For the die-hard historians, here is a chronology of major events from summer 2014 to now.

 

 

 

 

July 17, 2014Anne Tsui gave a talk on “socially responsible scholarship” at the 50+20 Conference, Hong Kong Poly University. Ulrich Hommel of EFMD was in the audience and invited Anne Tsui to write an article about the talk for Global Focus, the EFMD magazine.
September 2014Ulrich asked if Anne would organize a group of leading scholars to develop solutions for the challenges of business school research. Anne expressed the need to involve AACSB in this project. EFMD agreed.
January 2015The article “Reconnecting with the Business World: Socially Responsible Scholarship” was published in EFMD magazine Global Focus (volume 9, issue 01). 1
January 30, 2015Ulrich and Anne completed a working document titled “ Socially Responsible Business School Research: A Vision and an Action Plan Toward a Science in Service of the World”. 2
Jan – June 2015With assistance from colleagues, the team invited and recruited at least two leading scholars in each of these four disciplines: Finance (Franklin Allen, Maureen O’Hara), Marketing (Mary Jo Bitner, David Reibstein), Operation (Serguei Netessine, Chris Tang), and Management (Mats Alversson, Jerry Davis, Peter McKiernan, Howard Thomas, Anne Tsui) as well as four deans (Ingmar Bjorkman, Gerry George, Katrin Muff, and Xiaobo Wu) to join the project.
June 2015Matthew Wood from EFMD joined the project team (replacing Ulrich); completed the 15th version of the working document (dated June 9, 2015). 3
August 10, 2015Held the first team meeting in Vancouver, Canada (at the location of the Academy of Management meeting) hosted by EFMD. At this point, the project team had 18 members. A total of 12 members attended the meeting. Paul Adler (President, AOM), Dan LeClair and Patrick Cullen (both of AACSB) were special guests at this meeting. 4
November 2015Launched the Delphi study: invited 35 authors who have published papers on questionable research practices and relevant issues to participate in two rounds of Delphi, opened-ended questions in the first round and structured questions in the second round.
January 27, 2016Held second team meeting in Budapest, at the location of the EFMD Annual Deans and Directors meeting (hosted by Matthew Wood); attended by ten team members. Bill Glick, Chairman of the AACSB Board, attended as a guest.
January 31, 2016Held third team meeting in Miami at the AACSB Annual Deans Conference (hosted by Dan LeClair) with eight members in attendance. Bill Glick and Sri Zaheer (Dean of Carlson School, University of Minnesota) were guests.
February 2016Began writing the position paper; Ira Solomon (first Accounting scholar and dean) joined the team, and he subsequently invited Rashad Abdel-Khalik to join.
April 2016Completed the Delphi study with 27 participants in two rounds of the survey. 5
May 31, 2016Completed the first draft (dated May 31, 2016) of the position paper “A Vision of Responsible Science for Business Schools”.
August 1, 2016Completed second version of the position paper (renamed to the white paper, dated August 1) based on feedback from team members.
August 8, 2016Held the fourth team meeting in Anaheim (hosted by Dan LeClair); attended by 12 team members. Four more deans joined the team (Hongbin Cai, Xionwen Lu, Bernard Yeung, Sri Zaheer); Jonas Haertle of UNGC’s PRME joined as a new member. Mary Ann Glynn (AOM program chair) was a guest at the meeting.
September 2016Began building the RRBM website with the main purpose to capture consultant’s comments on the white paper; invitations were extended to co-sign the paper and to join the RRBM community.
October 2016Began presentation of the white paper at various conferences in China, Europe and USA and by October 2017, at least 15 presentations were made at Management (AoM, AIB, EURAM), Accounting (AAA), Marketing (AMA), and Operations (INFORM) in addition to AACSB, EFMD, CEMS and CIME conferences. 6
January 2017Received approval to publish a special issue in the Academy of Management Discovery on the topic of “Sustainable Development for a Better World: Contributions of Leadership, Management and Organizations.” It encourages research on the UN’s SDGs. Three RRBM team members are on the guest editing team: Jerry Davis, Thomas Dyllick, and Anne Tsui. 7
January 2017The paper “Why Care About Impact?” by team members Peter McKiernan and Bill Glick appeared in Global Focus (volume 11, issue 1). 8
February 5, 2017Held fifth team meeting in New Orleans (hosted by Dan LeClair); attended by eleven team members.
February 2017Jean-Alexis Spitz from EFMD joined the project to provide program and website support.
March 2017Finalized the white paper for consultation (dated March 20). The paper was re-titled “A Vision of Responsible Research in Business and Management: Striving for Credible and Useful Knowledge”.  The 24 scholars and the four institutional supporters are listed as authors of the paper. 9
April 2017RRBM website was ready; team members began inviting senior scholars in their disciplines to provide comments and offer support as co-signers.
May 2017Team member Jerry Davis was appointed Associate Dean for Impact at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
July 2017Reached out to the Center for Open Science organizers about collaboration with RRBM and the possibility of creating a “badge” for societal impact of research.
August 7, 2017Held the sixth team meeting in Atlanta (hosted by Dan LeClair). Eleven team members attended the meeting with David Reibstein and Miguel Padro (for Aspen) participating via video-conference. The International Association for Chinese Management Research proposed an Award for Responsible Research in Management. The team approved this proposal.
September 20, 2017The Call for Nominations for the IACMR Presidential Award for Responsible Research in Management was distributed to listservs of management professional associations. 10
September 31, 2017Completion of white paper consultation with 85 sets of comments and 80 agreed to be co-signers from 70 universities in 21 countries, representing the major business disciplines.
October 15, 2017Finalized the full version of the white paper for the scholarly community and a brief executive version for others. 11

