Balancing Relevancy and Rigor: Exploring the Impact of Scholarly Books on Knowledge Formation in Business Research

Abstract

Scholars are charged with knowledge advancement by conducting relevant research. Academic researchers rely on the peer-review journal system to evaluate the quality and relevancy of their work. Despite its value, the current review system is flawed and sometimes results in fragmented knowledge formation. Some scholars, including Kouzes and Posner (K&P), publish research in books more accessible to practitioners. The impact of foregoing the traditional journal publication process on current knowledge is unclear. To explore this question, we used leadership scholarship as a case study and examined how K&P's leader credibility conceptualization, primarily shared in practitioner-focused books, was integrated into peer-review literature knowledge. More specifically, we compared K&P's definition with the conceptual definition which emerged from a comprehensive review of leader credibility definitions contained in peer-reviewed literature. We discuss the advantages of different pathways to relevancy and identify ways to achieve better collective knowledge by using these different pathways.