AACSB Global Standards for Business Education™

The Global Standards define what high-quality business education looks like in a dynamic world—one that demands innovation, ethical judgment, global perspective, and meaningful impact.

Download the Global Standards

Strategic Management

Standard 1 Strategic Planning

A school’s strategic plan is the foundation for all of its activities. Within the strategic plan, a clear and focused mission describes who the school is and the populations it seeks to serve. Strategic planning sets the direction for how the school pursues its mission, allocates resources, and sustains highquality business education.

The strategic plan guides decisions across programs, people, and investments, identifies the intellectual contributions the school seeks to produce, embeds innovation, and articulates how the school intends to make a positive societal impact. Regular monitoring, communication of progress, and ongoing risk analysis ensure accountability and adaptability. This foundation sets the stage for the expectations that follow.

1.1.

The school maintains a well-documented strategic plan, developed through a robust and collaborative planning process involving key stakeholder input. The plan informs the school on resource allocation priorities, including maintenance of sufficient high-quality faculty. The strategic plan is developed at the school level and reflects the school’s distinct mission and priorities, while remaining aligned with and supportive of the university’s stated strategic direction.

1.2.

The strategic plan articulates a clear and focused mission for the school that contains distinguishing characteristics of the school’s essential identity. As the school carries out its mission, it embraces innovation as a key element of continuous improvement and as central to its mission.

1.3.

The strategic plan identifies its chosen focus area(s) for making a positive impact on society through its curriculum, its production of intellectual contributions, and its external engagement activities consistent with Standard 9.

1.4.

The school regularly monitors its progress against its planned strategies and expected outcomes and communicates its progress to key stakeholders. Ongoing assessment and refinement of the plan is regularly conducted. As part of monitoring, the school conducts formal risk analysis and has plans to mitigate identified major risks that may impair the school’s ability to maintain high-quality business education.

Standard 2 Physical, Digital, and Financial Resources

A business school’s ability to achieve its mission depends on the strength and sustainability of its physical, digital, and financial resources. Together, they form the foundation for high-quality teaching, research, and engagement, enabling the school to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a rapidly changing environment.

AACSB recognizes that schools today operate within a dynamic ecosystem that demands agility in managing facilities, technology, and funding models. Modern learning environments are physical and digital—designed to foster collaboration, connection, and learner engagement across geographies and modalities. Digital infrastructure must empower faculty, learners, and staff with the tools, data, and technologies needed for success. Financial models are forward-looking and diversified, supporting strategic priorities and long-term sustainability.

For accreditation purposes, schools demonstrate that their resources are sufficient, resilient, and intentionally aligned with their missions, strategies, and expected outcomes. AACSB accreditation evaluates whether a school’s resources are intentionally aligned with strategy and sufficient to support quality and continuous improvement; it does not prescribe specific facilities, technologies, platforms, or funding models.

The school manages its:

2.1.

physical,

2.2.

digital, and

2.3.

financial resources to sustain it on an ongoing basis and to promote a high-quality environment that fosters success of all participants in support of the school’s mission, strategies, and expected outcomes. Resource sufficiency is evaluated relative to the school’s mission, strategic priorities, learner populations served, pedagogical approaches, and delivery modalities, rather than by absolute scale or intensity of resources.

Standard 3 Faculty and Professional Staff Resources

This standard emphasizes clear qualification criteria, sustained currency, and intentional alignment between faculty deployment and strategic priorities. It underscores the need for well-documented processes that support faculty and professional staff development across all career stages, ensuring the capacity to deliver high-quality teaching, meaningful intellectual contributions, and effective learner support.

Standard 3 and Standard 7 are intentionally structured as complementary and interconnected standards where teaching effectiveness is concerned. Standard 7 establishes the school’s framework for teaching effectiveness and teaching impact at the portfolio level. It defines the processes, expectations, and support systems the school uses to promote high-quality teaching and continuous improvement across programs.

