Business schools have been increasingly expected to demonstrate tangible societal impact. It’s clear that schools can achieve positive impact by educating their students in principles such as leadership, strategy, and business ethics. But to truly make a positive difference in the world, we also must foster research that contributes to economic, environmental, and societal development.

One of the most effective ways that schools can achieve this goal is by closely aligning their faculty’s career development with the requirements of societal impact. Unfortunately, faculty often remain unclear about their institutions’ impact-focused goals and requirements that relate not only to teaching and project management, but also to publishing, disseminating, and securing funding for their research. Even after professors achieve tenure, they are likely to find it difficult to discern how they can most effectively contribute to the broader purpose of their business schools while advancing their academic careers. 

As we worked toward initial AACSB accreditation at Aalborg University Business School (AAUBS) in Denmark, the challenge of aligning societal impact with faculty development was a recurring theme. But we soon realized that we could achieve our impact ambitions if we aligned our faculty development with the AACSB Business Accreditation Standards.

For this strategy to be successful, we knew that we needed to take three essential steps: clarify our criteria for faculty promotion and tenure, be disciplined about gathering and analyzing data regarding the impact of faculty research, and assign staff managers to support faculty as they pursue impact-focused scholarship.