Monday, September 24, 2007

Making Research More Relevant

AACSB International (the premier accrediting agency for business schools) has recently released a report on the nature and purposes of business school research (full report here and 2-page press release here).

The report recommends closer ties between research and practice: "the task force recommends building stronger interactions between academic researchers and practicing managers on questions of relevance and developing new channels that make quality academic research more accessible to practice."

Of course, a key issue to address is incentive alignment - right now, professors' incentives are not particularly concerned with making research relevant to practice.

In previous posts (Irony: do business schools practice what they preach?, Incentive pay for professors), we have talked about the incentive conflict between alumni, faculty, students, administration, and the governing boards, particularly with reference to Dartmouth where this conflict has become very public (Agents vs. principals: the strange case of Dartmouth, Dartmouth governance, again). This move by AACSB seems like an attempt to control the principal-agent conflict.

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