Where do we go from here? Food for thought on academic papers in business research (original) (raw)
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Where does business research go from here? Food-for-thought on academic papers in business research
Journal of Business Research, 2011
This essay focuses on some of the adverse practices in business research publications. First, business researchers seem to have lost touch with business practice and to narrow the target group to fellow academics only, reducing the production of useful knowledge. Second, the objectives of business research publications narrow to impact and citations. This view leads to a strict focus on path-breaking theories and a denigration of replication and qualitative studies. Third, an obsession with the .05 significance level and corroborating findings leaves researchers with full file drawers of unpublished papers and could leave journals with a high rate of type I error papers. Fourth, complex, lengthy articles, the importance of carefully crafting a story around the research and a variety of style guidelines make business researchers less productive than they could be. Finally, a blind reliance on ISI's impact and citation scores may not do justice to a researcher's real contribution.
The Research-Publication Complex and the Construct Shift in Accounting Research
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Accounting research and publishing, tenure and promotion, elite journals, journal rankings, influential articles, faculty productivity, and academics vs. practitioners have been critically studied for decades. Empirical support is absent in many of the critical studies on accounting research and publishing, however, or lack sufficient support to corroborate all the criticisms. Furthermore, these studies remain isolated for the most part, and lack a unifying theme which diminishes their contribution to understanding the fundamental nature of the accounting research-publication complex.
International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2021
The field of academic publishing is under multiple pressures to transform as it suffers from crises of confidence partly due to the mass marketisation, deterioration of relevance and decline of collaborative scientific ethos that it has experienced. The paper offers a provocation based on a multilevel analysis of the present academic (business) model of knowledge production and dissemination, and its consequences. It then presents three alternative futuristic scenarios. The first one is based on a fully commercialised approach to publishing. The second scenario promotes an open science approach and the third one explores a complete overhaul of our current approach to management research. The paper has implications for governance of the field of publishing in management research into the future and aims to alert the actors in the sector to the vices of the mass marketisation of academic publishing.
Journal of Business Ethics, 2021
Academic leaders in management from all over the world—including recent calls by the Academy of Management Shaw (Academy of Management Journal 60(3): 819–822, 2017)—have urged further research into the extent and use of questionable research practices (QRPs). In order to provide empirical evidence on the topic of QRPs, this work presents two linked studies. Study 1 determines the level of use of QRPs based on self-admission rates and estimated prevalence among business scholars in Indonesia. It was determined that if the level of QRP use identified in Study 1 was quite high, Study 2 would be conducted to follow-up on this result, and this was indeed the case. Study 2 examines the factors that encourage and discourage the use of QRPs in the sample analyzed. The main research findings are as follows: (a) in Study 1, we found the self-admission rates and estimated prevalence of business scholars’ involvement in QRPs to be quite high when compared with studies conducted in other countri...
Research Misconduct in Business and Management Studies: Causes, Consequences, and Possible Remedies
Journal of Management Inquiry
This article analyses 131 articles that have been retracted from peer-reviewed journals in business and management studies. We also draw from six in-depth interviews: three with journal editors involved in retractions, two with coauthors of papers retracted because a fellow author committed research fraud, and one with a former academic found guilty of research fraud. Our aim is to promote debate about the causes and consequences of research misconduct and to suggest possible remedies. Drawing on corruption theory, we suggest that a range of institutional, environmental, and behavioral factors interacts to provide incentives that sustain research misconduct. We explore the research practices that have prompted retractions. We contend that some widely used, but questionable research practices, should be challenged so as to promote stronger commitment to research integrity and to deter misconduct. To this end, we propose eleven recommendations for action by authors, editors, publisher...
Information Systems …, 2006
T his paper reports an analysis of the proportion of faculty publishing articles in premier business journals (i.e., the ratio of authors of premier business journal articles to total faculty of a discipline) across the disciplines of accounting, finance, management, marketing, and information systems (IS) for the years 1994-2003. This analysis revealed that over this period the management discipline had on average the highest proportion of faculty publishing in premier journals (12.7 authors per 100 management faculty), followed by finance (9.4 authors per 100 faculty), marketing (9.2 authors per 100 faculty), IS (5.5 authors per 100 faculty), and accounting (4.8 authors per 100 faculty). A further analysis examined these ratios for the different disciplines over time, finding that the ratios of authors to faculty have actually decreased for the disciplines of marketing and IS over this time period but have remained stable for the disciplines of accounting, management, and finance. Given steady growth in faculty size of all disciplines, the proportion of faculty publishing articles in premier journals in 2003 for all disciplines is lower than their 10-year averages, with IS having the lowest proportion in 2003. A sensitivity analysis reveals that without substantial changes that would allow more IS faculty to publish in the premier journals (e.g., by increasing publication cycles, number of premier outlets, and so on), IS will continue to lag far below the average of other disciplines. The implications of these findings for IS researchers, for institutions and administrators of IS programs, and for the IS academic discipline are examined. Based on these implications, recommendations for the IS discipline are presented.
"Scholarly Management Journals: Are They Relevant for Practitioners? Results of a Pilot Study”
18thToulon-Verona International Conference Excellence in Services, 2015
PurposeThis paper aims to verifyhow interesting and useful practitioners find academic management research by asking entrepreneurs and managers what they think of some articles published in leading journals that have been selected on the basis of precise criteria as representative of management research.MethodologyThis pilot investigation was conducted in April and May 2015. In accordance with the study design, a convenience sample of 43 entrepreneurs and managers were mailed four articles published in leading management journals in 2014, accompanied by a simple questionnaire consisting of closed-answer questions. Although strictly lacking statistical validity, the 23 completed questionnaires received in return not only provide the first feedback concerning the subject of the study, but also offer some fundamental indications concerning the approach of the project as a whole that will help to refine the orientation of its next phase. FindingsAn analysis of the literature shows that the very concept of relevance is difficult to measure as its defining traits have a certain level of ambiguity and the meaning attributable to them is rather complex. This paper highlights how management research should focus on subjects that are of real interest to practitioners, satisfy the need for rigourrequired by the positive sciences, and be capable of producing knowledge that has a strong impact on the professional communities.Practical implicationsThe ongoing debate cannot remain confined to academic circles, but needs to involve practitioners with whom to establish a synergistic dialogue. They should ask management researchers to study problems that are relevant and interesting to them, and observe the more complex and dynamic situations that firms have to face. Originalityand valueIn literature it has emerged the importance of clarifyingwhether and in what ways the results of university scientific research are used in practice. This paper proposes and testes a rigorously systematic framework in order to enable us to investigate the way in which managers perceive management research with the aim of increasing the relevance of academic research strategies and the editorial policies of management journals.