Standard 3 operationalizes that framework at the individual faculty level. It requires that teaching effectiveness, as defined by the school under Standard 7, is incorporated into faculty qualification criteria, evaluation processes, and ongoing development expectations. In this way, Standard 7 sets the expectations; Standard 3 ensures accountability and alignment.

Importantly, evaluation of teaching effectiveness must be aligned with the school’s mission, instructional modalities, and institutional context. Schools retain responsibility for determining appropriate measures of teaching effectiveness consistent with local policies, labor agreements, privacy protections, and legal constraints. The standards do not require disclosure of confidential individual personnel evaluations to peer review teams.

3.1.

Schools maintain and strategically deploy sufficient participating and supporting faculty who collectively demonstrate significant academic and professional engagement that supports high-quality outcomes consistent with school missions.

3.2.

Faculty are qualified through initial academic or professional preparation and sustain currency and relevance appropriate to their classification, as follows: Scholarly Academic (SA), Practice Academic (PA), Scholarly Practitioner (SP), or Instructional Practitioner (IP). Maintenance of status requires meeting both engagement activities appropriate to the classification and the school’s established teaching effectiveness criteria. Faculty who do not meet both requirements are classified as Additional faculty (A).

3.3.

Sufficient professional staff are available to ensure high-quality support for faculty and learners as appropriate.

3.4.

Schools have well-documented and well-communicated processes to manage, develop, and support faculty and professional staff over the progression of their careers that are consistent with school missions, strategies, and expected outcomes.

Learner Success

Standard 4 Curriculum

Sound curricula provide the foundation on which business schools fulfill their missions and prepare learners for meaningful impact. High-quality curricula reflect the integration of theory and practice, continuous innovation, and responsiveness to the evolving business landscape. Such curricula equip learners with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets necessary to lead responsibly in a world shaped by technological advancement, organizational transformation, and societal change.

AACSB recognizes that curricular renewal is an ongoing process driven by scholarship, engagement with industry, and awareness of emerging trends. In today’s environment, digital literacy is essential for business leadership. Schools are expected to prepare graduates who are agile, analytically capable, and ethically grounded in their use of digital, data-driven, and emerging technologies. Effective curriculum design balances disciplinary depth with adaptability, ensuring that learners can apply technological fluency, critical thinking, and innovation to solve complex problems and create value in a dynamic global economy.

4.1.

Curricula are continuously renewed to reflect current and emerging business theories and practices, demonstrated innovation in design and delivery, and integrated insights from business research, evidenceinformed practice, industry evolution, and societal trends. Curricula innovation ensures that learners are future-ready—equipped with the agility, creativity, and applied competencies required to lead in an environment transformed by technological and organizational change. Curricular content appropriately distinguishes competencies expected for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs.

4.2.

Schools manage curricula through assessment and other systematic review processes to ensure currency, relevance, and appropriate use of digital, analytical, and information technologies. Curricula are reviewed on a planned and consistent review cycle.

4.3.

Curricula ensure that learners develop agility and an innovative mindset in adapting to evolving digital, analytical, and information technologies that shape business practice, preparing learners to be workforce-ready in a technology-forward environment. Curricula cultivate responsible and ethical use of technology, emphasizing human judgment, critical evaluation, and appropriate application rather than mastery of specific tools or platforms.

4.4.

Curricula promote and foster innovation, experiential learning, and a lifelong learning mindset.

4.5.

Curricula are informed by current research and scholarship, as well as other insights informed by evidence and practice, ensuring that learners benefit from contemporary understandings and discoveries in business. Faculty integrate relevant research findings and other credible sources of knowledge, including professional standards and industry innovation, into the learning experience to foster evidencebased comprehension and application.

4.6.

Curricula are designed to promote meaningful engagement among learners, between learners and faculty, and between learners and the practice of business.

