Can business schools ensure and improve their social impact?

As pressure mounts for business schools to be active citizens and demonstrate the social impact of their work, one key administrative tool is missing: rigorous data to help analyze, measure, and improve their courses and research. New initiatives now point to some signs of progress.

Alongside teaching more traditional skills and a greater emphasis on profit, there is growing pressure from students, employers and teachers from business, government and non-profit organizations to help address climate change, inequality and other human and wider challenges. Planet.

Much attention is paid to helping future managers and entrepreneurs meet these challenges through the curriculum of MBAs, Master’s Degrees in Management and other specialist diplomas. But the issues and needs are important, at least for those seasoned executives taking executive MBA courses who are well-established in positions of influence in their organizations.

Scholars such as the Scholars for Responsible Business and Management (RRBM) Network and the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) have long called for greater efforts, supported by various individuals and organizations.

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PRME has requested regular reports from its business-school members for several years. However, the results are subjective and difficult to measure or compare. RRBM and the International Federation of Scholarly Management Associations – as well as the Financial Times’ Responsible Business Education Awards – have organized competitions to showcase strong personal examples.

Now, the push for a more systematic focus on societal impact is going mainstream. The US-based AACSB last month published the first results of an effort to track business schools’ efforts.

Separately, detailed information released this year in the UK offers insights into an alternative approach. The latest Research Excellence Framework (REF), which all universities in the country are required to participate in every few years, includes several impact metrics.

AACSB’s assessment of its own first steps in social reporting is critical. “Schools are very immature in their social impact plans. Most . . . are just identifying areas where they want to focus their efforts,” he said.[They] There is a need to progress beyond the list of service functions. It shows that most initiatives are linked to the SDGs on quality education. good jobs and economic growth; and gender equality.

Limitations include AACSB’s tracking scope, which has so far reported only 74 institutions, primarily in the US and UK. After all, only a few go beyond describing activities to collecting measurable results. So far, few have been willing to publicly share details of their initiatives, and even those provide limited information.

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The UK ref is more transparent and comprehensive. Every university department in the country is asked to select case studies and research papers to demonstrate what they are doing to make an impact. External experts will review and rate your submissions. Business and management faculties alone cited 16,000 jobs.

The REF system creates an overall “grade point average” driven by peer-reviewed judgments of impact factors based on importance, importance, and rigor. An analysis by the Association of Chartered Business Schools shows that the best overall scores are closely aligned with leading institutions evaluated on a wide range of metrics.

The top score goes to Cambridge, followed by Imperial, London Business School, London School of Economics and City University.

In the first place, more energy is spent on reporting than on doing the right things

The REF website provides a full list of those seeking inspiration, cases and supporting academic papers from social-venture incubators and labor welfare interventions to economic modeling and improved demographic indicators for regulators.

An analysis by Wilfred Mijnhardt at the Rotterdam School of Management uses machine learning to scan the content of the reports, map the content of these issues to the SDGs, and examine the data to determine the contribution of different schools in terms of their scope. A standard shaker.

Despite recent efforts by scholars and publishers to monitor the content and value of academic publications, there remains a wide gap between the terminology used in such impact reports and the impact of causes beyond academia.

An effort like the REF requires significant resources from reporting schools and providing peer review. Professor Rick Delbridge of Cardiff Business School, who was involved in the review, said: “I’m concerned that most of the impact is not on fattening the pig, but on weighing the pig. Far too much energy was spent reporting what we did instead of doing the right things in the first place. I wonder if we are not reaching a period of diminishing returns.

Data collection comes with a cost. But that makes the case for asking the right, focused questions—to increase the breadth of insights that can be turned into action.