ERIM Lustrum 29 October 2009

Research in Management as an academic field is maturing rapidly. To mark the current state of the field, ERIM’s recent festivities marking the 10th anniversary of one of Europe’s foremost management research centres featured a distinguished and varied line-up of speakers who reflected on developments over the past 10 years, and described future challenges. In celebration of its 10th anniversary, the Erasmus Research Institute in Management (ERIM) organized a lustrum conference on the currently hot theme of 'Dual impact of management research'. The theme recognizes that the two yardsticks that are used to measure the viability of the success of the field of research in management in the next 10 years will be the impact of its research on the scientific community on the one hand and its resonance with the business community and general public on the other. It marks the fundamental change within ERIM to move beyond the traditional output driven strategy towards an impact driven strategy.

Several distinctive speakers, representing both ERIM’s external partners as well as its internal research programmes illustrated and commented on the conference theme from different perspectives. The conference covered multiple perspectives on the theme: of the funder of research in management, of the editor of a top academic journal, and of the researcher as main producers of new knowledge in management. The researchers presented selected examples of impact-driven projects from all five ERIM research programmes. Last but not least the conference reflected upon the strategic challenges for the ERIM community towards a third lustrum.