By Frank de Bakker, Hari Bapuji, Jill Brown, Colin Higgins, Kathleen Rehbein, & Andrew Spicer

When we took over editorship of Business & Society one year ago, we noted that “we are committed to impact and influence beyond publication, impact factors, and journal rankings. We aim to contribute to the development of novel and workable solutions to the urgent challenges that the world presently faces” (Bapuji et al., 2020, p. 791). We are happy to announce one of the initiatives we took to honour this commitment: the introduction of a new format, Business & Society Commentary!

A new format

Usually academic journals turn to special issues and similar formats to address important contemporary themes (for instance, we commissioned special issues on COVID-19, business and refugee crises or stakeholder engagement and inclusion) and to collect different approaches and perspectives. Yet, these discussions and debates often remain within the boundaries of academia, with limited scope for the stakeholders of management research to contribute directly. Furthermore, the lead time for a special issue is too long to respond swiftly to emerging challenges. Business & Society Commentary aims to address this issue and better align academic research with its broader stakeholders.

Commentaries are expected to generate debate on an issue of wide importance, direct attention to a new, emerging or overlooked phenomenon, challenge existing norms and rules, and generally invigorate the mind of the reader. Through this new space, we aim to complement the peer-reviewed research with pathbreaking new thoughts and observations on contemporary issues that concern the domain of business and society. Three characteristics distinguish a Business & Society Commentary from other formats, that is, non-research articles, typically found in academic journals:

1. The Commentary format is open to both academics and non-academics so that both parties can illuminate business and society topics with their experience, expertise, and insights.
2. We aim to publish an accepted Commentary rapidly—online first, later on followed by publication in print in a regular issue of the journal. We will curate sets of commentaries that address a particular theme and then publish them together, with an accompanying note from the editors.
3. All commentaries will be published open access. Further, brief summaries of the commentaries will be presented shortly here on Business & Society Blog, with an option to generate discussion via reader comments.

Impact

To kickstart this new section, we decided to spotlight a topic that has been constantly gaining traction in both business schools and among its stakeholders: Impact. Underlying this growing conversation is the desire to better understand the purpose of academic research and to discuss questions about the role academic research plays in society, and for whom. These questions further underscored our original editorial value of impact and influence and showed that there is no better time than now to think about impact, particularly by bringing a diverse set of voices.

With this first set of commentaries, we aim to generate a rich conversation on what impact is, why we should strive for it (if at all), how to achieve it, how to measure it, and when to prioritize it. Our initial set includes six commentaries:

1. Andrew Jack discusses the experience of the Financial Times with business school rankings and their evolution to include societal impact, the challenges in creating the rankings, and the need for better scholarly engagement to devise appropriate measures of impact.
2. Herman Aguinis and Kelly Gabriel argue that impact does not happen automatically or accidentally, but academics need to develop personal impact development plans and offer a useful template for scholars.
3. Tima Bansal and Garima Sharma draw on their impact journey to note three different approaches to impact and suggest that researchers need to see impact not just on but also with
4. Andrew Crane and Sarah Glozer reflect on the increasing individualized quantification of scholarly impact and dwell on the inequalities they exacerbate, by drawing on their experience with the ThinkList of business and society scholars.
5. Laura Spence and Paul du Gay offer involvement as a precondition for impact and discuss the various challenges related to involvement, drawing on their own experience.
6. Jelena Brankovic questions the very notion of rankings as an impediment to performance, but more so for scholarly pursuit and thus impact.

Together, this first collection reflects our intention to bring diverse stakeholders to the debate. Several new commentaries on impact will follow soon. We look forward to your responses, below or on our social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook).