Dear AIB Colleagues,
There’s been a flurry of activity surrounding the revision of the FT journal list. A key question that many business school leaders are asking is: “How should we define scholarly impact and what can I do to enhance scholarly impact in my own school”? The following open-access article offers some recommendations that we hope will be useful:
· Aguinis, H., Yu, L., & Tosun, C. in press. How to enhance scholarly impact: Recommendations for university administrators, researchers and educators. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-10-2020-1189 [available at http://www.hermanaguinis.com/pubs.html]
We very much look forward to your comments about this timely and important issue!
All the best,
--Herman.
Abstract
Scholarly impact is critical to universities in their aspiration to create, disseminate, and apply knowledge. However, scholarly impact is an elusive concept. First, we present a conceptual model to clarify different dimensions of scholarly impact (i.e., theory and research, education, organizations, and society) and four key stakeholders (i.e., other researchers, students, practitioners, and policy makers). Second, we provide actionable recommendations for university administrators, researchers and educators on how to enhance impact. Our scholarly impact model is flexible, expandable, scalable, and adaptable to universities in different regions of the world and with different strategic priorities. For university administrators, we recommend (1) aligning scholarly impact goals with actions and resource-allocation decisions, (2) ensuring that performance management and reward systems are consistent with impact goals, (3) being strategic in selecting a journal list, (4) developing a strong doctoral program, and (5) promoting practical knowledge and applications. For researchers and educators, we recommend (1) developing a personal scholarly impact plan, (2) becoming an academic decathlete, (3) finding ways to affect multiple impact dimensions simultaneously, and (4) leveraging social media to broaden impact on external stakeholders. Implementing these recommendations will benefit other researchers, students, practitioners (e.g., managers, consultants), and policy makers.
Herman Aguinis, Ph.D.
President Elect, Academy of Management
Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar, Professor of Management, & Chairperson
Department of Management
The George Washington University School of Business
Washington, DC