Challenges and propositions for research in quality management – Relevance gap revisited

By Anders Fundin and Henrik Eriksson

The findings reveal a consistent misalignment. While topics such as strategic quality management, leadership, culture, process improvement and stakeholder focus are widely covered in the literature, practitioners increasingly highlight challenges related to agility, digital transformation, co-creation, skills supply and the integration of AI — areas where academic research lags behind.

The study also shows that timeliness is becoming a growing barrier: slow publication cycles mean that even high-quality research often reaches practitioners too late to support rapid organisational change.

To close the relevance gap, the authors propose more agile and practice-oriented research approaches, deeper collaboration between researchers and practitioners, and better dissemination formats that make research more accessible, timely and useful in real-world decision-making.