What is it about?
Many business doctoral students are experienced executives who excel at solving real-world problems but often struggle to translate their professional experience into theoretically grounded research. This study introduces and evaluates the Theory-Practice Scaffold (TPS) framework, a structured reflective learning approach that helps practitioner-doctoral students move from managerial thinking ("how do we fix this problem?") to scholarly thinking ("why does this phenomenon occur and what theory can explain it?"). Implemented in an entry-level doctoral course in Thailand, the framework combines executive learning sessions, guided reflection, iterative feedback, and theory-building exercises. The findings show that students developed stronger problem statements, more theory-driven research questions, and greater readiness for doctoral-level research.
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Why is it important?
Business schools worldwide are increasingly enrolling senior professionals in doctoral programs, yet many struggle to help practitioner-students bridge the gap between industry experience and academic research. Without appropriate scaffolding, valuable professional insights may remain anecdotal rather than becoming meaningful scholarly contributions. This study demonstrates that structured reflection and theory-practice integration can significantly improve doctoral students' ability to generate academically rigorous and practically relevant research questions. The TPS framework offers a scalable and transferable pedagogical model for business schools, professional doctorates, and executive education programs that seek to produce research with both scholarly impact and real-world relevance. More broadly, the study highlights that developing research capability is not merely about teaching research methods—it begins with teaching students how to think theoretically about managerial problems.
Perspectives
This research was inspired by a recurring observation in doctoral classrooms: accomplished executives often possess rich professional experience but find it difficult to transform that experience into publishable academic research. Traditional doctoral pedagogy tends to assume that students naturally know how to make this transition, yet practitioner-doctoral students frequently require a different form of intellectual scaffolding. The Theory-Practice Scaffold (TPS) framework was designed from the perspective that business doctoral education should not force practitioners to abandon their professional identity. Instead, it should help them leverage their experience through structured reflection, abductive reasoning, and theory building. When properly supported, practitioners can become highly effective scholar-practitioners who contribute knowledge that is both theoretically rigorous and contextually meaningful. I hope this work encourages business schools to rethink how they design doctoral learning experiences and to place greater emphasis on the practice-to-theory transition that lies at the heart of practitioner-oriented doctoral education.
Manoj Chatpibal
King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bridging practice and theory for business doctoral education in Thailand: evaluating the theory-practice scaffold (TPS) framework, Journal of Work-Applied Management, July 2026, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/jwam-10-2025-0213.
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