The Impact Scholar Community was founded in April 2020 with the vision of establishing an online community of organizational scholars and educators conducting research to solve real-world problems. We define impact as evident when (1) our research changes how organizations and decision makers think and act; and (2) we use our position as academics to foster positive change beyond our immediate research insights.

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Early-career scholars who want to have impact are often advised to wait until after tenure to begin having impact. However, impact cannot simply be added onto a well-established research program. We instead take the position that achieving impact requires building impact capabilities early in one’s career. The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance of good management and the potential for management research to contribute to preventing and solving real-world problems. The Impact Scholar Community explores how scholars can have impact throughout their academic lives.

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This community is for researchers who believe in research impact on practice, have moved beyond asking ‘why have impact’ and instead are interested in exploring ‘how’. There are many challenges and opportunities of taking research and the researcher out of academia and into the public. This community is a space for dialogue around these opportunities and challenges. We will explore big ideas and concrete tips and advice on topics such as what it looks like to have impact, tensions between academic career progress and impact, and publishing impact research.

The Impact Scholar Community offers a virtual platform to connect scholars across the world in building impact into management academia. Kahn offers the concept of ‘barn raising’: “In frontier America when a family needed a barn and had limited labor and other resources, the entire community gathered to help them build the barn. The original family described the idea, the kind of barn they had in mind, picked the site, and the community pitched in and built it. Often the neighbors would suggest changes and improvements as they are built…". We aim to build on each other’s ideas, generate insights, and discuss concrete practices that will raise the impact of management research.

We would like to acknowledge support from the Academy of Management’s Strategic Project Fund. We welcome members from all AOM divisions. The Impact Scholar Community is hosted by the Academy of Management ONE Division.