Social scientists credit science with stimulating technological invocation and with it economic growth. We management theorist also believe that theories do help us organize our thoughts, generate explanations, and improve our predictions. In American/Western context, however, many researchers in our field point out that the gap between science and practice is so persistent and pervasive that our theory has been lost its relevance. Over the past decade, several attempts to deal with such problem have evolved in the form of movements toward “evidence-based management: EBM.” In response to EBM movement, in this “theme session” we try to rethink about the problems of researcher-practitioner linkage (RPL) in Japanese context. Our session consists of three separate parts. In the first part, based on the result of survey research we discuss about diffusion of management theory. In this part we try to develop a framework that will guide us in taking steps necessary for increasing the probability that practitioners will implement our findings. This may enable us to understand how transfer of knowledge (management theory) occurs and why. In the second part, we theoretically and empirically discuss about inter-organizational trust. As prior studies have suggested, the existence of inter organizational trust decrease uncertainty in inter-organizational exchanges and can enhance the performance of both practitioner and researchers. And our empirical research supports this. And finally, in the third part we think about RPL from the perspective of educational technology. Discussing about “evidence-based education” and analyzing data from some academic-industrial collaboration projects we try to draw some implication about RPL.
