Can Business School rankings measure the positive impact of management education instead? April 2017 virtual meeting.

Currently Business School rankings do not measure a business schools impact on dimensions relative to humanity’s global agenda as outlined for instance in the Global Goals (or SDGs).

Unfortunately business schools typically orient their innovations and decisions heavily on what produces good ranking output — often to the detriment of educating responsible leaders and enabling organizations to be a force for good

This not only orientates established schools toward a less than ideal measure but also places heavy pressure on upcoming business schools that can only achieve global recognition by publishing academic articles in a small and narrow pool of journals recognized by the ranking authorities.

The apparent unwillingness or inability of existing rankings to amend their criteria to a new 21st century relevant orientation of measuring impact of business schools, raises the question of where and how an independent source of information may be found when evaluating schools.

The current ranking systems simply don’t measure what truly matters.

Won’t a system that measures how much a particular school is doing to close the gap on major issues faced by humanity (e.g. those articulated by the SDGs) make more sense?

Tweaking the rankings formula or calculation when the wrong things are being measured in the first place is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

On 18 April 2017 the GRLI hosted a vCollab “Business School Rankings FOR the World” during which this dilemma was discussed with a view to promote and inform continued transformation of measures of management education.