Facilitating Impactful Research

Transcript

Moez Limayem: [0:00] Our stakeholders, internal stakeholder, but more importantly external stakeholders businesses, employers, taxpayers, and many state institutions ask and require us to do things that are impactful, to do research that actually is relevant, that people not only read but also help them with their bottom lines.

[0:39] This concept now is not the best schools in the world. The best school for the world is really important, helping your community be a better one. The question is how do we, as deans, facilitate the research that is relevant, that is impactful? I think all it starts with a very clear, distinctive mission and vision that is bottom up, that everyone in the college or the business school rally behind it.

[1:13] That always starts, and that mission and vision should also mention, and stress the importance of research with impact. For example, at the University of South Florida, Muma College of Business, our mission is very, very clearly asks for research that is impactful. Let's start with that.

[1:34] The second thing is incentives. We know faculty. They're smart people. They always do the math. What is it for them? What will make them do that research that is rigorous but also very impactful, very timely, and very relevant? Incentives, how can we incentivize?

[1:55] Work route. We should give more time to faculty who are doing this type of research. It's really important. Make sure that your promotion and tenure guidelines reflect the importance of research, but not just any research, research that is impactful, relevant, and timely, making sure that people understand what it means to have research that is impactful.

[2:25] How do we measure that impact? It could be different from one business school to the other. That's also really important, that understanding and that incentive. I think hiring good faculty, retaining your good faculty that are doing research that is very impactful is very important.

[2:47] Celebrating success. When there is research that is impactful, that actually is being used by businesses, helping decision makers make better decisions, companies improve their bottom lines, people can live better, we need to celebrate that and promote it within the institutions, but also outside.

[3:14] All these are good practices that, over time, will pay off.

Filmed February 2019 at AACSB's Deans Conference in Vancouver, Canada.