Business schools aren’t typically known for radical action. But radical innovation in how business schools translate their knowledge for non-academic audiences will be required to achieve maximum impact in society. And if the very legitimacy of business schools is in question1, this raises the urgency for radical change.
For Professor Will Harvey, Director of Melbourne Business School’s Social Purpose Centre, reflecting on the aim of business schools, research is the underpinning knowledge that should inform practice. But when he considers how academic institutions disseminate their research for non-academic audiences, such as the business community, he states “I think one of the challenges universities have had, historically, is not reaching such wider audiences.” If universities fail to connect their knowledge with audiences outside of the academy they can’t fulfil their full potential, and their legitimacy will continue to be questioned2.
If business schools are to succeed and thrive, it is Harvey’s view that “Dissemination more broadly, that’s underpinned by the research and is done in a digestible way, is really key.” There is an opportunity (and, it could be argued, an obligation) for academic institutions, including business schools, to go above and beyond simply delivering good teaching and undertaking good research to unleash ideas in society.
“We unleash ideas and leaders for a sustainable future.”3
How universities disseminate their research often fails to align with the needs of non-academic audiences. And when researchers do give their work to industry or policy makers they don’t always know what, if anything, happens after that. Whether the work is read. Whether it is understood. Whether it is applied. It can be a bit of a dead end. Or, at least, the end of the road. Harvey describes this as a linear process. And this linear approach to research communication, which can’t even be called engagement, is severely limited in its potential to unleash ideas. To achieve research impact, for Harvey, it needs to start with a “more circular, more engaged two-way process. That’s where the most work is needed.” He continues,
“I think there is massive scope to think about how you turn that whole process from a linear one to a circular one… that is more radical.”
Harvey elaborates on the status quo of research dissemination for industry and government audiences, and the resulting research impact of a radical approach: “Rather than, ‘here’s some really interesting research hope it’s useful. I’ll package it up in a way that’s, you know, is a bit more accessible to you.’ That’s the end of the story.” Harvey envisions the potential for research translation and engagement to lead to “a new research project or a new teaching program, or maybe even just smaller initiatives initially that start to, like a bricolage, build on each other to then develop something bigger” resulting in “a wider impact to audiences that then brings on other people” into the business school, such as prospective partners or even students4.
By innovating the way in which research is translated for non-academic audiences, exploring creative ways to engage with these audiences and start fruitful conversations, business schools can forge deeper connections with industry, government and society to achieve greater impact. And at the same time reinforce, and perhaps even reinvigorate their legitimacy. This will be critical for Melbourne Business School to fulfil its purpose of unleashing ideas and leaders for a sustainable future.
Harvey’s vision for circular research engagement
Considering the linear, it is not as simple as research leads to insights leads to behavioural change. Another way of thinking about it is that you cannot simply generate knowledge, publish it, and expect it to actually amount to much in society. Things don’t automatically happen outside of academia just because you’ve published a journal article. To achieve impact, whatever impact means for a piece of research, a feedback loop is required to transform dissemination into engagement. Moving from “‘here’s some really interesting research hope it’s useful’” to here’s some research, what do you think? What can we do with this? How can we work together to see this applied? In turn, industry and policy makers are brought into the business school community to partner on research projects, to teach, to support, and even serve a marketing function as unofficial ambassadors of the institution5. Harvey sees an opportunity to “create an ecosystem where you’ve got different stakeholders within and outside of universities creating knowledge”. How this might work is that research leads to insights leads to collaboration leads to more research leads to deeper insights leads to further collaboration leads to application leads to behavavioural change leads to impact6.
Creative research translation can be the catalyst for this circular model. To share research in ways which meet audiences’ expectations for online content, such as high quality videos and podcasts, which are known to encourage interaction and engagement, and foster a meaningful connection between creators and audiences.
