Are mainstream journals publishing research with a greater focus on impact? Based on recently published research on top-ranked business journals, the answer is a cautious ‘yes.’ Below is a summary of an article co-authored by, among others, Cabells’ Simon Linacre and the new Head of PRME, Dr. David Steingard.
From “Revolutionizing societal impact in business school research: can the FT50 lead the change?”, published in Emerald Publishing’s Society and Business Review.
As one of the co-authors of this paper, we were motivated by a simple but uncomfortable observation: academic research is being produced in increasingly large volumes, but too much of it seems to be failing to make tangible benefits for people or the planet. Scholarship, of course, advances our knowledge, but the academic ecosystem also rewards behaviors that can pull researchers away from impact and toward insular, circular conversations. This is the tension that sits at the heart of our argument.
We began with the dysfunction many of us know too well: the culture of publish or perish. Career progression and job security are strongly shaped by publishing in a small set of ‘elite’ journals. In business and management, the Financial Times’ list of top journals – the ‘FT50’ – functions as a powerful signal of quality. However, it also reinforces a narrow definition of impact, focusing on citations, rankings, and prestige. The result can be a false and damaging dichotomy that suggests rigor and relevance cannot coexist. In our view, that myth was extinguishing the passion and creativity researchers need to tackle society’s wicked problems and grand challenges – from climate change to inequality.
Our paper focuses on the FT50 as both a case study and a leverage point. The key question we ask is whether these journals are simply gatekeepers of the status quo or whether they can become catalysts for research that helps society. We approached this using three ideas:
- First, systems theory, which reminds us that journals are not isolated – they shape and are shaped by the broader incentives of business schools, rankings, and research evaluation
- Second, proxy failure (often associated with Goodhart’s Law): when measures like citations become targets, they stop reflecting the outcomes we actually care about
- Third, Hegelian dialectics, where the FT50 represents a ‘thesis’ of business-as-usual, the growing demand for SDG-aligned, solution-oriented research is the ‘antithesis,’ and a new ‘synthesis’ is possible – business research that integrates rigor and relevance.
To move beyond theory, we needed evidence. We therefore analyzed the FT50’s alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across two time periods: 2016-2019 and 2020-2023. We used an AI- and bibliometrics-driven metric we called SDG Impact Intensity (SDGII), designed to assess how strongly a given journal’s published research aligns with SDG themes. Unlike traditional journal metrics, SDGII focuses on relevance and not just reach within academia.
The results were mixed but nevertheless encouraging. In the 2016-2019 period, nearly half of FT50 journals had little to no SDG-related research activity, and only about 10% scored 3 or higher on SDGII. From 2020-2023, we saw improvement: around half of journals reached 2 or higher, and 17 journals increased their scores. Yet two-thirds remained unchanged, and there was no overall progress at the very top end of the scale. In other words: movement, but not transformation – yet.
To contextualize the FT50, we benchmarked it against a comparison set we call the SDG50 (a curated group of journals with strong SDG alignment). Here, the contrast was clear: FT50 journals were improving faster in percentage terms, but the SDG50 still outperformed them substantially.
However, one of the most important findings is that a small group of FT50 journals had made dramatic SDGII gains across the two time periods, suggesting that progress was not random. We highlighted the high-profile journal MIS Quarterly (MISQ) as a mini-case study because of its explicit statement against the ‘tyranny of metrics’ and deliberate push toward research impact within and beyond academia. We felt, as authors, that was significant as it showed what was possible when editors, publishers, and communities actively invited and rewarded scholarship that was both rigorous and socially consequential.
Our conclusion at the end of the paper is not that the FT50 has ‘solved its impact problem, but we did see signs of a cultural shift – and argued that the FT50 could become a meaningful lever for change if it confronted its proxy failures and embraced impact-oriented evaluation. That could include new metrics and weightings, or even expanding the FT list to 100, 250, or more journals to better reflect the breadth of impactful scholarship worldwide.
Ultimately, our goal in the paper was to help move business research from ‘words to worlds,’ where the best scholarship doesn’t just circulate within academia, but actively contributes to building a more sustainable and equitable future.
