Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:26:53.718Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Wicked Problem of Scholarly Impact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2017

Tara Behrend*
Affiliation:
George Washington University
Richard Landers
Affiliation:
Old Dominion University
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tara Behrend, George Washington University, 600 21st St. NW, Washington, DC 20052. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Extract

Academics sometimes forget that the purpose of a university is to educate: our students, our local communities, each other, and the world. Although each university is unique in its constituency, all share the charge to generate knowledge for the protection and benefit of the public good. The goal of an academic should be to beneficially impact society, broadly defined, with scholarly activity. As editor and columnist for The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, one publication highlighted by the focal article, we applaud the efforts of Aguinis et al. (2017) to put forth alternative approaches to defining impact. Like them, we are concerned that many of the measures of “impact” we currently use do not capture this charge.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aguinis, H., Ramani, R. S., Campbell, P. K., Bernal-Turnes, P., Drewry, J. M., & Edgerton, B. T. (2017). Most frequently cited sources, articles, and authors in industrial-organizational psychology textbooks: Implications for the science-practice divide, scholarly impact, and the future of the field. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 10 (4), 507557.Google Scholar
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. 1990. A theory of goal setting and task performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Ordonez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 1, 616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155169.Google Scholar
Verma, I. M. (2015). Impact, not impact factor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 78757876.Google Scholar