The Community for Responsible Research in Business Management (cRRBM), which comprises a diverse group of 24 scholars, journal editors, and deans from 10 countries in three continents, and represents all of the major disciplines in business schools, believes that business research should be addressing the critical problems of business and society.  It is also convinced that the current model will be unsustainable as business schools compete for resources in the future.

This article showcased a number of business schools which have already instituted systems designed to make research more useful and credible.  In particular, it featured SMU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business (LKCSB) as one of the ‘pioneers in responsible research’, alongside the business schools of The University of Michigan, Peking University, Erasmus University and Notre Dame University.

It highlighted that LKCSB gives out Dean’s Impact Grants to foster a mindset of social impact among research faculty and to help scholars customise their research for the Southeast Asian context.  The School’s MasterCard Social and Financial Inclusion research project, Citi-SMU Financial Literacy programme and its Tri-Sector Collaboration programme are some examples of initiatives that set it apart.  Furthermore, researchers at SMU are actively encouraged to integrate their academic journal papers into case studies and short thought leadership pieces in both undergraduate and post-graduate curricula, which spreads the impact of their research even more.

Read the full article here.