APPLIED DOCTORAL RESEARCH AND THE PRACTITIONER RESEARCHER: BRIDGING INDUSTRY

Abstract

Practitioner-researcher positioning within doctoral programmes represents a significant, yet underexplored, dimension of the relationship between academic inquiry and industry relevance. This paper examines how a higher level of student–industry symbiosis can be attained through a particular choice of research methodology and a certain characteristic of doctoral research student: that of the practitioner-researcher. The contextualisation of this argument is grounded in several years of running a professional doctoral programme pursued by practitioner-researchers who apply a predominantly qualitative grounded theory (GT) research methodology. The paper's central objective is to explore how GT, as a processual and data-driven methodology, enables practitioner-researchers to effectively interact with industry and to produce doctoral research outcomes that are recognised as relevant, applicable, and valuable by industry and societal stakeholders. Three guiding arguments frame the discussion: that a theoretically sensitive, applied researcher achieves higher levels of synergy between doctoral research and industry needs; that GT as a methodology is optimally grounded in the realities of daily organisational operations and challenges; and that the processual nature of GT research generates symbiotic gains as the research projects unfold. To safeguard methodological rigour, the authors propose three process-oriented quality expectations that guide the practitioner-researchers throughout the inquiry: theory-building, data-driven, and analytic proficiency. The paper further argues for flexibility in the philosophical stance and the GT toolbox of techniques adopted by GT practitioner-researchers, allowing them to select a position along the objectivist–constructivist spectrum that aligns with their own ontological, axiological, and work-philosophy orientations, while avoiding methodological slurring or drift. Six doctoral studies are provided to illustrate this framework, spanning artificial intelligence adoption, female entrepreneurship, soft skills training, mindfulness in the wellness industry, the digital transformation of accounting and circular economy models in small island economies. These studies demonstrate how practitioner embedding and GT's iterative nature progressively enhance student–industry collaboration.