Creating a Culture of Research Ripe for Impact

• Shared definitions of societal impact provide leadership teams with clearer pathways for aligning research culture with long-term institutional strategy.
• Schools can strategically engage with key stakeholder groups—including advisors, policymakers, practitioners, and the public—to strengthen the relevance and visibility of their faculty scholarship.
• Through investment in flexible development models and emerging technologies, faculty are better positioned to contribute effectively to rapidly advancing global conversations.

Transcript

Jonathan Doh: [00:13] What kind of cultural changes are necessary in business schools and academia more broadly to ensure that our research has some real practical impact? I think this is a tough challenge and one that requires collective action.

[00:25] For these reasons, I believe the task force that AACSB has assembled is the right approach to bring various professional associations together to reach a consensus about what we mean by societal impact, and then allow that to percolate down to individual business schools.

[00:41] We first need to agree more broadly, and then business schools themselves can set different examples about what they consider their strategic priorities with respect to societal impact.

[00:50] I think, unfortunately, some of the incentive structures in business schools are not aligned to encourage faculty members to reach out and embrace policy and practice.

[01:00] First, there needs to be a tone set at the top of business schools—by deans and associate deans—to establish priorities for reaching out and engaging with stakeholders.

The incentive structures in business schools are not aligned to encourage faculty members to reach out and embrace policy and practice.

[01:10] Most business schools have boards of advisors, trustees, and other formal groups of external stakeholders with whom faculty and others can collaborate.

[01:20] More broadly, we should consider ourselves to be contributors to public intellectual debates. To some degree, we've ceded this ground to political scientists and economists.

[01:30] However, I think business school faculty have a lot to bring to the table, in part because we're interdisciplinary and view things from different perspectives.

[01:36] I wrote an article with some colleagues a couple of years ago in the Journal of Management Studies about research impact.

[01:41] And there we define five types of impact: scholarly impact, educational impact, policy impact, practical impact, and societal impact. If we think about those five groups of stakeholders, they are our audiences. We're not always going to reach all of them concurrently.

[01:57] But if we always have top of mind that those are our primary stakeholders and we ought to be speaking to at least one or more of them, that'll help clarify the type of impact we're seeking to have through our research.

One of the things we can do is provide different opportunities for business school faculty to share and collaborate.

[02:08] How can business school research keep up with the rapid changes in society and economies around the world? It's tricky because academia is not known for moving rapidly and responsively.

[02:20] One of the things we can do is provide different opportunities for business school faculty to share and collaborate. And so, they're learning and acquiring knowledge from one another. Also, they say the best way to learn something is to teach it.

[02:33] For faculty members who are willing to put themselves out there, offer a mini course on a topic, and then get up to speed on that topic and use that teaching experience as a way to upgrade and retool.

[02:44] What kind of impact will AI have on the research process and business school? The impacts that it will have are analogous to those in the broader economy.

[02:53] It will streamline some of the more routine activities. For example, when conducting research, we often do elaborate literature reviews.

[03:00] Well, we know that ChatGPT and other AI tools can help us move through those quickly so that we can use our higher-order skills and capabilities to really break new ground in research.