As for the rewards of more effective engagement, Harvey states:
“I think it has the biggest impact on research, teaching, and just the legitimacy of business schools if you could do that. But I think that takes time and it takes a collective commitment.”7
In the context of Harvey’s own ideas about the purpose of business schools and social impact, “sometimes it feels like you’re swimming against the tide, and the tide being the norms.” Swimming against the tide in academia is no easy task8. But perhaps Harvey is not the norm for business school professors anyway. As Director of Melbourne Business School’s Social Purpose Centre, he is acutely aware of the transformative power of knowledge when it is used for social good. He is in a unique position to spearhead radical change.
Thinking about the required collective commitment, Harvey speaks highly of Melbourne Business School’s media and communications team. But, in his experience, “It tends to be very good, but quite operational”.
“They’re pretty responsive if you’ve got content that kind of resonates. Where I think they’re good but they just don’t have, necessarily, the resources or the capacity is, sort of, a bit more strategic around ‘right, that’s brilliant. What we need to do now Will is…’.’”
The available support does not stretch beyond the boundaries of traditional approaches to academic communication9. Thinking outside of the box is limited, as is innovating the way in which research is shared with valuable audiences. Harvey is still grateful for the support he receives, and acknowledges it is more support than has been provided by other institutions, however, still “it’s relatively narrow in terms of the kind of support” that is available. What Harvey would like is a more strategic, and perhaps holistic conversation, “this is the topic, what’s the plan of attack and why?” This resonates with many other researchers. In opposition to the operational relationship of universities’ marketing and media and communications teams, what many academics want is to collaborate with a creative practitioner. To find new and interesting ways to share their work, engage audiences, and achieve some kind of impact10.
For Harvey, to realise the full potential of his circular model, it will be critical to achieve research engagement at scale. One way Harvey suggests to achieve this, or at least start to move in the right direction, is by “providing more awareness of different, innovative ways that we can, we being the academic community, can translate our research into let’s call it thought leadership content that can be accessible to externals at scale.” While individual outliers might take it upon themselves to do good work in the engagement and impact space, academic institutions need to be proactive and support their researchers in these worthwhile ventures. Not only this, institutions must become the driving force behind creative research translation and academics’ content creation; and enable and empower academics to make sure their knowledge is accessible and digestible at scale. So for Harvey’s institution, Melbourne Business School, impact will come from the collective efforts of the school and its scholars. Only then can institutions start to create that research ecosystem, and reap the benefits. And, for Melbourne Business School, unleash ideas.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. And Harvey poses a simple question to get started: “What do we think is the best kind of strategy for maximising the engagement of this work to wider audiences?” But he acknowledges that it isn’t just about having a good strategy, “it’s also how to execute it well”.
“There’s two things. One, I think people are unaware of different possibilities. And then, there’s also where people are aware of the possibility but are not aware of how to optimise each of those possibilities.”
Academic podcasting is a good example of poor optimisation and execution11. Researchers will be aware of podcasts and their potential to disseminate knowledge, engage audiences and build a community. But the audio-media landscape is already saturated with amazing podcasts. Even with the best intentions, academics won’t necessarily know how to make a really good podcast to compete in this space. This isn’t to say they shouldn’t try, but it will require both an innovative approach and sophisticated execution. Harvey sums up this challenge, even if “you’re behind it as an individual, your institution’s behind it, how do you do that in a really effective way?” Being effective is critical. For one, if it isn’t going to be effective don’t bother doing it. And two, academics are already stretched pretty thin with business as usual. If they’re going to pursue something that takes time away from other important activities, and if they’re going to be supported by their institution to do so its effectiveness will determine its sustainability as an initiative.
Harvey understands the engagement potential on platforms like LinkedIn, but acknowledges that he would still like to do better.
“I’d love to have some training around how to do some of those different things better than I’m doing currently because that means more people are going to click on it, more people are going to read it, share it, and that’s not an ego thing. It’s just that, how do I get more awareness for what I’m doing? So hopefully then, you know, it helps practice in terms of the kinds of things I’m advocating for from my research.”
