大多数商学院研究“缺乏现实世界相关性”

新调查将该研究领域描述为痴迷于期刊指标的危险案例,尽管首席认证机构承诺将积极提升社会意识

一月 14, 2023
A business person sleeps with post-it notes of open eyes on his eyes
Source: iStock

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一项国际分析得出结论称,在迫切需要改善人类境况的时节,全球商学院学者们花费了太多时间撰写缺乏追求有意义的现实世界影响的期刊文章。

威奇托州立大学(Wichita State University)管理学教授乌沙·海利(Usha Haley)领导的评估研究结合了对数百名教职工的调查结果,描绘了一个越来越缺乏现实相关性的学术领域,而对与之相关企业社会作用的重要担忧也在升级。

海利教授说,考虑到这些研究的潜在重要性,商学院“不应以目前的形式继续下去”。

长期以来,过分强调期刊出版引起了各领域高等教育的关注。泰晤士高等教育去年对近一万名学者进行的调查发现,学者们仍然非常依赖通过期刊声望和作者引用分数等指标来衡量彼此。

专家警告称,鉴于经济和企业决策影响社会福祉的整体力量,这些与现实世界脱节的困难在商业等领域尤为重要。

海利教授说,新冠危机提供了一个非常重要的例子,表明商学院普遍未能履行其帮助社会的使命。她说,虽然多年来各种政府和卫生组织都警告过一场改变文明的全球大流行病的风险,但商学院似乎在很大程度上忽视了这种可能性,使得疫情轻易地带来灾难性的经济影响。

海利教授说,在《金融时报》排名商业领域前50的期刊在疫情暴发前“极少报道”潜在大流行病应对计划和影响。总的来说,这些期刊“很少强调实际创造革命性或颠覆性知识”,而是更喜欢“增量知识生产”。她解释道:“这是最安全的路线。”

全球最大商学院认证机构的负责人对这一担忧表示赞同。即将卸任的国际商学院促进协会主席凯林·贝克-达力(Caryn Beck-Dudley)表示,商业研究“需要为更广泛的利益服务”。她问道:“否则,我们花费所有这些时间都在做什么?”

贝克-达力女士说,除了疫情准备外,主要商业期刊及其学术作者很少涉及的其他关键领域包括缺水和荒漠化,以及人口和贫困问题。她说:“总的来说,商业学者投稿的期刊并不研究什么是商业问题,而是研究这个学科领域认为是问题的议题。”

海利教授及其研究团队针对商学院行为的这项研究由Sage作为经同行评审的白皮书独立于任何期刊出版。海利教授自己的调查部分涵盖了373名商业和管理研究人员,他们主要来自美国、英国和印度,其中81%受访者表示其研究在学术界外的价值是“重要的”或“非常重要的”,但只有1/3的受访者认为自己所属大学对此表示赞同。

该团队引用了Sage和管理学院对商学院学者的研究以及泰晤士高等教育的调查,以强调机构的使命感被误导。

贝克-达力女士说,她的协会正利用其认证权力来试图强制改进这一点。从2020年开始,该协会采用联合国定义的可持续发展目标作为衡量希望在全球范围内认可的商学院解决问题类型的标准。贝克-达力女士说,早在1985年,该协会力促的同行压力就鼓励商学院普遍采用道德课程。她说,随着商学院寻求每5年一次的认证,在现实世界的社会价值主题上应该会出现类似结果。

曾任圣克拉拉大学、佛罗里达州立大学和犹他州立大学商学院院长的贝克-达力(Beck-Dudley)女士说:“这是我们希望大力推动的学校发展方式。”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (6)

