An unfair ADVANTAGE
Business schools can find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to measuring the impact of research. Vince Mitchell , professor of marketing at University of Sydney Business School and Eric Knight , dean and professor of strategic management at Macquarie Business School, discuss ways to redress this imbalance
L ike other professional disciplines, emerging metrics for ‘measuring’ research impact, as much of their potential impact is enabled through tacit knowledge. Scholars have traditionally measured impact in terms of the quality of journal lists or article citations and, more recently, through the use of alternative metrics (dubbed ‘altmetrics’), as well as by media mentions, patents, jobs and start‑ups. However, these measures of codified, auditable and recordable explicit knowledge tend to ‘under-privilege’ the other kinds business schools can be at something of a disadvantage when it comes to
of impact that occur in business schools. Business decision making is heavily context‑dependent, with few explicit generalisable laws to draw upon, whereas most impact is created with knowledge that is implied rather than overtly stated. This is something that is not only prized in management practice, but also used by many professional firms in their business models, from Boston Consulting Group in strategy through to JP Morgan and UBS in finance. When set in a wider university context, the explicit knowledge dominance of scholarly and stakeholder impact favours some university disciplinary contexts over others. For example,
Vincent Mitchell gained his MSc and PhD from the University of Manchester, UK. As head of marketing at Bayes and the University of Sydney Business Schools, he has published more than 100 papers and is in the top two per cent of scientists globally in terms of citation impact Eric Knight completed his DPhil as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar and visiting professor at Stanford University and UC Davis. He publishes in the Strategic Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review
“The explicit knowledge dominance of scholarly and stakeholder impact favours some university disciplinary contexts”
46 | Ambition | DECEMBER 2022/JANUARY 2023
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