This paper investigates the potential of generative AI to enhance the evaluation of responsible business research focused on social impact. ChatSDG+RR7 is a custom-built AI tool grounded in the normative ethical standards of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Seven Principles of Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM). It is designed to promote academic business research that positively impacts business practices. We applied ChatSDG+RR7 to assess 366 full-text academic journal articles submitted to the RRBM Honor Roll, comparing evaluations conducted by AI, humans, and AI-human collaborations. Findings reveal that AI-assisted peer review improves consistency, transparency, and efficiency while reducing human bias and error. The epistemological “ground truth” of responsible research is established through iterative learning interactions between ChatSDG+RR7 and human reviewers. By offering more objective and reliable assessments, ChatSDG+RR7 aids in identifying research that addresses global “grand challenges.” The AI-human collaboration framework provides a valuable model for refining research evaluation practices, making responsible business research more accessible and better aligned with sustainability and social impact priorities. These findings are particularly relevant for scholars seeking to leverage AI in their social impact-focused research. Ultimately, this paper offers new insights into how AI can foster responsible business research that meaningfully contributes to societal well-being and sustainability. This research aims to encourage academics to use AI tools like ChatSDG+RR7 to enhance their efforts in championing "business as a force for good."

This chapter details how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used—and is very much needed—to reinvent academic research evaluation in terms of quality and impact. First, we review current literature on academic research assessment examining two overarching questions: What normative standards are employed to determine the quality of academic research? What explicit methodological rationales, unstated assumptions, and academic cultural dynamics determine the definition of quality? Second, we offer a literature review and alternative model for assessing the quality of academic research in terms of impact—that is, does academic research make a positive difference in the material conditions of humanity and sustain the natural environment, and how does academic research praxis transform “words into worlds”? Third, we examine how impact is being adopted by the publishing industry in a paradigm shift from limited notions of “quality” to the broader consequences of societal and sustainable “impact.” We critique how the Journal Impact Factor, as a gold standard of academic publication value, has eclipsed other possibilities for assessing real-world impacts of academic outputs: quantification without qualification. Fourth, we present a case study applying an AI rating system to ascertain degrees of impact for academic journals—SDG Impact Intensity. The AI system utilizes the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) criteria as normative standards to rate the impact of academic journals. We discuss the implications of such a system and SDG-focused research on business schools and scholarly outputs for academia. We critically consider the challenges of employing our algorithmic technique as a digital transformation technology for responsible management education, and ultimately to serve the Common Good and environmental sustainability.

This paper introduces a transformative systems-level framework for understanding the interplay of institutional, cultural, and systemic dynamics influencing the societal impacts of academic research. We introduce and apply the Societal Impacts of Research Institutional Ecosystem (SIRIE) framework to business school scholarship and academic research in higher education. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as SIRIE's normative ethical framework to benchmark: institutional mission; accreditation bodies' compliance requirements; faculty tenure and promotion research expectations; the influence of rankings and ratings; and journal quality metrics. Our framework acknowledges the role the Anthropocene Epoch plays in contributing to contemporary social and environmental problems. We argue that recalcitrant institutional forces in academia neutralize the promise of academic scholarship to galvanize meaningful societal impacts. We assert that the contemporary state of higher education research is unfortunately dominated by a "publish or perish" mentality. This narrative produces academic research that is decontextualized from today's exigent "grand challenges" related to poverty, climate, equity, health, peace, environment, etc., as well as transformative solutions for a sustainable future. By exploring an alternative paradigm for academic research through SIRIE and the SDGs-"publish and prosper"-we detail how academic research can meaningfully contribute to change the world for the better.

This paper offers three contributions to the burgeoning movements of AI for Social Good (AI4SG) and AI and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First, we introduce the SDG-Intense Evaluation framework (SDGIE) that aims to situate variegated automated/AI models in a larger ecosystem of computational approaches to advance the SDGs. To foster knowledge collaboration for solving complex social and environmental problems encompassed by the SDGs, the SDGIE framework details a benchmark structure of data-algorithm-output to effectively standardize AI approaches to the SDGs. Second, as a specific instantiation of the SDGIE framework, the SDG Impact Intensity Model (SDGIIM) is theoretically and operationally established. SDGIIM embeds expert decision-making and SDG keyword banks in textual data processing to determine overall SDG “impact intensity.” Ideally, SDGIIM can be applied to textual data sets from any sector or discipline: academia, business, government, non-profit, civil society, etc. Third, the SDGIIM instantiation is applied to the specific domain of academic journal rating systems as a case study. Traditionally, academic journals have been evaluated on loosely conceived and empirically shaky notions of ‘quality.’ Aligned with the trend of AI4SG and broader calls to action, ‘impact’ is rapidly becoming the primary normative consideration for assessing academic journals. We hypothesize and demonstrate that SDGIIM is capable of producing evaluations aligned with experts’ expectations of SDG impact intensity; the consistent analysis and rating of textual data sets that embody the SDGs with varying degrees of meaning and, ultimately, promote positive impact on the actual material conditions of the world.

Dynamic data visualization is a collaborative dashboarding methodology used to identify trends and insights in data while revealing changes in activity and work progress. This paper introduces a dashboard technique that collects, reports, and shares global business schools' fulfillment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)--the SDG Dashboard. With this tool, business schools can share experiences with the goal of promoting sustainable change and advancing the work (e.g. research papers, partnerships, and syllabi) being done internationally within schools. By revealing patterns and trends that may not be evident when reading individual school level accounts of SDG alignment, this dashboard was created to promote inter-school collaboration while highlighting best practices. Overall, it can be used as a high-level assessment tool to highlight areas of greatest impact on the SDGs as well as opportunities for growth. The SDG Dashboard allows users to drill down into the data, revealing patterns of global impact, while also highlighting the breadth of work that is being done. This dynamic dashboard is an agent for collaborations in all topics outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which are: sustainable economic growth, responsible consumption and production, availability for decent work, poverty eradication, cleaner energy, environmental conservation, and the foray of issues concerning overall inequality and quality education.

Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab, discusses his vision for a "new economy" where business is a "force for good." In this interview, Coen Gilbert provides an overview of how B Lab's various initiatives-Certified B Corporations, the B Impact Assessment, B Analytics, GIIRS, and Benefit Corporations-function interdependently to accelerate a culture shift to redefine success in business. Coen Gilbert then focuses on the role of benefit corporations in this larger movement. The benefit corporation is a new legal form of business that requires a corporate purpose dedicated to "general public benefit" and the delivery of demonstrable "material positive impact on society and the environment." Novel fiduciary and reporting requirements differentiate the benefit corporation from the traditional corporation founded on shareholder primacy. Coen Gilbert explains how the benefit corporation is better suited to create long-term shareholder value as well as sustainable value for society, the environment, and other stakeholders. He addresses critiques of and challenges to the benefit corporation as an agent of change for business.

This paper offers a new model of corporate purpose and applies it to the emerging legal form of the benefit corporation. First, corporate purpose is applied to the two currently dominant models of shareholder and stakeholder focus. Both are found inadequate to promote positive social and environmental impact because they remain anchored in a profit-seeking corporate purpose. Second, we offer an alternative model of Integrative Corporate Purpose (ICP). Third, we apply ICP to benefit corporations as an ethically superior model for promoting the common good. The benefit corporation offers four advancements: (1) positive duties to stakeholders; (2) legal protections for managers and directors to manage for the common good; (3) a requirement to have a purpose geared toward public benefit; and (4) required reporting of benefits to stakeholders and the environment. The implications of benefit corporations are discussed within the larger arena of corporate social responsibility.

This study follows Braud’s (2009) recommendation for the field of management, spirituality, and religion to produce “standardized assessment instruments”. Our principal goals in this study were to (1) define the construct of intentional intelligence and (2) formulate and assess a valid and reliable measure of the intentional intelligence quotient (IIQ). Intentional intelligence is defined as one’s ability to (a) identify their current thoughts and (b) choose positive thoughts in one’s mind. We defined the intentional intelligence construct in light of related constructs of mindfulness, self‐agency, and positive thought flow. We developed and tested the 10‐item IIQ scale as a measure of intentional intelligence alongside measures of comparison constructs. Based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, we found the IIQ to be a valid and reliable measure.

Due to mounting pressures to avoid offending individuals on the basis of demographic group membership, political correctness has begun to restrict student participation in our diversity courses. This restriction diminishes what can be learned from class dialogue, an important component of diversity instruction. This article offers a model of “political trans-correctness,” integrating discourse constructs of authenticity, sensitivity, and political correctness. When optimally functioning, a learning community will enter a “zone of understanding” where educators and students speak with candor and actively listen. Four key pedagogical tactics for adopting the model in the classroom are provided: building rapport, setting the ground rules, ensuring the right to remain anonymous, and maintaining the proper presence. Implications for operationalizing the model are discussed.

This paper presents findings from research conducted with undergraduate and graduate business students enrolled in business ethics courses. Using the Ignatian (Jesuit, Catholic) methodologies of self-reflection and "discernment," student perceptions of the relationship between ethical education and business conduct are examined before and after completing the course. Results from a sample of 195 students suggest that business ethics education can 1) raise students' ethical awareness; 2) shift attitudes about ethics; and 3) foster positive ethical behavior in life and work. These findings support a 4-stage "ethical learning model that may be helpful for intensifying the effectiveness—"making a difference"—of business ethics pedagogy, curriculum, and practice. Several implications for linking business ethics education with the conduct and climate of business practice are discussed.

F ranz, Wong, and Delbecq have engaged me with challenging and meaningful reviews of my essay—I very much appreciate their fine efforts. For me, their careful and caring service reflects the academic knowledge generation process at its best. Such exemplary work contributes profoundly to the success of scholarship as a vital dimension of the human condition. Space allotted for my rejoinder allows me only a partial response to their robust commentaries. I focus on elucidating how spirit (the metaphysical realm) and spirituality (the human experience of spirit) are actually knowable, objectively and intersubjectively, through certain aspects of wisdom traditions, religions, and transcendentally transformative practices. That the phenomenon of spirit and how we experientially operationalize it are knowable in a transhuman and universal manner is a controversial proposition. To the rational mind living in a materialistic world of representational language, spirit is reduced to unfulfilling approximations—the map is not the territory. Underhill (1914) illumined this point:

The burgeoning line of inquiry and integration of spirituality and management may very well be inspiring managers and scholars to embrace new "metaphysical foundations." An infusion of spirituality into management necessitates inquiry into new ontological, epistemological, and teleological dimensions of research and practice. This article proposes a preliminary model of a theory of spiritually-informed management that integrates traditional and spiritual approaches to management. The model has three dimensions: (a) awareness: unconsciousness and consciousness; (b) change: translation and transformation; and (c) manifestation: temporal and perennial. The article concludes with an invitation to dialogue and some questions about future research issues: empirical testing of spiritual knowledge systems; unbounded world consciousness; enlightened stakeholder management, spiritually responsible business, and the spiritual transformation of management.