Come on! Most university research, indeed most research of any kind, "lacks real world relevance." What is the point of this? Educational writers must know a little bit about....
We really have heard this over and over and over. The issue is that no one really knows the ex ante value of research activities and a large amount of research cannot be evaluated individually as its value is collective -- it is the body of work around ideas that matter not any specific individual piece of work. I wrote back in 2013 as a response to the never ending "Oh, whoa is me! We are not relevant :( " discussion (https://www.ft.com/content/3ba9551e-4898-11e3-8237-00144feabdc0) in an article entitled, "What is the role of scholarship in business schools? Many aspects of management practice are based on what was originally meaningless research". As I noted in that article, if I wanted all of my research to hit the ground running in terms of relevance, I would be a consultant selling that work for a fair market price and not be an academic working on more scientific and personal goals. Also, the more your can expect something to be immediately relevant the likelihood that it has potential future innovative potential may be reduced (what if Einstein was asked about the relevance of his original work?). Statistics show that the 'innovativeness' of research outputs seems to be declining (we can argue as to the validity of those measures). One of the reasons is that narrowness of metrics leads scholars to focus on marginal advances. Focusing on relevance could, in my opinion, also lead to an erosion of innovativeness as it becomes yet another metricised output (on which, in the case of one of the authors of the Sage report) to be able to be put into a ranking or evaluative model that will even further reduce the willingness of scholars to take risks.
Part of the problem is, in the UK, REF has always been biased towards theoretical research - this is well known and the recent 2021 REF has only begun to address this. Academics, like any person, will work towards what their employers reward them with. So if employers look at REF, and REF rewards theoretical research, then academics will do just that. This also fosters a kind of intellectual snobbery among academics who do theoretical work and look down on applied research as lacking in intellectual 'purity' and 'rigour'. It is almost like they regard applied researchers as doing research for monetary profit (crass) rather than for the higher cause of pursuing the 'truth' kind of snobbery.
One comment to add to my earlier one. I once was on a panel with a CEO who rabbited on about the relevance of business school research. I asked him if he thought we did not teach well or were teaching the wrong things? He said no. I asked if he sent his executives to b-school for training? He said yes. I asked was he dissatisfied with the people he hired from b-schools or the XP training his managers got? He said, no. I said, OK, so you want me to do more 'relevant' research for free? He said, of course not. I then asked when we could expect his company's $M donation to establish a centre in the areas of work he viewed as relevant? Even he bust out laughing (BTW they never gave us any money -- not before this interaction or after the interaction). My point here is why should anyone care about the choice of a scholar's work? If someone wants specific 'relevant' research (and remember 'relevant' is alway relevance to a 'whom') then they should be asked to pay for its cost. Part of the 'relevance' argument is that those wanting it are simply not prepared to pay for it. So (to paraphrase Dire Straits) "they want their relevance, they want their relevance", but want they really want is "money for nothing and your relevance for free."
Tim, thanks for these comments. I liked your reference to Einstein. It may be relevant to bring up here that none of Einstein's papers, including one on special relativity that got him the Nobel Prize, were peer reviewed; through his life, Einstein had only one anonymous peer review in 1936, and that article was rejected. Indeed, the establishment of his time generally classified Einstein as overly simplistic. As our Sage paper discusses, we are not against peer review, replication or theoretical progress; instead, like you, we argue for a portfolio of scholarly accomplishments for social impact and wellbeing as every metric has its drawbacks. Thanks for your interest.
I am with Tim here. Business schools include a variety of disciplines. Most of my colleagues in finance, accounting, actuarial science, economics do tons of research that translates rather quickly into practice - both businesses and institutions. Sure, it could be improved in many ways but, given how close to practice these disciplines are, lots of work is already going on related to eg sustainable goals and the likes, both ij research and teaching. In marketing, IS, and operations, the situation is not so different, although timing seems to me slightly longer. Our colleagues in charity management are as close to practice as it goes, hard to disentangle what is theory and what is practice. The situation appears different in other management disciplines - especially, strategy, OB/OT, and entrepreneurship - because timing of knowledge production is different. I am in strategy and entrepreneurship - but an accountant by training and pre-academia in corporate marketing, with tens of applied strategy consulting projects in the bag with students and companies: any strategy research based on yesterday data and published tomorrow that claims any kind of meaningful impact is, at best, an airport consulting book that rewrap old stuff with new labels. Some might be very successful in terms of sales but most of the times they piggyback on 20+ of other people's collective effort. My PhD was based on a 'useless' theoretical concept: 15 years later that research fed into applied work with a large cooperative confederations and shaped a big chunk of their innovation activities along the way. In parallel, the same 'thinking process' has led me to research strategic innovation in extreme poverty contexts in Africa: measurable impact might happen in +10y time based on countless unmeasurable micro activities along the way of research time like training local researchers and micro entrepreneurs, advising on institution building etc. I could go on, and so could countless colleagues. This 'lack of impact' narrative mixes companies' attemps to get free consulting on short term matters and governments' attempts to box impact in something they can sell to voters with the dynamics and processes of how societal impact evolves in the long term. And yes, I like - to a point - the publication process despite of its shortcomings: writing for theory is intellectually stimulating and it forces us to step back from the micro details of today's practice and engage in conversations about the long term, while contributing to short/medium term practice via teaching, service, and consulting.