Usefulness, Credibility and Scientific Norms: Reflections on Our Third Responsibility

This essay takes a brief stock of the progress in the transformation of business research toward tackling the grand challenges and solving many wicked problems facing business and society today. Efforts are underway in journals, schools, academic associations and accreditation agencies to encourage attention on the societal impact of faculty research in business schools. This transformation is long overdue, and it reflects the will of the scientific community to self-correct the dual crises of research credibility and research-practice gap that dominated the business research ecosystem in the past three decades. Reflecting on the journey of this self-correction as a co-founder of the Responsible Research in Business and Management network, I draw on Robert Merton’s normative structure of science and the idea of scientific freedom and scientific responsibility, to suggest five scientific norms for the business and management research community as part of our third responsibility, in addition to our responsibilities for usefulness and credibility. Accepting this third responsibility will ensure that going forward, we will continuously and consistently deliver on our two major responsibilities of producing both credible and useful knowledge for better business practices and a better world.