A challenge that continues to arise, one that must be overcome, is the lack of incentive for academics to pursue this kind of engagement. It takes time and effort, and is challenging to do well, and when it comes to career progression the recognition of engagement and impact still lags behind traditional academic metrics (such as publications and citations). Harvey considers this:
“I think an interesting question that would be worth exploring empirically is would that circular model, that we’ve just been describing, could that have a positive impact on research metrics? So, in other words, if there is evidence that by doing that you increase the downloads of papers, the citations of papers, the altmetrics of research. Provided that they’re, kind of, deployed in a responsible way that’s surely already quite strong evidence that hey, you know, this is worth it. Because it’s reaching bigger audiences, it’s clearly having an impact on intellectual debates and presumably future projects. You could even look at successful grant proposals, and if they’re citing some of that stuff. You could also make a case there. So I think that would be something interesting to also try and show empirically because then it’s saying that, actually, even in a narrow sense of academic measures that it’s worth doing this because it is going to pay off in the medium term.”
Harvey makes a great point. At the moment there is little understanding of how non-traditional creative engagement content, such as academic podcasts, actually contribute to research impact. Even if we could better understand the value of creative research translation within the narrowest lens of academic measures, typical metrics such as paper downloads and citations, it would be a starting point towards acknowledgement of this type of content’s value12. A better understanding of this could overcome challenges of resourcing and incentivisation. If academics could measure and report the success of their engagement activities, in a way that would be understood and appreciated by university leadership, this would result in greater support for this type of work at scale.
Why this is so important
According to Harvey, a lot of great business school research simply slips through the cracks. It isn’t picked up by any media and fails to escape the ivory tower, even though it is on “a lot of the interesting stuff that has got high potential to have an impact on a lot of public debates about, you know, working from home, polarisation, inflation, misconduct, harassment. The things that are in public discourse.” While scholars like Harvey read these academic papers, “I think there’s loads of potential” to reach broader audiences. “Most people are in the workforce, right? These are issues people are dealing with.” This represents an opportunity, but I would also argue a necessity, to connect business school researchers and their knowledge with the workforce. With society.
Harvey states, “We don’t have a problem with volume of research. We’ve got a challenge with how that volume can be made more accessible.”13
“Your general public, with some help, could actually massively benefit from a lot of this content that for me, kind of ends up, kind of buried in journals and books and doesn’t ever really see much light of day. And that’s, I think, a real shame and a missed opportunity.”
In the end, for Harvey, it’s all about legitimacy and impact.
“How research can have a better impact on society. That, for me, is going to be really key in terms of enhancing the legitimacy of universities. So that’s why that engagement piece, for me, is a really important part of what universities should be doing more of.”
“That’s the inflection point that I think most business schools need to move towards.”14
Check this out if you’re interested in making better research videos.
It looks like it is. The article is six years old, but I question whether much will have changed given the pace at which universities move: Why we should bulldoze the business school. “Business schools have huge influence, yet they are also widely regarded to be intellectually fraudulent places, fostering a culture of short-termism and greed… it is remarkable just how much criticism of business schools over the past decade has come from inside the schools themselves. Many business school professors, particularly in north America, have argued that their institutions have gone horribly astray… At the end of it all, most business-school graduates won’t become high-level managers anyway, just precarious cubicle drones in anonymous office blocks… These are not complaints from professors of sociology, state policymakers or even outraged anti-capitalist activists. These are views in books written by insiders, by employees of business schools who themselves feel some sense of disquiet or even disgust at what they are getting up to.” Professor Martin Parker has much more to say on the subject…
Harvey sees it as his purpose to “ensure that that knowledge gets passed on much more broadly and not just hiding behind fees to pay to have education or behind a paywall” such as academic journals.
From Melbourne Business School’s About us.
