Delivering Impact in Management Research

When Does it Really Happen?

Robert MacIntosh, Katy Mason, Nic Beech, Jean M. Bartunek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367559687
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000413267
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Education Administration
• Index: Business

Impact is of increasing importance to all researchers, given its growing centrality to those who fund, assess and use research around the world. Delivering Impact in Management Research sets out a detailed and nuanced analysis of how research impact is best delivered in practice. Starting with a rich conceptualisation, the authors move on to discuss models through which meaningful impact is framed and delivered. The book explains processes, skills and approaches to impact, along with examples and insights into potential pitfalls and solutions.

Examples are drawn from around the world and systems such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) are discussed as part of a key contribution to primary debates globally. A significant contribution to the long-standing discussion about relevance in business, management and organisation studies research, this concise book is essential reading for scholars and university administrators seeking to advance their understanding of delivering and demonstrating world-class research that matters.

1
Conceptualising impactful management research

This book seeks to answer a seemingly simple question. How, when and for whom does management research create impact not only on scholarship but also on practice? While we recognise multiple meanings and approaches to impact, our focus will be on impact as evidenced change in practice occurring as a result of the purposeful application of co-developed knowledge. We will argue for the importance of a relational and processual view of impact which: both delivers immediate outcomes in the context of practice and also creates value at a meta level of method and process; incorporates different kinds of knowledge to bring together analytical and practical expertise (to co-develop new knowledge); and operates ethically with a “flat hierarchy” and equity of regard for all participants. Later in this chapter, we introduce a two-level model of impact in which we explore the immediate level of a specific change, such as a new technique being introduced in a professional service firm, and a meta level in which ongoing learning resonates as the firm applies the thinking to other functional areas and the researchers adapt their methods in view of their own learning from the project. There are choices for academic experts and professional/practitioner experts, and we explore how these can be understood and so seek to assist those interested in achieving impact in developing a repertoire of impact-making knowledge with which to improvise when undertaking the exciting opportunities of impactful work.

The processes of organising and managing are central to every aspect of human life. The products and services that we access in our day-to-day activities are provided by a wide range of public, private and charitable organisations, each of which is managed in some way shape or form. Our schools of business and management house more students than any other discipline and prepare some graduates for careers leading organisations of every shape and size, whilst preparing others to form their own organisations. It seems natural then that management research matters because it is capable of reaching into every aspect of society and economy (Bastow et al., 2014).

Alongside scale and reach, we will argue that because management specifically addresses coordination, collaboration and engagement, there is an ethical drive to include management research in multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder work to embed inclusivity. Management is the ideal disciplinary base to combine with arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences if they are to produce truly effective change. Equally, the matters of pressing urgency for our societies, for example, defined by the UN sustainability goals and the grand challenges we face such as health inequalities, poverty, inclusive economy, social justice and sustainability, require integrated social and sometimes socio-technical system change – the very stuff of impactful management research. For us, the connective potential of management research is simply too important to neglect if we care about improving the world.

Despite this potential for impact, our field has long been beset by concerns about relevance (see Starkey and Madan, 2001; Bartunek and Rynes, 2014) and these concerns do not seem to be resolving (e.g. Nobel, 2016). In 2017, we commissioned a special issue of the British Journal of Management (BJM), which attracted the highest number of submissions ever received for a special issue of that publication. BJM had previously addressed related topics on relevance and on the very nature of management research, suggesting that there remains a healthy appetite to understand and to address our discipline’s place in the world. In this book, we build on the arguments set out in that special issue (see MacIntosh et al., 2017) and develop a framing of impact which goes beyond a narrow definition of research to incorporate the full range of academic activities in classrooms and curricular that includes other stakeholders such as the professions as partners in impact and that considers the temporal nature of impact as it emerges.

Impact

In everyday usage, impact is defined as the action of one object coming forcibly into contact with another. Perhaps, fortunately, there is limited evidence of peer-reviewed management research outputs coming “forcibly” into contact with policy and practice but this definition of impact privileges the idea of impact as a singular event. Our intention in this book is to present a richer conceptualisation of impact as a process and, in so doing, to move beyond a linear framing that focuses almost exclusively on the heroic but idealised cases of individual research insights which directly impact practice. Rescher (1996: 7) suggests that natural existences “consists in, and is best understood in terms of processes rather than things, of modes of change rather than fixed stabilities” and we would echo that sentiment in our view of impact as a plurivocal process through which multiple audiences are impacted in multiple ways over and through time. Therefore, we define impact as evidenced change occurring as a result of the purposeful application of co-developed knowledge.

