Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

Abstract

This study addresses critical questions about how current evaluative frameworks for academic research can effectively translate scholarly findings into practical applications and policies to tackle societal ‘grand challenges’. This scoping review analysis was conducted using bibliometric methods and AI tools. Articles were drawn from a wide range of disciplines, with particular emphasis on the business and management fields, focusing on the burgeoning scholarship area of ‘business as a force for good’. The novel integration of generative AI research approaches underscores the transformative potential of AI-human collaboration in academic research. Metadata from 4051 articles were examined in the scoping review, with only 370 articles (9.1%) explicitly identified as relevant to societal impact. This finding reveals a substantial and concerning gap in research addressing the urgent social and environmental issues of our time. To address this gap, the study identifies six meta-themes related to enhancing the societal impact of research: business applications; faculty publication pressure; societal impact focus; sustainable development; university and scholarly rankings; and reference to responsible research frameworks. Key findings highlight critical misalignments between research outputs and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a lack of practical business applications of research insights. The results emphasise the urgent need for academic institutions to expand evaluation criteria beyond traditional metrics to prioritise real-world impacts. Recommendations include developing holistic evaluation frameworks and incentivising research that addresses pressing societal challenges—shifting academia from a ‘scholar-to-scholar’ to a ‘scholar-to-society’ paradigm. The implications of this shift are applied to business-related scholarship and its potential to inspire meaningful societal impact through business practice.