This editorial offers some thoughts on wider criteria of evaluation than journal and article impact metrics. The editorial suggests that the measurement of journal and article impact metrics simply confirms the status quo rather than the promotion of resonance between practice, research and theory. The editorial proposes a more holistic recognition of impact, influence and usefulness that elevates the importance of three further dimensions of application, context and involvement. The editorial considers the value of scientific research to business practitioners and students concluding that an ingenuous and on-going scheme of exchange between scholars and practitioners would lead to cross-fertilization of ideas and experience and enhance empathy, learning and understanding. The alternative pursuit of scientific “respectability” by scholars in the most myopic academic sense has become less and less useful to students as well as the business community leaving the suspicion of business schools obsessed with making money whilst pretending to pursue knowledge and produce future citizens to make the world a better place.
The publication of business papers in learned journals is the outcome of scholarship, even perhaps the ultimate acclamation of application, contribution, knowledge, and skill. The application of approved (in the sense of reliable and trustworthy) research processes punctuated by fashionable (in the sense of current and popular) etymological and epistemological derivations and formulaic patterns of rude (in the sense of robust) paradigmatic proportion is surely a productive (in the sense of useful) and noble (in the sense of contributing or making a difference) pursuit. Yet the evaluation of such academic contribution remains illative and moot, subject to diverse, conflicting and contradictory patronage, and controversial in application.
The number of author citations alongside journal ranking as a measure of scholarly contribution, impact, influence, and usefulness are increasingly the touchstones supported by investment of time and effort by senior members of educational institutions (see Editorial: Journal and author impact metrics by Woodside 2008). If research success dictates hiring, promoting, and firing of faculty candidates, then perhaps the wider rationale for such diligent yet monopolizing application within an assumptive scholarly and prospectively intellectual environment requires more critical and rigorous examination.
The evaluation of impact of scholarly contributions of journals and authors is typically contentious and not least because most journals depend upon the readership and the support of the academic community. A citation system of measurement of research output in combination with journal ranking offers one form of measurement to identify the impact of an author's work. The use of multiple metrics for evaluating journals and scholarly contributions has the appearance of being informative, objective and tangible as well as an independent confirmation of impact, influence, and usefulness.
The value of any writing must be the ability to communicate thoughts and understandings. The impact of those understandings is a matter of degree and may shape future action, attitude, belief, emotion, knowledge, sentiment, thought, or perhaps a combination of these and other components. Outcomes may include action and improvement, anger and dismissal, argument and discussion, shame and disgust, thought and creativity.
A citation system does not necessarily delineate the respective contributions of researcher, scholar and intellectual unless popular acclaim is a measure of value. Faculty candidates looking to make their mark (with recognition of the ascendancy of H G Wells one-eyed man in appropriate circumstances) may be forgiven for confusing quantity and ownership as subservient to, for example, learning and practice. Only a more holistic recognition of impact, influence and usefulness can accurately evaluate the impact of journals and an author's contribution and scholars should not relegate business research as a living discipline to philosophical insignificance by simplistic measurements of scholarly and intellectual prowess.
The mission statements of business schools provide rich evidence of an essential and fundamental dictionary of perceptions of excellence. Words such as “leading”, “successful”, “international”, “challenging”, “rigorous”, “relevant”, and “high quality” abound. The words represent how an institution would like to be perceived and represent a fundamental positioning statement of business education and research. A declaration of excellence is of course simply a declaration of intent. Anyone can make a statement of intent and, whilst behavioral psychologists for many years believed that intention was the primary antecedent of future behavior, increasingly, the importance of attitude, past behavior, experience and involvement receive recognition as better predictors of future behavior. So, perhaps, whilst the intention (or possibly a desire to be perceived in a certain light) may exist, statements of intention are no guarantee of attainment or even necessarily commitment.
