining resilience at industry, supply-chain and firm levels identified technology, coordination, communication, workforce skills, risk management and adaptation as important capacities (Lemke et al., 2025). Engagement did not replace rigorous research. It helped reveal a richer problem.

Sustainability provides another example.

A company may initially ask how to communicate its sustainability achievements more effectively. Conversations with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders may lead to harder questions. Can the claims be verified? Do different stakeholders value the same outcomes? Can the conduct of one organisation affect the reputation of others in the supply chain? Research on corporate reputation in sustainable supply chains shows why these relationships deserve attention. Reputation develops through interactions with multiple stakeholders and can extend beyond the boundaries of a single company (von Berlepsch, Lemke & Gorton, 2024).

The difference is important because the two approaches begin at different points. Research dissemination asks: "We have discovered something. How do we explain it to managers?"

Research engagement asks: "What are organisations experiencing that we do not yet understand properly?" Both are valuable. But the second can improve the research before there is anything to disseminate.

Zeithaml and colleagues (2020) make a closely related argument in their work on theories-in-use. They suggest that researchers can develop new theory by engaging with people who are close to the problem and drawing on their experience, assumptions and understanding of how things work in practice. Importantly, the researcher is not simply recording those views. The academic contribution comes from questioning, comparing, interpreting and developing them into more rigorous theoretical ideas.

That does not mean businesses should determine academic research agendas.

Academic independence remains essential. Managers can misdiagnose problems just as researchers can. An organisation requesting leadership training, for example, may actually be struggling with decision rights, incentives, accountability or organisational culture.

The researcher's role is therefore not simply to answer the question presented by an organisation. Sometimes the more useful contribution is to challenge it. This is where sustained relationships between researchers and organisations become intellectually valuable. Practitioners can expose researchers to phenomena that existing theory does not yet explain adequately. Researchers can help organisations reconsider assumptions that have become taken for granted.

The exchange works in both directions.

Practical experience can generate questions. Rigorous research can examine them. The resulting insight can return to practice and generate further questions. That is a very different relationship from one in which academics produce knowledge and organisations receive it.

It also has something in common with strong coaching, leadership and advisory conversations. The immediate request may be genuine, but it may not yet capture the underlying issue. Progress often begins by examining the assumptions behind the original question.

Perhaps that is one useful test of a strong conversation, whether in research, leadership or advisory work.

Not whether someone produced an immediate answer, but whether the conversation changed the question in a useful way.