Final Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force

"Exemplar" of How "Basic Research" Can Have "Considerable Impact On Actual Practice" (p. 18-19)

February 20, 2008: AACSB International is the premier accrediting agency for bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs in business administration and accounting. AACSB International recently released a report that evaluates the nature and purposes of business school research and recommends steps to increase its value to students, practicing managers, and society. The report's first recommendation is that AACSB "require schools to demonstrate the impact of faculty intellectual contributions to targeted audiences." In essence, the task force suggests that existing guidelines be amended to focus on outcomes, not [only] inputs. Schools would be required not just to keep track of refereed journal articles published by their faculty, but also to demonstrate the impact of all types of scholarship.

On pages 18-19 of the report, the "basic research" in Information Systems conducted and published by Professor Yogesh Malhotra, serving on the Accounting and Information Systems Faculty of Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, was noted as an exemplar of "considerable impact on actual practice." The specific text of the report is listed below and links are provided to the full-text of the Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force as well as related coverage in Business Week and Economist.

“There are many examples illustrating that advances in basic research have had a substantial impact on practice. Exemplars of this phenomenon can be seen in finance through academic publications on the theories of portfolio selection,²² irrelevance of capital structure,²³ capital asset pricing,²⁴ efficient markets,²⁵ option pricing,²⁶ and agency theory.²⁷ All are well-known for their substantial impact on both theory and practice. In accounting, while building on efficient market theory, the foundational research of William Beaver²⁸ demonstrated that the stock market reacts strongly to corporate earnings announcements. Applying agency theory, the work of Watts and Zimmerman²⁹ has been influential in creating a research stream that addresses how managers choose among accounting methods. In marketing, Keller³⁰ is well-known for his contributions to understanding the construction, measurement, and management of brands. Green and Rao³¹ are credited with developing conjoint analysis approaches to consumer research based on seminal work by Luce and Tukey³² in mathematical psychology. Today, conjoint analysis is widely used to test new product designs and assess the appeal of advertisements. In information systems, the research of Malhotra³³ has helped companies to understand why knowledge management systems fail and Bass’s Diffusion Model has had practical applications for forecasting demand of new technologies³⁴ In management, Hofstede³⁵ has conducted the most comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture and Vroom³⁶ made seminal contributions to understanding employee motivation. The point here is that while each of these business faculty members pursued scholarship that focused on very basic issues and published in academic journals, the product of that scholarship also has had considerable impact on actual practice.”

22 Markowitz,1952 23 Modigliani and Miller,1958 24 Sharpe,1964 25 Fama,1965 and 1970 26 For  example, Black and Scholes,1973

27 For example, Jensen and Meckling,1976 28 William Beaver,1968 29 Watts and Zimmerman,1978 30 For example,Keller,1993 31 Green and Rao,1971

32 Luce and Tukey,1971 33 Malhotra,2004 34 Bass,1969 35 Hofstede, for example,1983 36 Vroom,1964

Sources:

AACSB Impact of Research Resource Center
Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force (Final Report, February 2008)
Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force (Draft, August 2007)

Copy of Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force (Final Report, February 2008)
Copy of Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force (Draft, August 2007)

Related articles in:

BizEd, Business Week , Economist , Economist Background