Standard 5 Assurance of Learning

Assurance of Learning (AoL) is the foundation of continuous improvement in business education. It provides evidence that learners achieve the competencies schools have identified as central to their missions and degree programs. Through systematic assessment and analysis, schools demonstrate that their programs lead to meaningful learning and that results are used to enhance curriculum quality and relevance.

AACSB recognizes that schools employ diverse approaches to assessing learning, reflecting their missions, strategies, and degree offerings. Both direct and indirect measures are valuable when appropriately aligned with program competencies and used to “close the loop” on improvement. AoL processes also help ensure consistency and quality across locations, modalities, and credentials, supporting the integrity and comparability of all programs offered within a school’s accreditation scope.

5.1.

Schools use well-documented assurance of learning (AoL) processes that include direct and indirect measures for ensuring the quality of all degree programs that are deemed in scope for accreditation purposes. Both direct and indirect measures are tied to clearly articulated learning competencies or objectives, as opposed to simple satisfaction measures. Results of AoL work inform and lead to curricular improvements.

5.2.

Programs resulting in the same degree credential are structured and designed to ensure equivalence of high-quality outcomes regardless of location and modality of instructional delivery.

5.3.

Microlearning credentials that are “stackable” or otherwise able to be combined into degree programs include appropriate processes to ensure high quality and continuous improvement.

5.4.

Non-degree executive education that generates more than 5 percent of a school’s total annual revenue includes appropriate processes to ensure high quality and continuous improvement.

Standard 6 Learner Progression

Learner progression is central to the mission of every business school. Ensuring that learners are effectively admitted, supported, and guided through their educational journeys reflects commitment to quality, fairness, and impact. From admission through post-graduation, schools play a vital role in shaping learners’ experiences and outcomes—both academic and professional.

AACSB recognizes that effective learner progression depends on transparent policies, consistent academic support, and meaningful career development opportunities. Schools are expected to demonstrate that their admissions, advising, and progression practices are fair, consistently applied, transparent, and aligned with their missions, and that learners are well prepared for success after graduation. Publicly available information on program quality and learner outcomes reinforces accountability and trust among stakeholders.

6.1.

Schools have policies and procedures for admissions, acceptance of transfer credit, academic progression toward degree completion, and support for career development that are clear, effective, consistently applied, and aligned with school mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.

6.2.

Post-graduation success is consistent with school mission, strategies, and expected outcomes. Public disclosure of academic program quality supporting learner progression and post-graduation success occurs on a current and consistent basis.

Pathways to Impact

Standard 7 Teaching Effectiveness and Impact

Standard 7 is interrelated to both Standard 3 and Standard 5. First, Standard 7 seeks to define and establish expectations at the aggregate level related to teaching effectiveness and teaching impact. Standard 7 describes overall processes in place to support teaching effectiveness and teaching impact. In contrast, Standard 3 seeks to include teaching effectiveness as an important component of a qualified faculty member.

Second, Standard 7 complements, but does not replace, the requirements of Standard 5 (Assurance of Learning). Standard 5 evaluates whether learners achieve stated program competency goals. In contrast, Standard 7 focuses on the quality of instructional delivery (teaching effectiveness) and the sustained influence of teaching over time (teaching impact). Evidence used for Standard 5 may inform Standard 7, but the standards serve distinct purposes.

It is also instructive to distinguish between teaching effectiveness and teaching impact.

Teaching effectiveness refers to evaluated evidence of instructional quality within a faculty member’s assigned instructional responsibilities. It reflects how well instructional design, content delivery, learner engagement, feedback practices, and learning support collectively enable learners to achieve intended learning outcomes.

Teaching impact refers to the broader, longer-term influence of teaching beyond the immediate course or learning experience. It reflects sustained contributions to leader development, application of knowledge, career progression, leadership capacity, or societal contribution, and may also include influence on curriculum innovation, pedagogical advancement, or educational practice.

7.1.

Schools have systematic, multimodal assessment processes for evaluating and continuously improving teaching effectiveness.

7.2.

