Research making a real difference

Climate risk models. Sustainable fashion supply chains. Potentially life-saving neonatal care technologies. These submissions to the academic research category of this year’s Responsible Business Education awards underscore the ongoing shift from traditional scholarly accolades to research that delivers tangible societal and scientific contributions.

But this year’s standout projects not only illustrate how academic work can transcend the ivory tower to create real-world impact. They also reveal key trends: how research is influencing policy, offering practical tools for industry, improving health and social outcomes, fostering collaboration — and how its authors are finding innovative ways to share findings.

Policy impact is a defining feature, with several submissions showcasing how academic insights can shape government thinking and corporate strategies. 

A notable example comes from Edinburgh Business School’s Pati Klusak, whose framework for assessing climate impact on sovereign credit ratings informed Standard Chartered Bank’s internal models for stress testing and loan provisioning. The project highlights how cutting-edge research can integrate into financial systems to promote sustainability.

At Cambridge Judge Business School, dean Gishan Dissanaike acknowledges the challenge of aligning academic priorities with these pressing societal challenges. “There is perhaps a natural tension between scholarly research and these huge global problems,” he explains, pointing to the pressures of publishing in journals with a narrow focus and readership.

Still, practicality is a major theme in this year’s submissions, with many researchers focusing on usable tools for businesses. Hakan Karaosman and Donna Marshall, from the University College Dublin Lochlann Quinn School of Business, worked with some 50 companies to promote sustainable practices in fashion supply chains, tackling issues such as labour exploitation and environmental degradation. Their work exemplifies how academic insights can address systemic industry challenges.

Improving human welfare also stands out as a central focus of the submissions. Projects addressing health disparities, educational access and systemic inequities demonstrate how academic research can improve lives.

One powerful example is the work of Kara Palamountain and Rebecca Kirby, from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. They provided recommendations for cost-effective neonatal care products designed to reduce infant mortality in poorer countries, showcasing the potentially life-saving applications of research.

Collaboration, too, emerges as a hallmark of many submissions. The MIT Climate Pathways Project exemplifies this, blending expertise across disciplines to use interactive simulations that help business leaders craft smarter climate policies.

This year also marks a continued shift from traditional academic outputs to dissemination strategies that make research more accessible to diverse audiences.

Sarah Kaplan, founding director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, stresses the importance of translating academic insights into actionable formats — such as op-eds, case studies and reports. “We have an obligation to get those insights out to shape practice,” she says. In her view, hiring communication experts has been key to bridging the gap between theory and application.

Ultimately, the research highlighted in the Responsible Business Education awards reminds us that meaningful academic work does not just generate knowledge. It drives action. Here, we examine some of the winners.

Bridging the finance-climate gap

Research led by Klusak, a professor of accounting and finance at Edinburgh Business School, is helping to change how climate risks are factored into global finance.

Using artificial intelligence to merge climate models with financial data, her team has uncovered how environmental changes influence corporate and public borrowing costs, plus credit ratings and default risks, for more than 100 countries.

These insights are significant. Sovereign debt — the money governments borrow — is one of the world’s largest asset classes, valued at about $100tn. Yet, as the professor points out, a gap exists: the financial sector often overlooks climate science, while scientists fail to present their findings in ways investors can use. 

Her team’s work bridges this divide, integrating climate risk into financial frameworks. “It’s not good enough to know that climate change and biodiversity loss are bad, we needed to offer actionable information about how they translate into financial risk,” Klusak says.

The results are already influencing stress tests, credit ratings and lending decisions, she adds.

Dissemination was key to the research’s initial impact. Central banks praised the team’s clarity of writing, while global presentations, media coverage and collaborations with development banks amplified their findings. “The team might have spent as much energy on impact as we did in producing the research in the first place,” Klusak notes.

Overcoming scepticism from credit rating agencies was not easy. “Understandably, they don’t enjoy academics swooping in from nowhere and telling them how to do their jobs,” she admits. But, by sticking to rigorous science and aligning with industry methods, the team ensured their work was both practical and credible.

The result is a road map for embedding environmental science into the financial systems that underpin the global economy.

Improving newborn care

Every year, 2.3mn newborns do not survive their first month, and another 30mn — born prematurely or with complications — require specialised hospital care. Yet potentially life-saving devices such as oxygen concentrators and pulse oximeters, widely available in wealthier countries, remain scarce in low-income nations.

Palamountain and Kirby are determined to change that. Their goal: to equip hospitals in poorer countries with essential medical devices to save newborn lives. “The survival of a newborn baby is our primary inspiration, but ensuring political will to support newborn survival has been a crucial second motivator,” says Palamountain, a research professor at Kellogg.

Working with humanitarian aid organisation Unicef, the researchers developed Target Product Profiles — blueprints that guide the creation of affordable, durable and user-friendly devices tailored to low-resource settings. These guides have already resulted in societal impact.