RRBM website updated to host the white paper for reading, to comment, to debate, to pledge support, and to join community. The website also includes “Activities”, “Endorsers”, and “About Us” sections.

January 1, 2018RRBM website was opened to public. Readers can view without registration. It has two versions of the position paper (the full version and the executive briefing),  a welcome statement, the Call to Action video and a “What’s New” side bar. An invitation to endorse the position paper and share best practices is present everywhere on the website.
February 9, 2018The founding members held its first web-based meeting using the Zoom technology. A total of 12 attended. We discussed a variety of issues, ranging from further dissemination of the position paper in both academic and media outlets, personal invitations to senior scholars (e.g., fellows of professional societies) to be endorsers, new award programs, to special issues in key journals.
March 16, 2018Inaugural March 2018 issue of Voices – the RRBM newsletter published.
May 2, 2018Bill Glick, Anne Tsui, and Jerry Davis, founding members, published a new paper in BizEd titled “Moral Dilemma in business research”
August 13, 2018We had the 8thmeeting of the RRBM founding members, in Chicago, at the location of the Academy of Management. There were 14 founding members in attendance (11 in person and 3 by Zoom), along with one guest. We discussed several proposals from a few institutional partners on collaborative projects. We approved a joint project with the Rotterdam School of Management to organize a research ecosystem summit that will bring together the key stakeholders to discuss specific changes that will be required to transform the ecosystem that supports responsible research. There was also a discussion of the governance of RRBM and a need to expand the committee of contributors. A proposal was also made to meet on a quarterly basis using the ZOOM.
November 6, 2018We had our first quarter meeting by Zoom. A total of 13 founding members participated. We discussed the planning of the research ecosystem summit, the progress of the second annual “Responsible Research in Management” award. This time, we added an executive review that would focus on the “usefulness” principles on the list of finalist articles and books. We have almost 1000 endorsers, 55 institutional members, and 14 blogs.
January 2019Transition of governance by the Founding Members to a Working Board was established.  On January 18, Jerry Davis, Bill Glick and Anne Tsui created a CARMA webinar explaining the meaning of responsible research from both the credibility and usefulness points of view.  The Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society issued a call for nominations for published articles and books exemplifying the Seven Principles of Responsible Research.
March 2019The second IACMR-RRBM Award was held with a new two-stage review process to identify research that inspires practice.  Nominations receiving the highest ratings from the academic review committee were then evaluated for usefulness in a second review by a team of ten executives. The process resulted in three distinguished winners, 12 winners and eight finalists.
July 2019Inaugural, First Global Summit on Responsible Research, was held in collaboration with RRBM’s institutional partner Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, in The Netherlands on July 1. This Summit brought together 62 leaders among the internal stakeholders of the business research ecosystem, including deans, journal editors, association and accreditation leaders, and senior scholars.
August 2019On August 11, RRBM held its Inaugural Responsible Research in Management Award ceremony in Boston to celebrate 84 authors who collectively authored 35 research projects.  The in-person RRBM Working Board meeting was held the afternoon of August 12 in Boston.  The Working Board approved the Second Global Summit to be held at Imperial College London.  At this meeting, it also was decided that future in-person Working Board meetings will be held in conjunction with the annual Summit. Alexia Shonteff was hired half time to serve as the RRBM Project Director.
October 2019We had our first quarter meeting by Zoom. A total of 13 fBill Glick, Jerry Davis and Rich Lyons were among the judges for a special publication of the Financial Times“ Special Report: Responsible Business Education” featuring 20 business schools globally with research on sustainability, ethics and social purpose.
December 2019Anne Tsui participated in the Leading Business School Deans’ First Summit on Dec 12, 2019 “Serving Society through Responsible Research in Business and Management” in Hangzhou, China, hosted by Zhejiang University, China.
February 2020The inaugural American Marketing Association’s AMA-EBSCO Annual Responsible Research in Marketing Award identified 14 winners (two Distinguished Winners, seven Winners and five Finalists) who were honored at the AMA Winter conference.
March 2020The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, the Aspen Business and Society Program and RRBM hosted “Igniting Impact – Enhancing Business Practice and Research Through Greater Collaboration” in Ann Arbor on March 5-6.

