Where does business research go from here? Food-for-thought on academic papers in business research (original) (raw)
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Where do we go from here? Food for thought on academic papers in business research
Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business …, 2010
In this paper I comment on some of the adverse practices in business research publications. First, we seem to have lost touch with business practice and have narrowed our target group to fellow academics only, reducing the production of useful knowledge. Second, the objectives of our publications are narrowed to impact and citations. This leads to a strict focus on pathbreaking theories and a denigration of replication and qualitative studies. Third, an obsession with the .05 significance level and corroborating findings have left researchers with full file drawers of unpublished papers and could leave journals with a high rate of type I error papers.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 our research and a variety of style guidelines make us less productive than we could be. Finally, a blind reliance on ISI's impact and citations scores may not do justice to a researcher's real contribution.
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...
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.
"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.
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...
Literature Review in Business Research
Many young researchers expect their research report to be accepted by evaluators, failing to understand the importance of literature review which is the foundation and integral to the research one undertakes. The hawkish eyes of the evaluators first fall on the literature review which is Achilles’ heel of many researchers. Worst of all, researchers of some ilk are completely clueless of what constitutes research. Sadly, some researchers still think that literature review is just a formality; some of them think that doing a survey is research; and some others think that writing a voluminous book is research. This essay is an attempt to wean the researchers away from erroneous ways and their misconceptions about research and put them on the right track. This essay attempts to first explain critical terms - research, relationships and theories -whose understanding is essential to embarking on a meaningful research. It will be followed by a discussion on the important dimensions of business research - relationships among variables, features of a phenomenon, and different forms of a phenomenon.
On business theory and influential scholarship: What makes research interesting?
2015
Couched within a theory of business, this paper explores what makes business scholarship influential and probe into mechanisms that make a paper interesting to its audience. It presents a framework to combine several attributes of influential scholarship and presents a model for making research interesting. Examples of interesting scholarship are provided and speculations about why they are interesting and why they might be influential are offered. In addition, suggestions are made as to what individuals and institutions can do to promote and sustain influential scholarship. It was recently reported that the number of management journals listed by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) has nearly tripled in over dozen years from 61 to 174 (Davis, 2014). In fact it is standing at 185 at the point of writing. There are about 8000 papers published in management journals every year. It is one thing to publish, and given these numbers, it is quite another thing to be read! Scholarly publication is an arduous process (Cummings & Frost, 1995). A community of scholars have to be convened to constitute various editorial boards, they curate the work of a scholar through a process of reviews and revisions negotiating the value of the scholarly contribution through. At the end of the process, those papers that get past the process are certified as valuable knowledge culminating in their publication (Davis, 2014). The interest of the authors and editors converge in the hope that what gets published gets read (Baba, 2002). Given the vast and rising number of publications, both authors and editors need to strategize to become influential. As shown in Figure 1, individuals, groups and organizations in the knowledge business like to have influence among their constituencies. This influence is largely gained through reputation that one establishes as a scholar. The primary ingredient that contributes to the building of reputation is intellectual capital. In the business of knowledge production, intellectual capital is largely generated through research and becomes visible through the publication process mentioned earlier. While publication is necessary, it is not sufficient to get noticed. Typically, a scholarly outlet's value is determined by its impact factor (Davis, 2014). Therefore a journal chasing an elevated impact factor has to publish interesting research that has a chance to be read, to be cited, and to influence knowledge production and its use. Interesting research comes from an interesting research question (RQ). It is a simple
The Gray Zone: Questionable Research Practices in the Business School
In recent years, the awareness of academic misconduct has increased due to high-profile scandals involving prominent researchers and a spike in journal retractions. But such examples of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) serve to obscure the less flagrant, more subtle cases of possible misconduct - what some have called 'questionable research practices' (QRPs). While FFP is seen as inherently negative, QRPs fall into an ethical 'grey zone' between permissible and impermissible. In this paper, we draw on semi-structured interviews with business school scholars to explore the occurrence of QRPs. Prevalent QRPs include playing with numbers, playing with models and playing with hypotheses. Scholars explain the existence of QRPs in three ways: the inadequate training of researchers, the pressures and incentives to publish in certain outlets, and the demands and expectations of journal editors and reviewers. We argue that a paradox is at work here: in order to live up to the positivist image of 'pure science' that appears in academic journals, researchers may find themselves - ironically - transgressing this very ideal. Ultimately, this challenges the individualistic account of academic misconduct by drawing attention to the role played by institutional actors such as academic journals in encouraging forms of QRPs.