The Practitioner Researcher and Applied Doctoral Research – Bridging Towards Industry

The focus of the panel discussion will encompass the main attributes that enable doctoral researchers to carry out research projects that are recognized by industry or societal organizations to be relevant, applicable and valuable. The three panel members shall share their experiences emanating from five years of running a professional doctoral programme that is pursued by practitioner researchers and that applies the grounded theory research methodology. This methodology utilizes data, largely qualitative, that is grounded in industry, organizational and societal real-world experiences and challenges, in order to build practical, parsimonious models and theories that explain what is really going on and why. The final objective is to provide the relevant stakeholders with tools and best-practice solutions, reaping tangible benefits from the doctoral journey of these practitioner researchers that hail from the relative field of practice themselves. The argument that will be placed for discussion by the panel are essentially the following: That a theoretically sensitive, applied researcher will be able to achieve a higher level of synergy between the doctoral research and the industry needs; That the research methodology is grounded in the realities of daily organizational operations and challenges; There is an evolving, or processual nature in the research, in which synergies and symbiotic gains increase as the research project unfolds.

The panel shall also examine a further aspect, that of the different research philosophies pertaining to the practitioner researchers, as indeed grounded theory accommodates diverse epistemological approaches that shape data collection and analysis. The panel shall also open up to discuss a number of alternative research methodologies, and whether these can also correspond well with applied research. The panel session shall be supported by a number of practical examples of past doctoral research endeavours that seek to achieve these synergies. These studies delve into a range of diverse areas such as AI take-up by small industry, strategizing in the small firm, female entrepreneurship, mentoring, mindfulness in beauty salons, and how small businesses manage crises in a small island state. Another argument being placed is that the research methodology must also be processual in nature, allowing the researcher to steadily build further on his/her theoretical sensitivity on the theme of research, throughout the doctoral journey. This then contributes to more sensitized prompts and interactions with industry, that in turn encourages a return of quality data and commitment to the research by the industry stakeholders themselves. 

The Panel shall thus seek to explore how grounded theory, as a research methodology, serves to allow practitioner researchers to more effectively interact with industry and to provide a doctoral research product that is usable and of importance to industry, organizations and societal entities. As this methodology incorporates a processual research approach it gives the doctoral student and the industry stakeholder the evolving opportunity to synergize. Moreso, the fact that the students themselves hail from industry and still operate within industry, coupled with the use of data grounded in industry reality, supports further the positive student-industry interaction. The Panel shall also open up to inputs on other research methodologies and explore to what extent these too can succeed in the student-industry collaboration. The Panel shall put forward the argument that for this synergy to take place all of these parameters should ideally to be in place; that of the applied and industry-relevant researcher, a methodology that builds substantive theory that is grounded in the data, and a process-based research endeavour that allows for a build-up of theoretical sensitivity and evolving industry collaboration. Examples shall be given of how doctoral students have sought to obtain this student-industry synergizing through their doctoral research projects. The Panel discussion will thus focus on the doctoral research student, a particular research methodology, and industry, organizational and societal organizations at large as stakeholders to the student research.

The final product of these students’ doctoral journey is required to be a parsimonious process-based substantive theory, that is deemed by industry to be relevant and usable. Some six student research examples shall be provided, in which these students were practitioner researchers and utilized the grounded theory methodology to build a practical theory or model that industry could ultimately benefit from. A range of different industry, organizations and societal partners shall be included in the examples provided, demonstrating the generalizability of the concept in question. Examples include business-IT alignment (Aquilina, 2017), wellbeing in beauty salons (Cauchi & Falzon, 2023), distributed leadership (Debono, Aquilina & Brincat, 2025), professional and personal wellbeing (Falzon, 2023), accountants in the digital age (Muscat, Aquilina & Montalto, 2025), applications of grounded theory in practice (Rizzo & Fulford, 2012; Rizzo, Aquilina & Falzon, 2024) and soft skill training within industry (Spiteri Axiak, Packer & Ghio, 2025). In all of these examples the practitioner researchers were following a professional doctorate trajectory, and had chosen a field of research that was strongly correlated with their previous work life, and also related to their present field of expertise and work focus. It was commonly observed that the level of interaction and synergy between the student and the industry players followed an incremental trajectory of increased collaboration and value enhancement. This aspect was even evidenced in the sampling strategy of the students, as they evolved from convenience to purposive to theoretical sampling, and in the process building a closer partnership with the industry concerned. In the first, convenience sampling phase of the grounded theory research, generic prompts were used and the level of interaction with the industry player was somewhat broad in nature. Data being obtained was adequate for the student’s needs, but the benefits being accrued by the industry player were minimal. In the later more purposive sampling phase of the research, more meaningful and probing interactions took place, and a clearer visibility of mutual benefits from the research findings began emerging. In the final theoretical sampling stage of research the student would have achieved a significantly high, and certainly more relevant, knowledge level. Interaction with industry would have evolved once again, with stronger mutual benefits by way of knowledge transfer and usability of research findings. To some extent this does mean that the industry players being studied in the later stages may have reaped more benefits than those of the earlier stages, but in similar fashion the larger volume of industry players outside the direct study would now have research results that are impact oriented and do not just serve the student’s immediate research objectives of obtaining a doctoral qualification. It is this win-win aspect of research that shall be discussed in the panel session.