OPINION
a knowledge perspective that overlooks those significant aspects that are particularly relevant to business schools and knowledge economies: tacit knowledge and know-how. We suggest a theoretical shift away from explicit-only research impact outcomes and towards explicit and tacit knowledge recognition in how current business school research is conceptualised. This would allow for better accounting of what is currently undertaken in business schools, since it makes the ‘invisible’ work more visible by widening the conceptualisation of impact itself. In doing this, great research-based MBA teaching and more inter‑disciplinary research within the wider university could allow business school researchers to receive greater credit for the kind of work that they are already undertaking.
two, we can also help to overcome placing too much emphasis on those aspects of research where management research might be structurally different, such as for instance the explicit knowledge perspective that minimises aspects of research where management scholars may bring additional impact to bear. Next is interdisciplinary collaboration with STEM subjects such as medicine, engineering or law, all of which have academics who practice since all of these areas contain elements of management. This immediately allows business school researchers to contribute their tacit knowledge in the research conundrums of other fields and for them to tap into the knowledge of researchers who are closer to practice. For university leaders thinking about the effect of the business school within a wider higher education context, this enhances both intellectual productivity and the impact of their workforce. For management scholars themselves, it reduces the cost of networking and opens them up to new communities that might otherwise be inaccessible through their student and industry contacts alone. For funders, the implication is to place greater
the construction and authorship of journal articles in physical sciences is typically more conducive to both higher co-authorship teams and larger publication volumes per author and a greater number of citations per academic paper. To illustrate, the Nature index tracks 68 of the most prestigious journals in science-based disciplines: between 2012 and 2016, the average number of authors in physical sciences grew from nine to 39. Compare this to the Academy of Management Journal , where the largest co-author teams were two papers that had six authors each in 2019, with the majority of papers having three authors or fewer. When it comes to stakeholder impact, unlike clinician researchers who are embedded in a hospital or medical clinic collecting patient data on the frontline of care, management academics are by and large not engaged in equivalent activities. While explicit outputs are undoubtedly important and part of the political economy of business schools, they paradoxically also have the potential to diminish the institution within the context of wider university activities. If business school deans encourage their university presidents and alumni to view the school’s performance through these metrics alone, they are likely to always be viewed as a poor relation. So what can be done to address and indeed redress this imbalance? In short, research- based MBA teaching and interdisciplinary collaboration. The nearest and most scalable source of management practice is via MBA programmes, which contain thousands of senior ranked managers of organisations seeking guidance on company practice. The key is to incorporate original business research into these units and ask students to enact sections of it as part of their coursework or dissertations. The impact of business schools in the teaching domain is rarely in dispute within universities, but what is often challenged is the worth and impact of their research. Business schools are often characterised as university cash cows for the students they produce, rather than the research they conduct or the research impact they have. By combining the
emphasis on the socio-economic and legal implications of scientific grant applications. Such a shift has been pursued
“Business schools are often characterised as university cash cows for the students they produce, rather
by Genome Canada, which is focused on how genomics-
based technologies improve the lives of others. Could it become standard practice for
biologists or physicists to have co‑investigators from management, law or indeed philosophy to offer tacit knowledge about the ethical, environmental and strategic implications of their work? In concluding, our thoughts here build on a recent paper that we co‑authored, The ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of research impact . In it, we argue that current approaches to evaluating research impact are anchored to
than the research impact they have”
Ambition | DECEMBER 2022/JANUARY 2023 | 47
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