Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/373915
24 September/October 2014 BizEd diversity in the classroom. When students invest the money to study in another country, it is imperative that they be exposed to the variety of perspectives that will enhance their capacity for critique." She continues, "This is the emerging picture of a future we are creating for ourselves if we don't account for our impact in a richer way. We need to actively demon- strate our worth, so we can safe- guard our role in society. We want to leave no room for critics to question the investment in educa- tion that cultivates conscience—not just at the business school level, but in the university at large. We begin by demonstrating how our scholarship has impact." Searching for Solutions But change is difficult, and these professors believe it won't come unless faculty push for it—at their own schools and beyond. "During my performance reviews, I fol- low the guidelines. But I also tell my dean of the things I do that demonstrate my contributions to the scholarly community and the wider communities of business and policy," says Antonacopoulou. Faculty also must raise the issue among themselves. Says Antonaco- poulou, "I'm inviting us to start dis- cussing how what we do as scholars has an impact. If I recognize that what I do has impact, then I know that when I write my next article, I won't just be mindful of where I can publish it so I can get the most brownie points. I'll be thinking about ideas that I can bring into my classrooms and into the worlds of policy and practice so I can make an impact with my teaching, my research, and my engagement work. I'll seek feedback from students, executives, and policymakers so my ideas can be tested, enriched, and improved. I want to capture the variety of ways in which my work makes a difference." Such conversations are "abso- lutely happening" among members of the Academy of Management, says Shapiro, not only in the U.S. but at affiliate organizations in other parts of the world. For instance, at annual meetings of the organizations, participants in both scholarly symposia and professional development workshops debate how to broaden the impact of scholarly research, how to measure it, and how to operationalize it. "The presidents' speeches at Academy meetings also have increasingly touched on the need for research that advances scientific knowledge and solves practical problems," Shapiro adds. "The solutions at this point are not clear. But we're all speaking about the need for a solution." The Pressures and the Problems Today's faculty labor under a growing number of pressures that are familiar to anyone in the higher education field. Debra Shapiro of the University of Mary- land points to shrinking budgets, which have led to larger class sizes, and the rise of online education, which has erased geographic boundaries in the competition for students. To attract students from around the world, Shapiro notes, many schools are offering a greater variety of classes, which they manage by shortening some classes to half a semester. While faculty might still teach for the same number of credit-hours per year, Shapiro says, "they're teaching twice the number of students they would typically teach." In addition, teaching half-semester-long courses increases the courseload professors carry every year. Shapiro notes that, at research-intensive institu- tions, typical teaching loads might be three or four courses a year. But when those courses are cut in half, those loads might become six to eight courses per year. At teaching-oriented universities, that number easily could be doubled. Not only that, to accommodate more students, classroom sizes have expanded—which has changed the pedagogy in certain kinds of courses, par- ticularly those focused on skill-building. For instance, if there are 60 students in a course about learning how to manage teams or negotiate effectively, the professor can't realistically videotape students and play back their perfor- mances for small-group critique. "It's quite likely that the opportunity disap- pears for students to see themselves practicing negotiating or behaving as team members and receive individualized feedback from the instructor on how to improve," says Shapiro. To ease the teaching burden on tenure-track faculty, many schools are hiring more adjuncts, which Shapiro considers a mixed blessing. "Adjunct professors are highly valued by faculty, because they help cover classes that faculty would need to teach at the expense of doing research," says Shapiro. "However, if schools begin hiring adjuncts in larger numbers than tenure-track faculty, it becomes difficult to sustain and energize the research culture. And because adjunct professors can't train doctoral students, having too many of them on one campus hinders the school's ability to train the next generation of management scholars." Thus, the problem remains: Tenure-track faculty continue to absorb respon- sibilities that take time away from conducting research, but the number of A-journal publications is still the primary metric that is considered in faculty evaluations. And that's a problem still looking for an answer.