Research Note: Asterix in Disneyland. Management Scholars from France on the World Stage

Organization Studies, Winter, 1998 by Lars Engwall

In the case of journal characteristics, the samples share two of three top journals: Management Science and Organization Studies, but differ considerably when it comes to the third. The French have 16 publications in the Strategic Management Journal, while the Nordic authors have just one. Instead they have 13 publications in Accounting, Organizations and Society -- one of the journals in which there were no French articles.

The two samples also differ with respect to the journals covered. In only one journal -- the Journal of Accounting and Economics -- were the Nordic scholars not represented, whereas the French-based writers were absent from five: as well as the AOS and JAE already mentioned, these were the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Advertising Research and the Journal of Management. The journal publishing of French authors thus appears to be more concentrated than that of their Northern colleagues. The French also publish in slightly more important journals, which results in a higher average impact factor (1.322 as against 1.178) and average cited half-time (7.5 as against 7.1 years).

In terms of author characteristics, the differences are not very great in quantitative terms. The two samples constitute 0.8 and 0.9 percent of the total population, respectively. The authors based in France have a somewhat higher co-authorship figures than the Nordic (2.0 as against 1.7 authors per article), a few more institutions are involved (62 as against 56) and they have a slightly higher share of foreign authorships (23.2 as against 16.4 percent). The major difference is again the orientation of the articles as measured by the most frequent words in their titles. In full accord with the difference observed earlier with respect to the top three journals, i.e. presence in or absence from the Strategic Management Journal and Accounting, Organizations and Society, the words most frequently used in the French sample were strategy, strategic and management, and in the Nordic sample accounting, organization and organizational.

When quantitative measures are used to compare the reference characteristics of the two samples, we also find considerable similarities. This applies to the total number of references (2,673 as against 2,693), the median number of references (33 as against 37), references cited once (72.3 as against 72.8 percent), the share of the top four references (1.49 as against 1.37), the average use of references, and the concentrations measure [rho] (2.51 as against 2.41). However, when it comes to the top references we find a difference. If we limit the comparison to documents which have a citation frequency above two per thousand, we find two shared references: Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) and Williamson (1975). For the rest we can again observe differences in orientation. The French authors tend to favour strategy-oriented works (Porter 1980; Ansoff 1965; Chandler 1962 and Hofer and Schendl 1978) and to a certain extent cross-cultural comparisons (Hofstede 1980). The Nordic authors, on the other hand, show a preferen ce for works in the Carnegie-Tech tradition and its followers: Pfeffer and Salancik (1978), Cyert and March (1963), Thompson (1967), March and Olsen (1976), Meyer and Rowan (1977) and Weick (1969). They also refer frequently to cultural studies (Geertz 1973), and a classical paper on strategic choice (Child 1972). This difference between the two samples seems to suggest that the authors based in France tend to adopt a more rational planning perspective than the Nordic authors, who appear more apt to stress bounded rationality, random events and rituals as significant components in decision-making.