Designing societal impacting architectures for business schools: do-gooders or doing good?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the authors reconceptualize societal impact for business schools by shifting the focus from static outcomes to the dynamic process of societal impacting. Second, drawing on systemic reforms and lessons derived from the Dutch higher education context, the authors introduce an architecture for societal impacting that enables business schools to deliberately design, implement and refine frameworks that incentivize, measure and reward the societal contributions of business researchers and educators across Europe and beyond. Design/methodology/approach The authors synthesize recent literature on impact definitions and situate their analysis in the Dutch context. Building on an ecosystem perspective and a service research lens, the authors develop an integrated architecture for societal impacting. Findings Societal impacting is conceptualized as a co-created, recursive and purpose-driven process through which business school researchers and educators collaborate with stakeholders to generate durable positive change. The authors highlight resonance, the extent to which academic work changes how stakeholders think, feel or act, as the key differentiator between output and true impact. Achieving resonance requires balancing inside-out expertise with outside-in societal responsiveness, supported by structural alignment and a shift from dissemination toward sustained collaboration and co-creation. Originality/value By integrating a service research lens, the authors operationalize societal impact as an emergent process and propose a cohesive architecture for policy alignment, capability building and enabling infrastructure. The framework supports deans and institutions in embedding co-creation and iterative learning in research and education, broadening stakeholder engagement and realigning incentives toward interaction quality, mutual learning and durable societal change.