British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 14–28 (2017) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12202 The Impactful Academic: Relational Management Education as an Intervention for Impact Lisa Anderson, Paul Ellwood and Charlotte Coleman 1 University of Liverpool Management School, Chatham Street, Liverpool L69 7ZH, UK, and 1 Pluralthinking, Henry Wood House, 2 Riding House Street, Fitzrovia, London W1W7FA, UK Corresponding author email: l.anderson@liverpool.ac.uk We widen the scope of the impact debate by extending Boyer’s theorization of scholar- ship through Denyer, Tranfield and van Aken’s CIMO framework to propose relational management education as an intervention that creates the generative mechanism of co- production and subsequent impact. In so doing, we propose a new conceptualization of academic impact that occurs through teaching and is situated within a community of in- quirers. We ofer a critique of current thinking, dominated by the idea that the research paper is the most appropriate unit of analysis by which to measure the excellence and impact of research. We examine the notion of the gap between academics and practi- tioners and argue that the impact agenda should be widened to include a consideration of how management academics can become impactful through their teaching of practi- tioners, broadly defined to include the whole range of learners associated with business schools. We propose that for management research to have the potential to change these practitioners, an engagement with knowledge is needed, and that this involves more than translation but the creation of new ideas. Such impact can be brought about by a disrup- tion of, and challenge to, thinking engendered by an approach to management education that we term relational. Introduction In this paper we ofer a new characterization of the way in which business school researchers can deliver impact upon the practices of organi- zations and managers. In doing so, we critique current thinking and practice that positions the re- search paper as the most appropriate and impor- tant unit of analysis to measure the excellence of research and its impact (Aguinis et al., 2014). We make a case for broadening how research impact is understood and assessed. This new understanding incorporates approaches to management educa- tion that engage practitioners and lead to changes in management practice. It builds on the work of Antonacopoulou (2008, 2010) who warned of the dangers of neglecting the centrality of our teaching and learning practices as an integral aspect of the impact our scholarship delivers. We first consider the relevance debate and the apparent gulf between management researchers and the dominance of the highly starred and highly cited journal paper as the unit of analysis of academic performance. From there, we problematize research impact and chal- lenge the notion of a ‘gap’ between researchers and practitioners, and propose that the double hurdle (Pettigrew, 1997) cannot be negotiated by a single piece of writing. Increased impact may be derived through our teaching of managers and we reflect on the original intentions of UK business schools and how they set out to educate practitioners. Drawing on these ideas, we position all students as current or potential practitioners and explain the rationale behind this, building on a broad no- tion of scholarship, set out by Boyer (1990). We use Denyer, Tranfield and van Aken’s (2008) CIMO logic and, in particular, the idea of generative mechanisms as integral elements for producing © 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.