HUMAN-RESOURCE EXECUTIVES PERCEPTIONS OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Human Resource (HR) executives were surveyed with regard to their perc eptions of academic HR research information. In general, the results s uggest that HR practitioners' attitudes related to relevance, skeptici sm, and accessibility are not as negative as was commonly assumed. Sti ll, some specific areas of practitioner concern were identified in the study. The executives' attitudes were also found to be significantly related to specific demographic and organizational variables. Interest ingly, HR executives with Ph.D.s had significantly more negative attit udes toward academic research than those without Ph.D.s. Male HR execu tives also viewed academic research as more irrelevant than their fema le counterparts. Attitudes also differed significantly as a function o f organizational size and type of industry.