Mind the gap: Conceptualising and experiencing the space between academic and practice communities in HRM/D education

HRM/D is a contested discipline and profession, where mid-career entry is common, and professional membership is key to career advancement. Consequently, in the UK a typical engagement with professional education combines postgraduate study with full-time employment.
Exploring this experience through the lens of the third phase of communities of practice (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2015), this chapter highlights the complexities of such trajectories through landscapes of practice (Fenton-O’Creevy et al., 2015). Given the recognised ‘gap’ between academia and practitioner settings in business education, particularly HRM/D (Rynes et al., 2007), and the incongruent communities of academics and practitioners (Personini et al., 2015) the chapter highlights the peripheral memberships practitioner-students’ hold in academic communities, and the similarly outlying positions academics are perceived to hold in practice settings.
In response, the chapter proposes approaches which can be utilised to bridge this gap, both by acknowledging congruent communities, and seeking to cross between them.