The Impact of Business Schools in International Perspective

The aim of this symposium is to critically engage with the ways in which business schools can create impact. The symposium brings together renowned scholars whose scholarly work has focused on the (lack of) impact of business schools. We invited scholars from three regions: North America (Jeffrey Pfeffer), Asia (Howard Thomas), and Europe (Michel Kalika). Together their input allows us to contrast different international perspectives on the importance of impact, the assessment of impact, and the ways of achieving impact for business schools. The symposium discusses the impact of business schools as a multi-dimensional construct (e.g. societal impact, educational impact, and economic impact) and also encourages a debate about the spatial nature of impact (e.g. international, regional, and local). The symposium provides an intellectual space for Academy members to participate in the ongoing and timely debate around the impact of business schools and also to design future research opportunities around it.