Create a Personal Impact Development Plan

When I saw the open-access article in the Business & Society journal “If You are Serious About Impact, Create a Personal Impact Development Plan” by Herman Aguinis and Kelly Gabriel, I thought it fit well with the Methodspace theme of Research<>Relevance and the February focus in interdisciplinarity. You’ll notice that Business & Society includes both open-access and subscription only articles on a wide range of topics of interest to researchers beyond the business field.

Certainly, while we see the need for societal change, we need to commit to action in our own work. This practical article asks us to think about our impact competencies, and about what we can do and what we will commit to do, to increase the impact of our scholarly research.

By Herman Aguinis

All of us researchers and educators aspire to have impact on other researchers, on theory, and on our students. But, I also think most of us also want to have an impact on business and other organizations, and society. In fact, I believe many of us not just want to, but need to have such impact. After all, this is why we became professors, right? But, impact won’t happen on its own. We need to plan how to have impact and on whom and then implement this plan. In our open-access article published in Business and Society titled If You are Serious About Impact, Create a Personal Impact Development Plan, we use research from human resource management and performance management to expand on the general concept of “personal development plans” to offer what we call “personal impact development plans” or PIDPs. A typical individual performance development plan highlights strengths and areas in need of development—and includes an action plan for further developing these strengths and improving on weaknesses. Similarly, PIDPs allow us to answer the following questions: (1) How can I continually learn to increase my scholarly impact in the next year and how can I increase it in the future? (2) How can I avoid unsatisfactory impact from the past and what are barriers to enhancing my scholarly impact?, and (3) Where am I now and where would I like to be in terms of my impact journey? Our Business and Society article describes why PIDPs are needed, their content, activities, and the role of profession and university leaders in their successful implementation. I am hopeful that given increased demand for accountability and contributions to society, we will continue to work on improving our collective impact. Impact is not a destination – it’s a journey.

Herman Aguinis is the Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar, Professor of Management, and Chairperson of the Department of Management at The George Washington University School of Business, and he is currently serving as President of the Academy of Management (AOM). His research addresses the acquisition and deployment of talent in organizations and organizational research methods. He has published 11 books and about 200 journal articles and received the Losey Award by the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation for lifetime achievement in human resource research, AOM Research Methods Division Distinguished Career Award for lifetime contributions, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Scientific Contributions Award for lifetime contributions, and AOM Practice Theme Committee Scholar Practice Impact Award recognizing outstanding impact on policy making and managerial and organizational practices. Every year since 2018, he has been ranked by Clarivate among the world’s top-100 most influential researchers in economics and business. See: www.hermanaguinis.com.

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