What are the difficulties with management literature? And how to use it to improve your business?

The following is is a summary of the article Developing Design Propositions through Research Synthesis, Denyer, Transfield & van Aken (2008)

The problem with management literature

The authors argue, that published research in the field of organization and management is recurrently criticized as fragmented and of limited relevance for practice.

Design science as remedy

The purpose of design science research is to assist managers by providing specifications for interventions that enables them to improve the effectiveness of their organization. It suggests that the research base could increase its relevance by developing more solution-oriented or prescriptive knowledge.Therefore, design science research aims for two objectives: first to develop knowledge to design interventions; second to design systems. Prescriptive knowledge cast is noted in the form of design propositions following the so-called ‘CIMO-logic’.

CIMO-logic

It is composed as follows: in this class of problematic Contexts, use this Intervention type to invoke the generative Mechanism(s), to deliver the Outcome(s). It should be noted that the design proposition is only an input to the designing of a solution. It is not a complete solution for any given business problem.

The authors argue that an important and effective way of creating practical management knowledge is by developing a customized research synthesis.

Question: How do you use management literature to improve your business?