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When an A Is NOT an A in Academic Research, or How A-Journal List Metrics Inhibit Exploratory Behaviour in Academia

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  • Alejandro Agafonow
  • Marybel Perez

Abstract

On account of the leverage that the Academy of Management (AOM) has, via its positioning in the highest tiers of the A-journal lists currently used to adjudicate promotions and tenure evaluations, it is urgent to assess the premises and assumptions upon which the so-called pluralist model of scholarly impact , advocated by academics with executive responsibilities in the AOM, is built. Our findings are that the pluralist model is liable to three crucial problems: ecological bias, specific knowledge and pre-emptive costs. Consistent with extant performance evaluation scholarship, promotions and tenure evaluations must build instead on: (a) a qualitative evaluation of scholarly contributions unencumbered by ordinality assumptions; (b) the narrowing of the span of control of academics, moving supervisory authority away from the line structure and back into the hands of true peers; and (c) muting the incentives that prevent academics from focusing on riskier and long-term horizon outputs, which are pillars in agreement with known accounts of how exploratory behaviour has been successfully managed at IBM, Google, the SAS Institute and Nokia, to name but a few cases. JEL Codes: 123, O31

Suggested Citation

  • Alejandro Agafonow & Marybel Perez, 2024. "When an A Is NOT an A in Academic Research, or How A-Journal List Metrics Inhibit Exploratory Behaviour in Academia," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 36(1), pages 105-121, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:36:y:2024:i:1:p:105-121
    DOI: 10.1177/02601079231152118
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Exploratory behaviour; journal list metrics; knowledge production; high-powered incentives; tenure evaluation; promotions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

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