The potential for student recruitment, resulting from research engagement, is worth further exploration.
A case could be made that this approach to research engagement makes a positive contribution to student recruitment, perhaps the number one priority of every academic institution in Australia.
The circular model in Harvey’s own words:
“It’s not a linear process of research leads to insight that leads to behavioural change, but actually there’s a feedback loop which is that those people who over time have access to accessible material they become more interested in research, teaching, other activity at the business school that may make them interested in taking a course, doing a program, coming and giving a guest lecture, participating in an event, supporting students. So, that then can lead to all kinds of positive implications for the business school and the university in terms of people who are actually practicing in business coming into the classroom or coming into discussions that can then lead to, in turn, you know better experience in the classroom or… industry partners becoming involved in research in the design stage. So I feel like, maybe the best way of describing this is that you start to create an ecosystem where you’ve got different stakeholders within and outside of universities creating knowledge, disseminating knowledge, across, sort of a whole different set of platforms where it’s not always the starting point is from the research but the research underpins it, suddenly if you do this engagement piece it suddenly expands the ecosystem of possibilities.”
Further thoughts on the legitimacy of universities and their academics, on the subject of research engagement, “it can bring legitimacy in the classroom as well because you can talk about how what you’re doing is having resonance to other audiences. It can give confidence to the students in the classroom that ‘oh, okay, this person knows, kind of, what they’re doing’”.
Associate Professor Mark Lauchs jokes that universities have failed to innovate in over a thousand years, besides the use of computers.
Another potential limitation of institutions’ marketing and media and communications teams if their, often, focus on broad public engagement. Trying to reach the widest audience possible. However, increasingly, what audiences want is deep subject-matter content. To meet this appetite, Harvey suggests “within the realms of our research there may be opportunities to create, kind of, niche contributions.” So be the academic that is known for that thing.
For more on this topic, check out You make me look like some corporate academic, Designing for the future of healthcare, and If anybody can do it, it's Dr Bikie.
There are so many great academic podcasts such as The Cinematologists or City Road Podcast. But, the problem is, academics sometimes think that just by recording themselves having a chat about their research it will make a podcast. But, like the old saying goes, if a podcast is produced and nobody listens to it is it even a podcast?
Other quantitative measures might include media views and engagement (including likes, comments, and shares), LinkedIn profile views and connection requests, and website traffic. While these would not, currently, be considered measures of impact they are at least indicators of a raised profile. As well, qualitative measures could be gleaned through interviews exploring researchers’ experiences. Such as, how have your engagement activities contributed to the achieving of your objectives?
Commending the work of scientists and science communication, distilling complex ideas for non-scientific audiences, but reflecting on the theory-ladened nature of many business journals “Your average kind of business school journal article should be more accessible than one that’s quite scientific, you would have thought. But yet, somehow, there seems to be something paradoxical going on.”
A bit of postscript, on what might be done, Harvey asks “can your institution create a set of exemplars who really showcase how this can be done extremely well?” He continues, “I think it starts to massively put the institution on the map, and it starts to significantly increase the awareness amongst faculty and media teams that there are other ways that we can showcase the legitimacy of what we do.” For me, this is a no-brainer. It might cost $30,000 to $50,000 per year out of an institutions marketing/engagement/outreach/impact budget, to basically run a pilot project with ten academics. That sounds like a lot of money. But, really, return on that investment shouldn’t be too hard. If just one of these exemplars goes on to forge a new industry partnership that could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for an institution - not to mention the prestige, and potential future funding or income. The whole Exemplar project is paid for. If just one of these exemplars goes on to have a popular content channel, such as on YouTube, connecting with the right audience could result in student recruitment. All it would take is getting a handful of students over the line, to choose your institution, and it pays for the Exemplar project. I’ll admit, this is a simplification. But, as universities continue to compete for reduced government funding (at least in Australia) and a finite pool of prospective students, radical change is going to be needed to survive. Let alone thrive.