SOCIETAL IMPACT
B usiness schools nowadays are at a crossroads. The increasing popularity and use of AI, pressure from research grant owners and dialogue within government bodies have all led to a change of paradigm in terms of how we measure success in management education. Up to now, business schools have had a rather limited understanding of what it means to be successful and have only focused on the future and distant consequences for stakeholders. Success for graduates is when they get a job within three months, with a decent salary. Success for researchers is when they get published in a high-ranked, high-impact, peer-reviewed journal (plus the number of papers that they publish). In 2019, Ken Starkey and Howard Thomas published an article on the future of business schools entitled Shut them down or broaden our horizons? It is not too late to rethink our relevance around how the success of our institutions should be measured. In the context of a paradigm shift, business schools’ success cannot and should not be measured by the number of research papers produced, academic rankings of its faculty, or any other quantitative measures. Success needs to be measured by a school’s real impact and effect on society. The time has come to fundamentally reimagine our approach and embrace a more engaged, direct model of impact that places real-world problem- solving at the forefront of everything we do. Measuring success by societal impact These days, no business school should limit itself to being just an ‘academic institution’; business schools are a potential force for positive change in society and the economy. The way we measure success should reflect how effectively we deliver on our promise to make a difference in the world. This emphasis aligns education with broader societal goals and, in doing so, guarantees that business schools will remain relevant and useful in the 21st century. Consequently, it is no longer enough to view social contributions as a peripheral activity; they have to be the core of business education. To sustain our relevance and achieve our goals, business schools must shift from the current passive approach of teaching, in which learning material is presented to students, to a more active approach that gets learners to focus on solving practical problems. For many of us veterans in management education, ‘impact’ is the usual suspect to determine the success of our programmes and is the standard tool used to measure societal change. However, we have always used an indirect approach – expecting changes to happen with
our stakeholders in a far-off horizon. We measure output with a narrow focus on theoretical contributions and academic faculty research. Business schools have been acquiring academic knowledge and contributing to measurable results for decades. Faculty members have been rewarded for producing more and more research in order to achieve their own career progression and higher rankings for their business schools. However, they do not always address the most critical issues that exist in the faculty member’s area of expertise. In traditional academia, there is the concept of ‘academic freedom’ and you hear people asking “What is the next journal to target?” rather than the more important question of “What real life problem do we want to solve?” This approach has led to a significant gap between the world of academia and the real world of business. The requirement for a new paradigm This situation has to change; we need to move towards a more applied, engaged model of teaching and learning that puts solving real world problems at the core of what we do. This is because direct impact demands that business schools engage with local, national and international audiences to come up with solutions. This will require a drastic change from passive knowledge dissemination to actively solving problems. At Sasin School of Management, this approach is embedded in our mission statement: “Inspire, connect, transform for a better, smarter, sustainable world.” From the time students apply for admissions to their learning experience in the school, to their graduation and taking the Sasin management oath, they are being prepared to bring positive change to society and they understand that the knowledge they have gained is a tool for changing that same society. There are three aspects of direct impact that need to be considered: • Addressing local challenges via community engagement Think about how and why business schools are in the best position to be driving forces for innovation within their specific communities. As a higher education institution, it should be in our schools’ mandates to come up with feasible solutions to the social and economic challenges of our regions. This approach not only involves making random contacts and interactions every now and then – it entails a purposeful and intentional approach to engagement. It entails the establishment of strong and sustainable relationships with the local community and the creation
Ambition • ISSUE 2 • 2025 33
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