IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v64y2011i10p1104-1107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Where does business research go from here? Food-for-thought on academic papers in business research

Author

Listed:
  • Geuens, Maggie

Abstract

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an obsession with the .05 significance level and corroborating findings leaves researchers with full file drawers of unpublished papers and could leave journals with a high rate of type I error papers.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.

Suggested Citation

  • Geuens, Maggie, 2011. "Where does business research go from here? Food-for-thought on academic papers in business research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(10), pages 1104-1107, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:64:y:2011:i:10:p:1104-1107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296310002298
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hubbard, Raymond & Vetter, Daniel E., 1996. "An empirical comparison of published replication research in accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 153-164, February.
    2. J. Scott Armstrong & Ruth Pagell, 2003. "The Ombudsman: Reaping Benefits from Management Research: Lessons from the Forecasting Principles Project," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 33(6), pages 91-111, December.
    3. S. Stremersch & I. Verniers & C. Verhoef, 2006. "The Quest for Citations: Drivers of Article Impact," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 06/422, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    4. Daniel Sutter & Rex Pjesky, 2007. "Where Would Adam Smith Publish Today? The Near Absence of Math-free Research in Top Journals," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 4(2), pages 230-240, May.
    5. Armstrong, J. Scott, 2003. "Discovery and communication of important marketing findings: Evidence and proposals," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 69-84, January.
    6. Unknown, 2007. "Editorial Board," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 36(1), pages 1-1, April.
    7. Forster, Nick, 2007. "CEOs' readership of business and management journals in Australia: Implications for research and teaching," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 24-40, March.
    8. U. Mohanty & Sethu Raman & D. Rao, 2007. "Editorial," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 42(2), pages 253-255, August.
    9. Kousha, Kayvan & Thelwall, Mike & Rezaie, Somayeh, 2010. "Using the Web for research evaluation: The Integrated Online Impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 124-135.
    10. U. Mohanty & S. Raman & D. Rao, 2007. "Editorial," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 41(3), pages 379-379, June.
    11. Ellson, Tony, 2009. "Assessing contribution of research in business to practice," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 1160-1164, November.
    12. Evanschitzky, Heiner & Baumgarth, Carsten & Hubbard, Raymond & Armstrong, J. Scott, 2007. "Replication research's disturbing trend," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 411-415, April.
    13. Moussa, Salim & Touzani, Mourad, 2010. "Ranking marketing journals using the Google Scholar-based hg-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 107-117.
    14. J. Scott Armstrong, 1980. "Unintelligible Management Research and Academic Prestige," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 10(2), pages 80-86, April.
    15. Woodside, Arch G., 2009. "Journal and author impact metrics: An editorial," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-4, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gassen, Joachim, 2014. "Causal inference in empirical archival financial accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 535-544.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Kenworthy & W. Edward McMullan, 2013. "Finding Practical Knowledge in Entrepreneurship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(5), pages 983-997, September.
    2. Ortinau, David J., 2011. "Writing and publishing important scientific articles: A reviewer's perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 150-156, February.
    3. Thompson, Ann-Marie K., 2010. "Golder's historical method in research in marketing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(12), pages 1269-1272, December.
    4. Michael A. Clemens, 2017. "The Meaning Of Failed Replications: A Review And Proposal," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 326-342, February.
    5. JS Armstrong, 2005. "Incentives for Developing and Communicating Principles: A Reply," General Economics and Teaching 0502049, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Andrés Marroquín & Julio H. Cole, 2015. "Economical writing (or, “Think Hemingway”)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 251-259, April.
    7. Hensel, Przemysław G., 2019. "Supporting replication research in management journals: Qualitative analysis of editorials published between 1970 and 2015," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 45-57.
    8. Daniele Fanelli, 2012. "Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(3), pages 891-904, March.
    9. Francisco J. Conejo & Lawrence F. Cunningham & Clifford E. Young, 2020. "Revisiting the Brand Luxury Index: new empirical evidence and future directions," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(1), pages 108-122, January.
    10. Márcio Braga, 2009. "Juan Bautista Alberdi: o Pensamento Econômico de um Liberal Latino-Americano no Século XIX," Working Papers 09_15, Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto.
    11. Dolnicar, Sara & Chapple, Alexander, 2015. "The readability of articles in tourism journals," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 161-166.
    12. Ryan, James C. & A Tipu, Syed A., 2022. "Business and management research: Low instances of replication studies and a lack of author independence in replications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(1).
    13. Evanschitzky, Heiner & Armstrong, J. Scott, 2010. "Replications of forecasting research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 4-8, January.
    14. Roger Wettenhall, 2009. "Crises and Natural Disasters: a Review of Two Schools of Study Drawing on Australian Wildfire Experience," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 247-261, September.
    15. Pesqué-Cela, Vanesa & Tao, Ran & Liu, Yongdong & Sun, Laixiang, 2009. "Challenging, complementing or assuming 'the Mandate of Heaven'? Political distrust and the rise of self-governing social organizations in rural China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 151-168, March.
    16. Li, Ling, 2011. "Assessing the relational benefits of logistics services perceived by manufacturers in supply chain," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 58-67, July.
    17. Armstrong, J. Scott & Fildes, Robert, 2006. "Making progress in forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 433-441.
    18. Emile, Renu, 2011. "Retrospection on the impact of Wallendorf and Brucks' "Introspection in consumer research: Implementation and implications"," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 194-198, February.
    19. Ulla A. Saari & Rupert J. Baumgartner & Saku J. Mäkinen, 2017. "Eco-Friendly Brands to Drive Sustainable Development: Replication and Extension of the Brand Experience Scale in a Cross-National Context," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-26, July.
    20. Peterson, Robert A. & Merunka, Dwight R., 2014. "Convenience samples of college students and research reproducibility," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(5), pages 1035-1041.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:64:y:2011:i:10:p:1104-1107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.