This health services study employed a participatory action research (PAR) approach to engage nurse practitioners (NPs) from two health authorities in British Columbia in separate and concurrent inquiry groups to examine the research question: How does collaboration advance NP role integration within primary health care (PHC)? The inquiry with NPs is significant and timely, because the introduction of the NP role was only recently formalized in BC, supported by the passage of legislation and regulation, and the introduction of graduate education programs. For this PAR study, a first-, second-, third-person action research framework was adapted and applied to facilitate graduate student research. PAR fostered an iterative process of social investigation, education, and action, in which NPs strengthened their relations, shared and generated practice and policy knowledge, and engaged in collective visioning and action to improve health care delivery. The findings of this PAR study include design and substantiation of an ecological framework about collaborative health care culture. This collaborative culture framework was applied to and substantiated by the NP inquiry discussions. NP practice patterns were examined and found to parallel the PHC principles, indicating the importance of the NP role to PHC renewal efforts. The meaning of role integration was explicated and collaboration was found to be foundational to NP practice. The study revealed the political nature of the NP role and the extent to which NPs are reliant on collaborative relations at all levels of the health system to attain role integration. Given that NP role development is still at an early stage in this province, this study provides important information about the current progress of role implementation and direction for future role advancement.

Depuis la naissance des sciences de gestion, les chercheurs questionnent la pertinence de leurs travaux pour la pratique des entreprises. Interroger le rapport de la recherche à la pratique, c'est s'intéresser à la façon dont sont produites les connaissances managériales. Nous nous focalisons tout d'abord sur la controverse développée autour du rapport de la recherche à la pratique en développant quatre approches complémentaires par lesquelles les académiques appréhendent le rapport à la pratique. Dans un deuxième temps, nous nous intéressons à la façon dont chercheurs et praticiens développent ensemble des innovations managériales et conceptualisons un processus de développement spécifique aux innovations managériales développées entre recherche et pratique. Dans un troisième temps, nous étudions le concept de Stratégie Océan Bleu et nous montrons comment ses innovateurs ont performé leur concept suivant ses préceptes. Enfin, nous nous intéressons au chercheur-praticien, un acteur qui d'une part se situe à la fois dans le monde de la recherche et dans celui de la pratique et qui d'autre part participe à la production des connaissances managériales. L'objectif est de mieux appréhender les conflits de rôle auxquels ils font face et la façon dont ils équilibrent leurs rôles. Ainsi, par ces quatre études, cette thèse éclaire la façon dont sont produites les connaissances managériales. / Since the early days of management research, its relevance to practice has been the subject of vigorous debate. Understanding the relationship between research and practice implies studying how management knowledge is produced. We first aim at understanding the controversy surrounding the relevance of management research. We develop four complementary approaches on how academics apprehend the relationship between research and practice. Then, we develop a framework that allows the identification of four modes of interactions between scholars and practitioners and discover a developmental process that is specific to the management innovations that are developed between research and practice. Then, we study how the strategic concept of “Blue Ocean Strategy” is performed. We show how its innovators have performed the concept by applying its own principles. Finally, we are interested in scholar-practitioners given they straddle the worlds of research and practice to produce management knowledge. We seek to understand how they overcome role conflicts related to their activities in both research and practice. These four studies shed light on how management knowledge is produced.