We are aware that impact has been discussed in other ways (such as those we discuss later), such as in citation counts and the simple translation of academic findings for practitioners. Later in this chapter, we set out four types of impact (see Figure 1.1) and a focus on citation counts and translation would be an example of Type One. In this book, however, we set out to explore additional approaches, which have a basis in co-design and collaborative relationships between academics and practitioner experts. We will argue that each type of impact is valid, and the important thing is to overtly choose the approach that best fits the problem/opportunity at hand and to be aware of the options that are available.

Figure 1.1 Levels of impact

In defining impact in this way, we seek to emphasise its purposeful and relational character. Sometimes, a distinction is drawn between theoretical and practical knowledge, in simple terms, the knowledge about why things are as they are and the knowledge about how to change things. Impactful knowledge combines these purposes of knowing so that analytical and normative thinking are intertwined in a learning orientation that understands and acts. The relational aspect of impactful knowledge requires different types of expertise, for example, combining analytical skills with experiential insight. If impactful knowledge is to be effectively produced and enacted these forms of expertise need to influence each other (e.g. Van de Ven, 2007), and this means that their role and status need to be explicit. Sometimes, we talk of “academics” and “practitioners” but in reality we are all practitioners, or experts, who can make distinctive contributions to a collaborative effort to produce and apply new knowledge.

In the context of impactful management research, we foreground the importance of knowledge held by a variety of actors, including those with academic expertise and those with management or professional expertise, and note that the ability to translate between and integrate across different areas of expertise is key. Different forms of knowledge can co-exist in combinations such as explicit or tacit, individual or shared and such forms of knowledge are not “subordinate to, or made up out of any other” and each form of knowledge does “work that the others cannot” (Cook and Seely-Brown, 1999: 382). Hassard and Kelemen (2002), Knorr Cetina (2010) and Van de Ven (2007) show that different experts (researchers, practitioners and policymakers) use different forms of knowledge and expertise, for example, abstract or immediately applicable knowledge in a specific context and that alternative forms of knowledge decay, transform, stabilise become institutionalised differently. We expand on these conceptualisations in Chapter 3, but note here is that this suggests the need for a flat hierarchy between alternative forms of expertise that embody, produce, use and transform knowledge.

As Usher et al. (1997: 121) observe: “Context-independent knowledge [theory] is [typically] ascribed a superior epistemological status to context-specific knowledge. This status also becomes a normative status, where context-specific practitioner knowledge is constructed as a limited and inferior form of knowledge; in effect, it is defined as not ‘real’ knowledge at all”. We argue, in contrast, that to understand the impact well, in the broader conceptualisation that this book argues for, the traditional power and privileged position of theoretical knowledge over practical knowledge must be rebalanced and the focus should move away from a question of who owns which type of knowledge to a question of what each participant can contribute from their knowledge and expertise. The different ways of knowing do not need to be reduced so a singular approach but rather the dialogue between them can produce “arresting moments” of insight and action which produce, in turn, theoretical developments (and this is discussed further in Chapter 4).

To address our question of how, when and for whom management research might create impact, we first consider two levels at which impact occurs – the immediate and the meta. An example that illustrates this is the Fuel from Waste project (Griffiths, 2011). This project, and others like it, meets the definition of impact as collaborative effort to effect positive change in the world. Here, the purpose was to enable change for those living in areas of deprivation in Africa, reducing their reliance on charcoal fuel by producing fuel briquettes from domestic waste and in turn.

The immediate impact in this example is the application of technology to change the access to fuel. From this immediate impact, a meta level of impact flows. For example, where participants in the projects become included in the economy, setting up small businesses to sell fuel briquettes. Over time, other impacts emerge as the researchers involved reflect on how they went about the project, the particular skills needed and how they stepped outside their training to develop approaches of understanding and participating in cultures that would be more familiar to social anthropologists. In examples of this type, immediate impact is followed by a broader, meta impact in the context of the project (such as greater participation of women in an economy) and the academic context (such as development of the methods and practices which the researchers apply in subsequent projects).