Medical device-maker Neopenda used them to create a vital signs monitor, while the NEST360 Alliance, a global initiative fighting newborn mortality in Africa, used them to purchase and install more than 2,400 devices across 65 hospitals in Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and Malawi.

Palamountain and Kirby have also scrupulously shared their work to ensure it reaches those who can act on it. A detailed report hosted on Unicef’s website has been accessed 7,000 times, they say, and presentations at international conferences have sparked meaningful conversations with policymakers and healthcare professionals.

Estimates suggest better quality hospital care could save 750,000 newborns annually. So Palamountain and Kirby’s work is helping to give vulnerable babies a fighting chance.

Solving the ESG ratings puzzle

Sustainable investing is booming, but environmental, social and governance ratings — the backbone of the movement — are plagued by inconsistencies. Florian Berg, a research scientist at MIT Sloan and co-founder of the business school’s Aggregate Confusion Project (ACP), is on a mission to address this problem.

His team’s research confirmed a fundamental flaw: different agencies define and measure ESG metrics in wildly different ways, leading to conflicting ratings. “This inconsistency makes it harder for investors to trust ESG data, or identify which companies are truly sustainable,” Berg explains.

Rather than calling for standardised ratings, ACP has pushed for greater transparency and better methodologies. The impact has been significant.

Policymakers, including France’s Financial Markets Authority, have cited ACP’s findings when crafting rules to increase transparency in ESG ratings. Meanwhile, Berg says rating agencies such as MSCI have used the research to refine how they evaluate companies’ sustainability.

Investors are benefiting, too. He says pension funds, such as Massachusetts PRIM, have used the insights to improve the quality of their ESG data, helping them to make more informed and credible investment decisions.

ACP’s reach has, indeed, been vast. Berg says its academic papers have been downloaded more than 140,000 times and cited in 150 media articles. He adds that he has also worked directly with regulators, including the US Securities and Exchange Commission, to help translate the research into policy. “Regulators don’t have time to wade through piles of academic papers, but they are hungry for clear and actionable insights,” he says. 

A ‘just transition’ for fashion

Parts of the fashion industry’s supply chain have long been associated with human rights abuses and environmental harm. But Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub (FReSCH), a project led by Karaosman and Marshall, at the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business, is driving a much-needed shift towards equity and sustainability.

Having both grown up in households tied to the fashion industry, Karaosman and Marshall have been motivated by its supply chains challenges for some time. With FReSCH, they have made it their mission to prioritise human rights in supply chains. Funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme, FReSCH highlights the contradictions in the fashion industry’s approach to sustainability, where efforts to address environmental issues, such as reducing carbon emissions or water usage, are often pursued in isolation, overlooking harm to worker rights.

“Sustainability has been reduced to an accounting tool and failed to create real change,” says Karaosman, a visiting scholar at the Lochlann Quinn school. “Our research shows decarbonisation is impossible unless the industry shifts towards being more people- and planet-friendly.”

FReSCH’s impact has reached far beyond academia. Karaosman and Marshall say that the project has partnered with some 50 fashion companies, NGOs and media platforms to create strategies for fairer supply chains. It has already influenced major policy initiatives, including the Welsh government’s Just Transition Framework, the European Commission’s sustainable textiles strategy and the UN’s push for greater transparency.

Challenges have arisen, especially the industry’s focus on technical fixes over deeper issues such as worker exploitation. But FReSCH addresses this by engaging stakeholders, sharing research and publishing more accessible op-eds. “We make sure our findings are embedded in industry and multi-stakeholder initiatives,” says Karaosman.

Ultimately, FReSCH shows that true sustainability goes hand in hand with justice for workers.

The ‘good bad job’ in the gig economy

Gig work is often poorly paid, physically demanding and offers few protections, yet many millions of workers remain in these roles. Why? Research by Lindsey Cameron, an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, shows how people are kept tied to these precarious jobs by financial need, rules set by algorithms, and personal choice.

Her research has a deep personal connection. “During the Great Recession in 2008, my mother lost her job and struggled to find traditional work,” Cameron recalls. “She turned to gig-like jobs, trying to maintain middle-class status on a lower-class income.”

Cameron’s paper, The Making of the Good Bad Job, reframes gig work not as a choice, but as a stop-gap in an economy with few good options. “Folks don’t take these jobs because they’re great,” Cameron explains, “but because they’re the best of a bad set of choices.”

Her work is influencing legal debates on worker classification, having been cited in more than a dozen cases, including the landmark lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts attorney-general against ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft.

The case resulted in a $175mn settlement for drivers, raising their pay to at least $32.50 per hour, and providing benefits such as paid sick leave, health insurance and accident cover. Cameron’s dissemination strategy includes speaking at conferences, engaging with policymakers and sharing her findings with the legal sector and mainstream media.

The challenge is avoiding oversimplification. “I resist being reduced to soundbites,” she says. “My work speaks to the bigger picture — how sociological and economic forces are shaping the future of work, not just tips for succeeding in the gig economy.”