The third IACMR-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Management was announced with 18 winners (three Distinguished Winners, eight Winners and seven Finalists) identified through a round of academic reviewers and second review by a committee of executives.

June 2020The first RRBM Pro Webinar “Responsible Research in Pandemic Times” hosted on June 16 by Prof Jerry Davis, Prof Peter McKiernan and Dr Jean-Alexis Spitz, gathered more than 60 doctoral students and showed them how they could, through multidisciplinary engagement, generate impactful ideas of dissertation topics.

The second Global Summit on Responsible Research was held virtually on June 29. This Summit brought together 68 leaders among the internal stakeholders of the business research ecosystem, including deans, vice deans, journal editors, association and accreditation leaders, and senior scholars. Keynote speakers included Mr. Paul Polman and Prof. Rebecca Henderson.

August 2020The first of three webinars to celebrate and honor the winners of the Responsible Research in Management Award was hosted by Prof. David Zhu and the discussant was Prof. Jeff Pfeffer.

AACSB published revised accreditation standards with the largest change focusing on the incorporation of societal impact in each school’s mission, research, teaching, and outreach activities.

Winners of the American Marketing Association’s AMA-EBSCO Responsible Research in Marketing Award were honored by a special virtual session at the AMA’s Summer Conference, hosted by Prof. Mary Jo Bitner and Matthew Weingarden (AMA).  Winners presented their work and took audience questions.

October 2020The second of three webinars to celebrate and honor the winners of the Responsible Research in Management Award was hosted by Prof. Anne Tsui with Prof. Jerry Davis as discussant.
December 2020The third of three webinars to celebrate and honor the winners of the Responsible Research in Management Award was hosted by Prof. Peter McKiernan with Prof. Kim Cameron as discussant.

The Fellows Group of the Academy of Management assumed the sponsorship of the Responsible Research in Management Award (co-sponsored by RRBM). The Call for Nominations with this new sponsorship is published in mid-December.

January 2021The RRBM Working Board welcomed four new members. They represent three disciplines (Finance, Marketing, International Business) and four countries.
Four webinars were held in January. In total, RRBM sponsored almost 30 webinars in 2021.
February 2021The second inaugural American Marketing Association’s AMA-EBSCO Annual Responsible Research in Marketing Award identified 9 winners (one Distinguished Winner, four Winners and four Finalists). They were honored at the AMA Winter conference.
March 2021The College of Business at the Colorado State University offered three scholarships to dissertation proposals addressing business sustainability, each receiving $6,000.
The fourth annual Responsible Research in Management Award changed sponsorship from IACMR to the Academy of Management Fellows Group. A team of 35 Fellows and 18 executives reviewed 100 submissions. The winners were announced on March 15, including 4 Distinguished Winners, 9 Winners and 8 Finalists.
April 2021The first open Responsible Research Academic Summit was held virtually on April 26, with 199 participants representing the major internal stakeholders of the research ecosystem. They include deans and associate deans, journal editors, association leaders, doctoral directors, senior and junior scholars, doctoral students, and accreditation officers. The participants declared actions plans in eighteen groups. The full report (free download) has many ideas for each stakeholder on how to advance responsible research.
May 2021RRBM announced the Call for Applications for the inaugural RRBM Dare to Care Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship, awarding up to 8 scholarships of $10,000 each.
June 2021The Responsible Research Roundtable (RRR) was held virtually on June 28 and 29, with 84 participants (57% academics and 43% executives) from 70 institutions in 15 countries. The RRR focused on identifying the areas where academic-practitioner collaborations are desirable, understanding the benefits and challenges of such engagement, and exploring different forms of co-creation to solve the world’s wicked problems.
The Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society announced the winners of MSOM Society Award for Responsible Research in Operations Management with one winning article and two honorable mentions.
August 2021The winners of the 2021 Responsible Research in Management Award were honored at a virtual session at the AOM annual meeting.
September 2021This month, we celebrated the winners of the 2021 EFA Best Paper Prize in Responsible Finance.
The Financial Time invited the RRBM Community to a “slow hackathon” to explore better ways to quantify the societal impact of business school research and create metrics to encourage high-quality and useful work.
November 2021RRBM called for nominations to serve on the Working Board.
December 2021The RRBM Dare to Care Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship program received nearly 90 applications by the December 1 deadline.
The Fellows Group of the Academy of Management issued a Call for Nominations for the 2022 Responsible Research in Management Award.