In this example, impact generates three different forms of value. Firstly, there is value in the immediate context of the work, such as the implementation of technology to produce fuel briquettes. Secondly, there is value in the broader context of the work, created over time, through the broader social impacts of the initial, direct and usually deliberate outcomes of immediate impact. These could include, for example, further beneficial consequences of the immediate change, such as further use of the technology allied with support for entrepreneurial start-up, which enable people not only to heat their homes but also to set up small businesses which give them a source of income. Thirdly, there is value in the research context and process, often created by methodological developments and changes to research practice enacted in future engagements. Hence, there can be value to the academic team in rethinking how they develop their next project and to the broader academic community, for example, in how skills for impact become incorporated into doctoral training. The value derived from research may vary across particular types of stakeholders. But truly impactful work requires the skills and processes of developing all three types of value which in turn requires a rounded view of the range of participants directly and indirectly, immediately and eventually involved in delivering impact. Figure 1.1 shows these levels of impact and the associated values.

In partial answer to our opening question, impact as presented here is delivered by a broad range of participants over an extended period of time to deliver multiple forms of value to a range of stakeholders. This is in contrast to the usual ways of accounting for impact in academic systems that tend to focus on a narrower range of value which is amenable to more direct causal analysis as illustrated by Bastow et al. (2014). There are, however, signs of change. For example, Ottoline Leyser (2020), the CEO of the UK Research and Innovation (the major body that oversees the public research funding bodies for the UK universities), has argued for a systemic change of culture in research towards a collective and collaborative approach which engages people across occupations from academia and industry and from less represented groups. This book will address how we might go about such a relational culture change.

Why do universities support academic research?

Bresnen and Burrell (2013) note that over the centuries, courtly, aristocratic, ecclesiastical and mercantile patronage played a role in enabling research and practice across the arts and sciences. The idea that funding shapes research agendas is important and it is, therefore, worth considering who are patrons of contemporary management research? And what do they get for their patronage? Our research is supported by our universities, by governmental funding agencies, by industry and occasionally by individual curiosity. Some argue that “disputes on the purpose and nature of management research appear to have taken on some of the characteristics of language games” (Romme et al., 2015: 545). (Although from a Witt-gensteinian perspective, language games are neither trivial nor playful, but are epistemologies which are exercised within groups, similar to what can be regarded as communities of practice, and which represent a significant challenge for translation between different communities (Beech, 2008)). Indeed, one is left to wonder whether “the only real beneficiaries of the protracted debate on relevance are those academics who make short-term publishing gains” (MacIntosh et al., 2012: 374).

That said, business, management and organisation research (which we refer to hereafter, as simply management research) has expanded in scope and scale to the extent that in the UK, for example, there are over 14,000 full-time-equivalent staff in business schools with significant numbers of doctoral students, research associates and others also engaged in research. Indeed, 12% of all university students in the UK and 8% of all staff are covered by management as a subject area.

Davis notes that “judging by the number of scholars involved and their volume of research output, the field of organizational research has been an incredible success” (2015: 179). Today, many thousands of articles, papers and books are published on the subject of management every year and our industry continues to expand.

Our concern is that the measurement of impact has become too narrow in terms of immediate value and in terms of the chronology of diffusion. In the UK, public funding has created an incentive to measure impact through successive research assessment processes which we discuss further in Chapters 2 and 6. More generally, websites like the Web of Science and organisations such as Academic Analytics focus almost solely on citations and equivalent measures. There is an implicit linear, temporal sequence (i.e. impactful papers beget more impactful papers). Increasingly, visible measurement systems within the university sector mean that “scholars are now much more attuned to where, when and how they publish” (Pettigrew, 2011: 348) and academic worth is judged, in considerable part, by “how many people cite your work” (Barley, 2016: 3; also see Bastow et al., 2014). Whether through national audit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• A note on authoring
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• 1 Conceptualising impactful management research
• 2 Delivering impact in management research: how relationships foster impactful outcomes
• 3 Conceptualising impact as theory in use
• 4 A model of dialogue for co-production of practice-oriented learning and impact
• 5 Ethics of impact
• 6 Nurturing the capacity to create impact
• References
• Index