How to Develop a Strong Research Culture

The business school of today is operating in a highly challenging and competitive environment. The leading business schools have a successful research culture, and a solid sense of academic citizenship. To navigate in the current environment, business schools seek ways in which they can build, or maintain, a strong research culture, so that they can achieve research objectives, solidify their research contributions, attract leading academics and doctoral students, and be poised for success in the future. In this editorial, we apply the procedure for organizational change, first outlined by Kurt Lewin (1951). We discuss the three steps of this procedure as applied to the research culture setting: (1) recognize a need to change (‘unfreeze’) current behaviors; (2) move to the desired behavioral level, and (3) reinforce (‘freeze’) behavior at the new level by instituting appropriate celebrations and providing rewards and recognitions for successful attainment.