Impacto Social: Estudo sobre Programas Brasileiros Selecionados de Pós-graduação em Administração de Empresas

In the academic community there is a growing concern with the issue of social impact: the benefits that teaching and research institutions bring to society. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the social impact Brazilian graduate management programs have. It is based upon scientific literature on social impact and presents an exploratory study of three social impact dimensions: (a) the training of researchers in doctoral programs, focusing on graduates and their insertion in the labor market; (b) the use of knowledge generated by each program's researchers, as measured by the institutional H factor, using the Publish or Perish (PoP) software to survey the Google Scholar database; and (c) the citation of researchers and their studies in business media, measured through a survey of articles published in the most relevant Brazilian media outlets. These three dimensions were measured in four graduate programs: FEA-USP, FGV-EAESP, PPGA-UFRGS and CEPEAD-UFMG. The results show significant differences among the programs, favoring the oldest ones, which are located in Sao Paulo. The conclusion is that there are opportunities to improve social impacts in these three dimensions and recommended measures are suggested to help meet this goal. The study also indicates directions to develop further knowledge about what social impacts Brazilian graduate management programs can have.