Beyond Relevance and towards Utilization: Academic Perspective Taking and the Experience of Surprise as a Proposed Indicator of Impact on Practice

We propose that a pluralistic conceptualization of scholarly impact includes surprise in addition to the more established relevance construct. We identify competing perspectives on the nature of the relevance–surprise relationship and test these perspectives empirically. Results suggest that when managers rate research findings, there is a very strong negative relationship between relevance and surprise; however, when rated by academics attempting to predict managerial responses, the relationship is orthogonal. We also find that academics are generally adept at predicting managers’ ratings of relevance and surprise when presented with academic research findings. Our findings are encouraging in that they suggest that academics are adept at perspective taking; however, they simultaneously highlight a challenge for academics because their most surprising research findings may be dismissed as irrelevant by managers.