Kazunori Fukushima: Toward a Society That Can Utilize Research

2023/02/10

A few years ago, while conducting an interview survey at a certain company, I was told, "Isn't what you are doing just an academic exercise?" In fields directly linked to business like management accounting, if there is something people want to know, a fair number of them will pick up a business book. This is because it seems likely to contain information that is immediately useful. On the other hand, research books and papers are often avoided because they are written using technical terms and statistical analysis, making the content difficult to understand and hard to see how it links to reality. These words and actions likely reflect the impression held by many that research is an "academic exercise" (i.e., research is not useful for practice).

This disconnect between practice and research has been recognized as a problem known as the "research-practice gap." According to this discussion, the lack of methods to explain research results in an easy-to-understand way is a factor creating this gap. 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 in an easy-to-understand manner 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 who else? Can we come up with an answer when asked that? If we cannot find an answer despite the fact that it could 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 individuals emerge who are motivated to interpret research for themselves, a society that can utilize research may be formed. Such efforts will likely lead to the development of society as well.