Towards a More Responsible Business School? Early Career Academics, Moral Identity Work and the Performative (Re)Constitution of the ‘Successful Academic’

Abstract The role of business schools in exacerbating social and environmental issues has become increasingly apparent. However, substantive change is often stymied at both individual and institutional levels by a ubiquitous pressure on faculty members to conform to a specific embodiment of the ‘successful academic’. This is a self that is performatively constituted through adherence to institutional rules and norms, with a particular emphasis on individual, research‐centric achievements. Through drawing on interviews with 46 Early Career Academics in the field of Business & Society, located in 20 countries, we explore how academics disrupt and reconstitute this self through moral identity work. We identify and explain four key forms of moral identity work: retheorizing, rallying, reframing and reorientating. Via these bottom‐up efforts, both implicitly and explicitly, our participants disrupt and reconstitute the norms underpinning the performative construction of the ‘successful academic’ in ways that hold potential to influence positive change. These findings therefore have broader implications for reimagining and retooling business schools as a force for nurturing more desirable realities beyond their own institutional boundaries.