Merit myopia and business school faculty publications

Business Horizons, March-April, 1991 by John S. Fielden, Jean D. Gibbons

AB0008

A very distinguished business school professor is concerned about who should inherit the extensive library of books on his specialty he has collected over his 40-plus years of teaching. "I certainly won't leave books to this school," he said. "They just sneer at books; they only respect refereed journal articles-and very few of them, too; only those appearing in the so-called top scholarly journals. And these articles are completely unreadable to anyone but a few narrow specialists. They certainly don't make the broad contribution that books do. It would be a damned useless library that contained only refereed journals."

This professor's complaint needs to be listened to, because many of the nation's business school faculties seem to be drifting into a not-so-subtle "banning" of books and any other publications that may be relatively widely read. In the value system employed by an ever-increasing number of business school deans and department chairs, only articles appearing in refereed scholarly journals "count" toward promotion, tenure, raises, and other benefits (such as sabbaticals) included in the reward system. Oh, they may say that other types of publication count; admittedly it would be the rare faculty handbook that does not claim that the university as a whole welcomes and encourages publication of almost any sort. However, many business schools assign such a large weight to articles in refereed journals that all other types of publication are trivialized in promotion, tenure, and salary decisions.

There are, of course, several high-sounding justifications for this attitude, but the animus seems to stem from a too-zealous application of the old adage: "Money is the root of all evil," and a centuries-old British notion that academic pursuits must be free of any taint of crass materialism.

In many business schools seeking scholarly repute, any type of publication that has even the faintest potential of making money has become increasingly suspect. The faculty reward system is being distorted because of the following fallacious notions that derive from such preciously anti-materialist attitudes:

The Money Fallacy. Corollary A: Because all books have the capacity to produce royalties, they should not count toward academic rewards. Since they do not count, there is no need to read them or to make any attempt to evaluate their contributions to knowledge. Corollary B: Because refereed journal articles have no capacity to produce income, they should count heavily toward academic rewards. Since the quality of these articles has been judged by referees, there is no great need to read them or independently assess their contributions to knowledge.

The Utility Fallacy. Articles that communicate something of practical utility to a businessperson also should count little in the reward system because it can be alleged that their authors are merely (a) fishing" for consulting opportunities or (b) reporting the results of earlier consulting for which they have already been well paid.

The Public Relations Fallacy. The only "public" that a business school's publications should seek recognition from is other scholars.

Let's look at the import of each of these fallacies.

THE MONEY FALLACY

There is an increasing tendency for business school faculties to lump all types of books together as producers of fat royalties. Hence a sneering, condescending attitude is increasingly taken toward books per se, irrespective of whether a given book is another "me-too" principles book, a research manual, a research monograph, or a graduate-level textbook. Not even some books are more equal than others.

In one case we know of, summer support was granted to a professor for coauthoring a very research-oriented, technical monograph with a scholar at another institution. However, this $6,000 grant was made only with the stipulation that the money must be repaid to the university from the professor's share of future royalties! Since it was fatuous even to suspect that this type of book could earn anything close to $6,000 for each author, the stipulation was agreed to. But the professor was unhappy that the administrator could not, or would not, recognize that such a book should have been categorized as a true contribution to research as opposed to "just another royalty-producing book."

Books should not be lumped together as money makers; all books are not alike. Take the case of a textbook written for an advanced graduate level audience. In most fields, there are so few graduate students enrolled in truly advanced classes that even if the book were to be widely adopted, the number of copies sold might range from five to 15 per adoption; therefore, the argument that writers of such books are rewarded for their efforts by royalties is fallacious. Moreover, very, very few business schools have chosen to apply the same money argument with equal rigor to the writing of scholarly articles. If a professor decides not to slave for months or years to create a high-level textbook (because it will neither "count" nor earn significant royalties) and instead applies his or her talent to the writing of scholarly articles, it is a much better gamble. In fact, it is one that cannot lose. Let's make a concrete comparison of the monetary rewards.