8.1 The school's faculty collectively produce high-quality, impactful intellectual contributions that, over time, develop into mission-consistent areas of thought leadership for the school.
8.2 The school collaborates with a wide variety of external stakeholders to create and transfer credible, relevant, and timely knowledge that informs the theory, policy, and/or practice of business to develop into mission-consistent areas of thought leadership for the school.
8.3 The school's portfolio of intellectual contributions contains exemplars of basic, applied, and/or pedagogical research that have had a positive societal impact, consistent with the school's mission.
Definitions
• Society in this context refers to external stakeholders of relevance to the business school given its mission. Examples include nonprofit and private-sector organizations; business, government, and community groups; and the broader social, economic, business, and physical environments. These external stakeholders and broader environments may be at a local, regional, national, or international scale.
• Thought leadership is evidenced when a business school is recognized as a highly respected authority in an area or areas of expertise, and is thus sought after by relevant stakeholders. Aligned with the school's mission, these stakeholders should include students, business, academics, government, nonprofits, non-governmental organizations, and/or broader society. • Predatory journals and publishers are defined as “entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and/or are characterized by false or misleading information; deviation from best editorial and publication practices; a lack of transparency; and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.”16
• Intellectual contributions are original works intended to advance the theory, practice, and/or teaching of business. Further, intellectual contributions may have the potential to address issues of importance to broader society. The contributions are scholarly in the sense that they are based on generally accepted academic research principles and are disseminated to appropriate audiences.
The school's portfolio of Intellectual contributions may fall into any of the following categories:
− Basic or Discovery Scholarship is directed toward increasing the knowledge base and the development of theory.
− Applied or Integrative/Application Scholarship draws from basic research and uses accumulated theories, knowledge, methods, and techniques to solve real-world problems and/or issues associated with practice.
− Teaching and Learning Scholarship explores the theory and methods of teaching and advances new understandings, insights, content, and methods that impact learning behavior.
In addition to the categorization of intellectual contributions within the portfolio as basic, applied, or teaching/learning related, schools further characterize their intellectual contributions according to the level of peer or expert review that has occurred for the intellectual contributions appearing in their portfolio. For our purposes, peer-reviewed intellectual contributions are those that are subject to the scrutiny and evaluation of others who have recognized subject matter expertise in the same field, normally with a similar competence to those who are producing the outputs.
This component in separated into three parts:
− Peer-reviewed journal articles are scholarly publications that were submitted for critique and evaluation by one or more academics who have expertise in the discipline and/or methodology of the subject matter. Publications in law reviews may be included in this category.
− Other peer- or editorial-reviewed intellectual contributions include forms of quality assurance by either peers or subject matter experts recognized as having particular practical or academic expertise in that field. Examples include papers submitted for an academic conference that undergo peer review to be selected for conference presentation or for publication in conference proceedings. Articles published in practitioner or industry publications can be included in this category if they are sufficiently reviewed by subject matter experts. Other intellectual contributions that are not journal articles but are papers sufficiently influential with public policy, government, or industry can be included in this category if they are sufficiently reviewed by subject matter experts. Simply writing a paper as an output of consulting or other work does not render it appropriate for this category. The review and validation by subject matter experts is the determining factor as to whether such an intellectual contribution belongs in this category or in the third category of other intellectual contributions.
− All other intellectual contributions include outputs that are not validated by peers or those recognized as subject matter experts. These contributions include a wide variety of outputs such as presentations at academic or professional meetings, research workshops led, invited talks, etc.
Basis for Judgment
8.1 The Production of High Quality, Impactful Intellectual Contributions
• The school has in place processes, systems, and resources to support the production of quality intellectual contributions and assess their impact.
• The school's intellectual contributions have an impact on theory, practice, and/or teaching of business.
• The school has a five-year portfolio of its intellectual contributions. The distribution of intellectual contributions across categories in the portfolio is aligned with the school's mission, strategy, and thought leadership. As such, the types of intellectual contributions will vary across schools just as their missions vary.
• One important type of intellectual contribution is the publication of high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles. The production of peer review journal articles is a key way in which faculty maintain currency and expertise in their field. Thus, all schools are expected to have some high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles in their portfolio of intellectual contributions. The type of peer review journal articles should be aligned with their school's mission. Schools with primarily teaching missions may produce more high-quality applied and pedagogical research, while schools offering research master's and doctoral degrees are expected to produce a greater percentage of high-quality basic research.
• A significant cross section of faculty in the school and each discipline is engaged in the production of intellectual contributions, relying heavily on participating faculty.
• The school assesses and evaluates the quality of its intellectual contributions and has clarity on its future direction.
• The school has policies that guard against publishing in predatory journals.
8.2 Collaboration with Stakeholders
• Systems, processes, and resources are in place to support engagement with relevant external stakeholders by the school, units within the school, faculty, and students. These engagements produce credible knowledge, contribute to new venture creation, and/or create commercialization opportunities that ultimately are useful for external communities, apply to the practice of business, and address real issues in society.
• The school identifies its area(s) of thought leadership, outlines its goals for these contributions, and describes its achievements over the last five years as well as plans for the next five years. Examples of areas that could evolve into thought leadership include organizing and holding regional, national, or international academic and/or practitioner conferences; holding meetings for academic or professional organizations; publishing working-paper series; publishing academic journals; establishing a case study clearinghouse; or forming research relationships with private-sector, nonprofit, or government organizations.
8.3 The Societal Impact of Intellectual Contributions
• The portfolio of intellectual contributions contains exemplars of research and publications that have a positive societal impact that is consistent with the school's mission and strategic plan. This may include interdisciplinary research undertaken by business school researchers with academics from non-business disciplines.
Suggested Documentation
8.1 The Production of High Quality, Impactful Intellectual Contributions
• Using Table 8-1, provide a five-year portfolio of evidence that summarizes the intellectual contributions of the school aggregated in a way that reflects the disciplines of the school. Schools can provide supplemental information at their discretion to present a more robust view of their intellectual contributions.
• In Table 8-1 (A), provide the total number of intellectual contributions produced by faculty who are employed by the school in the year of record. These intellectual contributions are identified by portfolio, type, and percentage of faculty producing them. The table should be organized using the same disciplines as reflected in Table 3-1.
• In Table 8-1 (B), outline how the intellectual contributions are aligned with the school's mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.
8.2 The Production of High Quality, Impactful Intellectual Contributions
• Outline the processes, systems, and resources in place to facilitate engagement between the school, units within the school, faculty, students, and relevant external stakeholders. Describe how these engagements encourage the creation and/or co-creation and communication of relevant and timely knowledge.
• In Table 8-1 (C), identify how the school measures the quality of its intellectual contributions and apply these measures to analyze the five-year portfolio. Include an evaluation against current and future desired states and any changes that will be implemented as a result.
• In Table 8-1 (D)(i), using qualitative and/or quantitative metrics, provide an analysis of the impact made by the school's portfolio of intellectual contributions.
• Clearly outline how the school supports and encourages faculty to produce intellectual contributions. Include an outline of financial and other support, incentives and rewards, performance expectations, development opportunities, and other initiatives that ensure faculty are developed and/or supported to develop quality intellectual contributions.
• Describe the school's processes to identify high-quality research and scholarship, including a description of how the school guards against promoting publications in predatory journals.
• Identify the thought leadership aspiration for the school and evaluate progress toward this goal as well as plans in place for the next five years.
8.3 The Societal Impact of Intellectual Contributions
• In Table 8-1 (D)(ii) describe exemplars of scholarship that have had a positive societal impact as a component of thought leadership.