���������

Introduction

Partner Organisation:��

The Australian Business Dean’s Council (ABDC) is the collective voice of Australian university business schools, which educate 16% of all domestic students and 39% of the nation’s international students. The 38 member business schools teach and research the areas vital to the success of the businesses that underpin the economy. The ABDC’s aim is to make business schools even better. As their peak body, ABDC’s role is to ensure that those with political, social, cultural and economic influence appreciate and support how business education contributes to Australia’s future.

Practical challenge

Business schools play a crucial role in achieving social impact by educating future leaders on responsible decision-making and innovation across all three sectors; commercial, public and non-profit. While business schools globally recognize that social impact is an important goal, there is no business-specific framework or guidelines for how business schools should foster the research environment to achieve these outcomes.

Therefore, this special issue will address the practical challenge of how might business schools systematically design, implement and refine frameworks that incentivise, measure and reward the social impact of business researchers? We have partnered with the Australian Business Dean’s Council in seeking guidance and practical strategies for business deans, academics and university administrators for policy development, measurement and academic research schemes to stimulate social impact in business research.

Practical challenge special issues are a unique feature of the Journal of Social Impact in Business Research. This type of special issue partners with a real world organisation who establish the purpose of the special issue. All submissions must directly address the stated practical challenge as well as a theoretical problem related to this challenge. The practical challenge partner will contribute a commentary article which responds directly to each article accepted in the special issue to identify the merits of each article and how the content can be used practically. In this way, practical challenge special issues not only generate knowledge on the social impact of a phenomenon, they also create evidence of social impact of the articles. This provides a high level of benefit to both the partner organisation and the author(s).

Background Literature

Business schools, particularly those who are accredited with AACSB, EQUIS and/or AMBA, recognize the important role business schools play in achieving social (societal) impact. Business schools have a greater remit that merely generating shareholder value, they have a “responsibility to improve the lives of all stakeholders” (AACSB 2024 p2) through their teaching, research and service. Despite this recognition and sporadic efforts (see Alkire et al 2025), there are currently no clear definitions of social impact in business research, no common language, agreed-on evaluation frameworks or metrics for business researchers and no frameworks to guide business school leaders for incentivising and fostering social impact research in a business school (see Parkinson and Naidu 2024). While there are templates and guidelines available (see AACSB 2024), these are not prescriptive and are not evidence-based or theoretically-grounded. ��Given the dominance of research quality metrics that reflect academic impact rather than social impact (i.e. journal impact factors, field-weighted citation index, H-index) and KPIs that focus on publishing in high-ranked journals, it is probably not surprising that there is little discussion about how business schools can generate social impact. Indeed while there has been discussion for more than two decades about the need for broader measures of a business school’s success than publications (Lockett 2024), little progress has been made. Indeed the relevance and impact of business schools is a topic with increasing discussion (Redgrave et. al. 2022, Basken 2023).

A key consideration in developing useful social impact frameworks for business schools is unintended consequences. When academics are rewarded or punished by KPIs, ��the emergence of ‘system gaming’ occurs, where extrinsic outcomes are the focus of behaviour rather than the true value of the research (see Hudson 2024). We do not know how to foster genuine social impact research that avoids or mitigates such unintended consequences. Without such frameworks, we risk replacing one set of KPIs (research quality) for another set of KPIs (research impact) that is extrinsically rather than intrinsically driven. If we do not want ‘one-dimensional academics’ who are afraid to take risks and adopt ‘performative’ tactics to their career (Mingers and Wilmott 2010, 2013), then we need frameworks that drive the behaviours we seek. A recent blog on the AACSB website provides a useful starting point; “to produce research with true societal impact, business schools must abandon one-size-fits-all journal list metrics in favor of diverse, personalized, mission-driven research objectives for each faculty member” (Lockett 2024).

The overall purpose of this special issue is to provide a path forward for incentiving, measuring and rewarding social impact in business schools from the perspectives of experienced business school deans. In doing so, this special issue seeks to set a future course for the variety of stakeholders in business school research.

References

AACSB (2023) AACSB and Societal Impact: Aligning with the AACSB 2020 Business Accreditation Standards, AACSB International,����, accessed 3 March 2025

Alkire, L., Hesse, L., Raki, A., Boenigk, S., Kabadayi, S., Fisk, R.P., Mora, A. (2025) “From theory to practice: a collaborative approach to social impact measurement and communication” European Journal of Marketing, DOI 10.1108/EJM-04-2024-0321

Basken, P. (2023) Most business school research ‘lacks real-world relevance’ Time Higher Education, January 14,����Accessed 3 March 2025

Hudson, R. (2024) “Responding to incentives or gaming the system? How UK business academics respond to the Academic Journal Guide”, Research Policy, Vol 53(9), 105082

Lockett, M. (2024) “The limitations of journal-Based metrics”, AACSB blog����Accessed 3 March 2025

Mingers, J. and Willmott, H. (2010) “Moulding the one-dimensional academic: The performative effects of journal ranking lists. ��Working paper, University of Kent, Canterbury.��

Mingers, J. and Willmott, H. (2013) “Taylorizing business school research: on the ‘one best way’ performative effects of journal ranking lists”. Human Relations Vol. 66 (8), 1051-1073

Parkinson, J. and Naidu, J. (2024) “Driving and evaluating social impact in health marketing”, Health Marketing Quarterly, 41:2, 113-129

Redgrave, S.D.J., Grinevich, V. and Chao, D. (2022) “The relevance and impact of business schools: In search of a holistic view”, International Journal of Management Review, Vol 25, 340-362

List of topic areas

We invite business school deans to contribute to our special issue and specifically address the practical challenge of the partner organisation outlined in this call for papers. We seek submissions that present innovative strategies, case studies, systematic literature reviews, empirical research, commentaries, policy papers, practice papers or viewpoints that shed light on how business schools can incentivize, measure and reward social impact by business researchers.

Suggested topics

• How does your university define social impact – is this a generic definition or is it business specific?
• What are the features or characteristics of your country/location/university size/mission/strategy/resources etc that affect conducting social impact research in your faculty/business school?
• What is your discipline background and what frameworks are useful in understanding the future of business schools – social impact?
• How does your business school overcome the challenges posed by social impact research?
• What do you think is needed to enable business schools to engage in social impact research?
• What are possible unintended consequences of fostering social impact research and how might you mitigate these?

The structure of practical challenge special issues Practical Challenge Special issues in JSIBR adopt a hybrid format that both shares and creates social impact knowledge with three sections: Editorial: A substantive editorial on the special issue topic will be provided by the guest editor(s) including a summary of the papers in the special issue. Peer reviewed articles. Practitioner Commentary: the practitioner partner for the special issue will provide a commentary in response to the peer-reviewed articles which includes background information on the problem or opportunity and the justification for the special issue topic and written responses to each of the peer-reviewed articles outlining the key takeaways for their organisation and intended social impact actions. This commentary ‘closes the loop’ for the article authors and provides evidence of how their article will be used to make practical social impact. This commentary may also provide recommended readings with hyperlinks to key reports or articles.

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available��

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see��.

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions:��31/03/2025

Closing date for manuscripts submission:��29/08/2025

Guest editors

Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett,��rebekah.russell-bennett@canberra.edu.au, University of Canberra

Professor Sean Sands,��ssands@swin.edu.au, Swinburne University

.