Closing the academia-practice gap in corporate sustainability management research: Challenges and bridges

While corporate sustainability management research in universities has contributed to a greater understanding of sustainability, its current form has limited capacity to make a meaningful impact outside of academia. When it comes to the structures and concepts on which corporate sustainability management research is built, previous research has focused on inadequate principles and has been driven by a system that neglects solutions for real-word problems. This paper identifies four critical challenges that need to be addressed to reach the point of linking corporate sustainability management research with science and industry. This article argues that the normative foundation of universities together with the need for practical outcomes can drive corporate sustainability management research to bridge the gap between science and businesses. Consequently, this paper proposes four practical solutions which can help to build a bridge between science and businesses and offer the opportunity to develop long-term, participatory, solution-oriented projects as platforms for the next generation of corporate sustainability management researchers to engage in real-world problems and approaches in the field.