Abstract
Occasionally, as editors we use this space to communicate with the readers of Business & Society and its stakeholders. Our communications take two forms: Editors’ Insights, which are essays to guide our prospective authors or to speak about important issues concerning the field of business and society, and From the Editors, which are shorter notes to give an update, introduce a specific feature, or mark an occasion. In the latter series, through this note, we now formally introduce our new
Contributions to this new section address an important topic of interest to business and society scholars and the stakeholders of their scholarship. With pathbreaking new thoughts and observations on contemporary issues that concern the domain of business and society and management studies more broadly, these commentaries complement the peer-reviewed research in the journal.
Commentaries aim to facilitate a dialogue between academics and the various stakeholders of academic research. So, they should be easy to read for both non-academic and academic readers, within business and management studies and its neighboring disciplines. This implies that the style requirements are different from those of an academic article published in Business & Society. They are short, written in the style of an op-ed of leading newspapers.
Commentaries revolve around a key message in terms of a viewpoint, an insight, or a new direction on issues of consequence to both business and society. They serve to spark debate within classrooms, to contemplate on new developments, and perhaps to spur new research. They are novel and counterintuitive, perhaps controversial to some, and aim to stimulate a further exchange. Although we currently do not envisage a point-counterpoint series, different commentaries can be published together in a thematic set to showcase a variety of perspectives on a salient theme, as we do in this issue.
In this first set of Commentaries, we highlight the topic of “impact” in business and society research. The issue of impact is taking a firm hold in our field, reflected in the discussions in universities and business schools, considerations in accreditations or rankings, or in the social media discourse on our role and purpose in society. So, we assembled a rich set of Commentaries covering this theme, some invited, and some inspired by the format and other commentaries published “online first.” Through this, we wanted to generate a conversation on all issues related to impact—definition, measurement, antecedents, consequents, advantages and disadvantages, and desirability. The purpose of these Commentaries is not to answer any of these questions directly or comprehensively, but to provide food for thought for those thinking about impact in relation to their scholarship.
These 10 Commentaries range from contributions discussing the experience of the Financial Times (FT) with business school rankings and impact (Jack, 2022) to questioning the very notion of rankings as an impediment to performance (Brankovic, 2022) or exploring the increasing individualized quantification of scholarly impact and dwelling on the inequalities they exacerbate (Crane & Glozer, 2022) and the perils of quantifying and measuring performance (van der Kolk, 2022). The other six Commentaries in this series shed light on a few ways to achieve impact, including creating personal impact development plans (Aguinis & Gabriel, 2022), working with managers to perform research (Bansal & Sharma, 2022), enhancing involvement with research stakeholders (Spence & du Gay, 2022), ensuring context-relevance to provide a valid foundation for effective action and working with stakeholders to disseminate research (D’Cruz et al., 2022), writing in alternative publication formats such as essays (Lindebaum, 2022), and developing as well-rounded scholars, with a balanced portfolio of research, education, and service for the benefit of society (Lu et al., 2022).
Together those Commentaries offer many insights, but we would like to highlight a few overarching themes. First, they highlight the importance of understanding what impact is as well as measuring it, while also being mindful of the pitfalls of impact measurement. Given the pressures of performance management and social comparisons, measuring impact is an important step. But, measures by their very nature often fail to comprehensively capture the underlying construct, in this case impact. Furthermore, they may give rise to people gaming the system to improve their performance. Also, some measures may provide an unfair advantage to scholars from privileged backgrounds and those with resourceful networks, which may lead to some ideas gaining currency due to factors other than their inherent merit.
Second, despite the ills and inadequacies of measures, a journey toward measuring is important as the Financial Times’ experience has shown. Although its rankings face criticism, as Andrew Jack notes, FT regularly refines its methodology for ranking to better capture the changing stakeholder expectations from management education. The measures used so far may not always capture the criterion. For example, its diversity measure, focusing on gender and international dimensions, does not adequately capture the lack of diversity on other dimensions that may be more relevant in some contexts, such as age, caste, clan, indigeneity, region, or religion. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge and study such criteria as well as other initiatives by our stakeholders to better understand their contributions—both positive and negative—to foster more inclusive and sustainable management research and education.
More broadly, in measuring the impact, a focus on the journey is important because impact itself is a journey to create the desirable future we aspire to. This journey requires researchers to understand the contextual nuances and develop solutions that address the problems. Therefore, it is only apt that measures of impact change as the needs of business and society change.
Third, even if research may be an individual effort of scholars, achieving impact is not. Scholars need to work with stakeholders to better understand the context, construct research questions that address the problems of stakeholders, and collaborate with them to conduct the research as well as to disseminate research findings to create the desired change.
Finally, to achieve impact, scholars need to question the received wisdom—whether it is in terms of what is valued as research or research publications, or what is rewarded in careers. Adopting a reflexive approach to our scholarship and our role in the society is important, not just to achieve impact but also to find meaning in our work and lives.
We hope that the above insights, and the new Commentary format in general, 1 provide further food for thought on impact and our role as scholars in society. This conversation is just gaining momentum and we hope to see more and more insights appear, not only in the pages of this journal but also in other spaces (e.g., the journal’s blog or social media pages) and, more importantly, in the field broadly.
Finally, before closing this contribution, we would like to remember one of our predecessors, John Mahon, who passed away on October 20, 2021. John served as an editor of Business & Society from 2004 to 2007. Prior to that, he served as a guest editor for a special issue on revisiting corporate social performance. As an author, John published eight research articles in this journal, including a seminal article on corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance (Griffin & Mahon, 1997). He also helped found the International Association for Business and Society (IABS) of which Business & Society is the official journal and helped to shape the field of corporate political activity. Fittingly, one of his close collaborators, Jennifer Griffin has penned an obituary to commemorate John’s life and work on the blog of this journal (see https://businessandsociety.org/john-f-mahon/). We gratefully remember his impactful contributions to the journal and the field.