Schools have development activities in place to support faculty teaching effectiveness in all learning modalities and ensure that educators are adequately prepared to deliver curriculum that is current, relevant, forward-looking, globally oriented, innovative, and aligned with program competency goals.

7.3.

Schools establish clear expectations for teaching impact (the sustained influence of teaching beyond the immediate instructional setting) and demonstrate how they measure, recognize, and reward faculty whose teaching contributes meaningfully to learner success and school missions over time.

Standard 8 Impact of Scholarship

Scholarship is a core expression of a business school’s mission and a primary driver of its impact. Through research and creative inquiry, faculty advance knowledge, inform practice, and contribute to positive outcomes for business and society.

AACSB recognizes that there are multiple paths to impact. Rigorous and responsible research may take the form of basic, applied, or pedagogical scholarship, and each form shapes or has the potential to shape theory, policy, practice, and learning in meaningful ways. Other types of scholarly activity also add value by fostering innovation, dialogue, and collaboration with external stakeholders. Over time, these collective intellectual contributions build areas of thought leadership that reflect the school’s mission, strategy, and aspirations. High-quality research is measured not only by scholarly rigor and peer review but also by influence on knowledge, professional practice, learners, and communities.

8.1.

Faculty collectively produce and disseminate high-quality, impactful intellectual contributions that, over time, develop into missionconsistent areas of thought leadership for the school.

8.2.

Schools collaborate with a wide variety of external stakeholders to create and transfer credible, relevant, and timely knowledge that informs business theory, policy, and/or practice and contributes to mission-consistent areas of thought leadership for the school.

Standard 9 Societal Impact and Engagement

While Standard 8 evaluates the quality and impact of a school’s overall intellectual contributions, Standard 9 focuses specifically on the school’s strategically chosen societal impact priorities and how those priorities are reflected across teaching and/or curricula, scholarship, and engagement.

Business schools play a vital role in shaping a more sustainable, responsible, and resilient global society. This standard emphasizes the importance of intentional, mission-aligned strategies that enable schools to contribute to the positive transformation of business and communities. Schools are encouraged to define and pursue focus areas through which their expertise, scholarship, and partnerships can create meaningful and measurable societal value.

Table 9-1 provides a framework for accredited schools and schools seeking accreditation to categorize and evidence their societal impact across curricula, scholarship, and engagement. The table highlights the outcomes and demonstrates impacts of the school’s activities and initiatives rather than serving as a simple inventory of efforts.

Schools may use terminology that best reflects their contexts to describe their chosen societal impact focus area(s). AACSB recognizes that institutions are at different stages of maturity in developing and measuring societal impact. This is an evolving and iterative area, and schools may refine or adjust their focus areas over time as their strategies and contexts evolve. Table 9-1 is designed to accommodate such evolution for schools.

The overarching expectation is that schools will tell compelling, evidencebased stories of how they leverage their business education expertise to create positive, demonstrable changes in society. While quantitative indicators may be included, qualitative evidence, such as impact narratives, stakeholder testimonials, and illustrative case examples, can be equally powerful in capturing the depth and significance of societal impact. No single terminology, thematic area, or metric is required to demonstrate societal impact; judgments consider alignment, intentionality, outcomes, and evidence consistent with a school’s mission and context.

9.1.

Schools identify one or more focus areas for their societal impact efforts, clearly articulate these in their strategic plans, and demonstrate alignment of resources and activities with their chosen area(s).

9.2.

Curricula include program elements related to the chosen focus area(s), ensuring that learners develop the knowledge, skills, and mindset to contribute positively to society and that ultimately elevate the impact of teaching.

9.3.

Schools produce scholarly work—basic, applied, and/or pedagogical—that demonstrably advances understanding, practice, or policy in their chosen societal impact area(s).

9.4.

Schools demonstrate positive societal impact through purposeful engagement with internal and external stakeholders—such as industry, government, community organizations, and alumni—focused on their chosen societal impact area(s) and aligned with their missions, strategies, and expected outcomes.