2022 TCR-AMA Impact Festival:

Best Practices and Scholarship for Impact

 

Co-Chairs:

Chris Blocker, David Crockett, Benet Deberry-Spence, Julie Ozanne, and Brennan Davis

 

Co-Hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the 2022 Summer AMA Preconference

August 10-11, 2022

 

 

Transformative Consumer Research and the American Marketing Association are hosting the first Impact Festival to celebrate research that has had societal impact and build capacity to accelerate even greater impact. We are generating best practices and scholarship for doing impactful research. If you have ever wondered how you might amplify the impact of your research and help people and organizations use your findings for positive social change, this conference is for you.

 

Please read the call carefully because this is an innovative format aimed at expanding the skills and capacities of our consumer and marketing research community. Our guiding vision is to create a gift economy for sharing best practices and scholarship on doing societally impactful research.

 

Festival Tracks

 

Track 1 Best Practices for Research with Societal Impact: Case Studies of Success

 

Doing research with societal impact involves an intentional process that begins with four stages: 1) doing and publishing research, 2) creating awareness, 3) using findings, and 4) documenting societal impact. Of these stages, the first two are typical for scholars, i.e., publishing our research and working with media to promote awareness of our findings. However, we usually do not promote the use of our research or document the societal benefits. This track focuses on developing best practices for doing research that is leveraged to drive social and environmental benefits.

 

Submissions are selected based on demonstrable use of research to drive social change and the extraction of best practices that are generalizable.  Given the measurement of social impact is a nascent area, we welcome creative metrics. We also welcome the sharing of missteps so that we can all benefit from mistakes.

 

 

Track 2 Best Practices for Relational Engagements with Impact

 

Increasingly, researchers are working in larger teams and collaborating directly with stakeholders who can benefit and directly apply the research. These relational engagements can span partnerships with non-profits and firms, but they also include interdisciplinary teams, multi-stakeholder coalitions, and even span efforts at community building and empowerment coalitions.

 

We welcome best practices for identifying partners, building teams, resolving conflict, managing power differences, respecting local differences, and developing long term commitment. Submissions will be evaluated based on demonstrable use and societal benefit of the research and the extraction of best practices that are generalizable.

 

 

Track 3 Basic Scholarship on doing Impact Research

 

This track invites more traditional scholarship on theoretical and methodological approaches for impact. Traditional theories and methods may be more focused on explaining and understanding human behavior, but they can be modified and extended toward affecting social change, such as using multi-method approaches.  A long tradition of scholarship also exists in other fields using critical, feminist, indigenous, and action research approaches to affect change.  This track invites scholarship on building and developing theories and methods toward increasing societal impact.  Traditional evaluative criteria on scholarship will be employed.

 

 

Track 4 Special Topics on Doing Impact Research

 

This is an open track for submitting special topics on doing impact research.  We are at the early stages of building practices and scholarship on doing impact.  What important topics need greater coverage? These topics might include but are not limited to: What are the best metrics for measuring social impact? What are the entrepreneurial skills needed to do impact research and how do you develop them? How does one leverage university resources and overcoming barriers when doing a program of impact research? How does one become a public academic?


Track Chairs and Submission Templates will be posted in December 2021.

 

Submissions due February 15, 2022.