Societal Impacts of Higher Education Research: From ‘Publish or Perish’ to ‘Publish and Prosper’ in Business School Scholarship

This paper introduces a transformative systems-level framework for understanding the interplay of institutional, cultural, and systemic dynamics influencing the societal impacts of academic research. We introduce and apply the Societal Impacts of Research Institutional Ecosystem (SIRIE) framework to business school scholarship and academic research in higher education. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as SIRIE’s normative ethical framework to benchmark: institutional mission; accreditation bodies’ compliance requirements; faculty tenure and promotion research expectations; the influence of rankings and ratings; and journal quality metrics. Our framework acknowledges the role the Anthropocene Epoch plays in contributing to contemporary social and environmental problems. We argue that recalcitrant institutional forces in academia neutralize the promise of academic scholarship to galvanize meaningful societal impacts. We assert that the contemporary state of higher education research is unfortunately dominated by a “publish or perish” mentality. This narrative produces academic research that is decontextualized from today’s exigent “grand challenges” related to poverty, climate, equity, health, peace, environment, etc., as well as transformative solutions for a sustainable future. By exploring an alternative paradigm for academic research through SIRIE and the SDGs—“publish and prosper”—we detail how academic research can meaningfully contribute to change the world for the better.