Since its inception, management has developed in the pendulum movement between theoretical rigor and practical relevance. In response to the widely discussed gap between management theory and practice, this paper draws on speeches from the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Organization and Strategy Division of Chinese Academy of Management and the results of 373 questionnaires, and identifies four key causes of the theory-practice gap, namely, institution design, knowledge classification, knowledge production, and knowledge transfer. To narrow the excessive gap, strategies are proposed in the four research stages of problem formulation, theory building, research design, and problem solving. This paper argues that maintaining a certain gap is necessary for the scientific integrity of management as a discipline. A dialectical understanding of the relationship between management theory and practice helps management scholars, who stand at the “crossroads” where theory and practice intersect, make the right choices in their path forward.