Liz,
You are raising the important issue of scholarly impact and whether various forms of scholarship that target different stakeholders should be considered as important-or, as most research-intensive business schools do today, mainly count "A-tier" journal publications only. Some past presidents of the Academy of Management have raised this issue. For example, Don Hambrick (1994: 13, AMR) noted that "each August, we come to talk to each other [at the Academy of Management's annual meetings]; during the rest of the year we read each other's papers in our journals and write our own papers so that we may, in turn, have an audience the following August: an incestuous, closed loop that." Similarly, Anne Tsui (2013: 378, MOR) wrote that "faculty members are responding to the requirements of the measurement system. When only the number of papers in certain outlets count, rational and good people will do whatever it takes to meet the expectations." Moreover, she wrote that the current system challenges the "credibility and long-term sustainability of our research enterprise if we do nothing to bring the train back on track" (2013: 383).
The latest issue of BizEd includes a feature article addressing the issue of faculty impact: http://www.bizedmagazine.com/features/articles/measuring-faculty-impact.asp Also, the following article to be published in the December 2014 issue of Academy of Management Learning and Education addresses the issue of how to define and measure scholarly impact based on which specific stakeholders are of particular strategic value to a particular business school (the article is available at http://mypage.iu.edu/~haguinis/pubs.html and the Abstract is at the bottom of this message):
· Aguinis, H., Shapiro, D. L., Antonacopoulou, E., & Cummings, T. G. in press. Scholarly impact: A pluralist conceptualization. Academy of Management Learning and Education. [available at http://mypage.iu.edu/~haguinis/pubs.html]
Thank you for bringing up such an important issue for the future of our "industry" and I look forward to reading other people's reactions and comments regarding these issues.
All the best,
--Herman.
Herman Aguinis, Ph.D.
John F. Mee Chair of Management
Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources
Founding Director, Institute for Global Organizational Effectiveness
Department of Management and Entrepreneurship
http://mypage.iu.edu/~haguinis/
ABSTRACT
We critically assess a common approach to scholarly impact that relies almost exclusively on a single stakeholder (i.e., other academics). We argue that this approach is narrow and insufficient, and thereby threatens the credibility and long-term sustainability of the management research community. We offer a solution in the form of a broader and novel conceptual and measurement framework of scholarly impact, a pluralist perspective. It proposes actions that depart from the current win-lose and zero-sum view that lead to false tradeoffs such as research versus practice, rigor versus relevance, and research versus service. Our proposed pluralist conceptualization can be instrumental in enabling business schools and other academic units to clarify their strategic direction in terms of which stakeholders they are trying to affect and why, the way future scholars are trained, and the design and implementation of faculty performance management systems. We argue that the adoption of a pluralist conceptualization of scholarly impact can increase motivation for engaged scholarship and design-science research that is more conducive to actionable knowledge as opposed to exclusive career-focused advances, enhance the relevance and value of our scholarship, and thereby help to narrow the much-lamented chasm between research and practice.
From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv [mailto:OB@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Dr. Liz Boyd
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 4:51 PM
To: OB@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: [OB-LIST] Ranking Practitioner Journals
Dear OB-list Members-
Within our College, we are currently reviewing performance expectations in the area of research. As with so many other institutions, within our College there is a push for all faculty members (including those in the category of Instructional Practitioner) to be active in research. Although those of us qualified as Scholarly Academics are accustomed to the typical types of peer-reviewed journal publications, we are less well acquainted with so-called 'practitioner' journals or other types of potentially scholarly publication.
What we are looking for is whether others have any sort of norms or practices they might be willing to share on how they have ranked/rated/counted these materials (e.g., editorially reviewed publications).
I would be happy to compile responses and send back to the list.
Thanks very much,
Liz Boyd
Dr. Liz Boyd, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Management
Research Director, Women's Leadership Center
Kennesaw State University
1000 Chastain Blvd.