Commentary on "measuring Canadian business school research output and impact"

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Sep 2002 by Vishwanath V Baba, Richard Dery, Jean-Marie Toulouse

This paper by Dr Ethan Erkut was published in the June 2002 issue of CJAS. In light of the importance of the topic and findings, we invited the Deans of two Canadian business schools to respond We are pleased that Dr. Baba of McMaster University and Dr. Toulouse and Dr. Richard Dery of Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales Montreal accepted the invitation and we present their responses below. In the December 2002 issue of CJAS, we will present Dr. Erkut's rejoinder.

Iraj Fooladi and Philip Rosson, co-editors

BEYOND MEASURING CANADIAN BUSINESS SCHOOL RESEARCH OUTPUT AND IMPACT: A COMMENTARY

Vishwanath V. Baba*

McMaster University

*Dean, Michael G. DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4M4. E-mail: baba@mcmaster.ca

Measuring the output and impact of research in Canadian business schools is important and merits ongoing investigation. I am a strong supporter of scholars studying scholarship in their fields. It not only makes for interesting reading but also sets the stage for a constructive shaping of knowledge in the field. Unfortunately, most of the studies in this genre are self-serving. The study by Erhan Erkut (2002) makes an honest attempt to look at scholarship more comprehensively than most studies do. More importantly, and to its strength, this study uses the ISI database that is arguably the cleanest and least biased. Most studies look at research output (Beamish, 2000). For example, in his paper Erkut refers to the latest UBC-Alberta-Toronto study of "the 60 journals" in his paper. However, in matters of scholarship, output is necessary but not sufficient to pronounce judgement as to its quality. It is the impact and influence that advances knowledge in meaningful ways and, by implication, contributes to the progress of human welfare and well-being. To look at both productivity and impact in juxtaposition is the major strength of Erkut's work. The purpose of this commentary is to explore what is beyond the measurement.

No study is perfect and Erkut acknowledges that: Nevertheless, he has taken a very important first step in the proverbial "journey of a thousand miles". My comments here are toward shaping future studies that would advance knowledge in this domain. This is an area where ongoing longitudinal analysis would seriously add value to our understanding of scholarship in business management. Erhan Erkut mentions it and I believe efforts in that direction by CJAS would go a long way toward channeling such knowledge toward policies and initialives that would move the wheels of commerce more in alignment with the goals of a knowledge society.

I would urge both Erkut and those who would follow in his footsteps to broaden the motivation for the work. We need to anchor the notions of research output and impact into something more fundamental in order to add enduring value. We should start probing into the roles of scholarship and research in business and how they contribute to the mission of the business school. There is ongoing debate about intellectual capital and the role it plays in adding value to reputational organizations. It makes sense to incorporate that discussion in the context of measuring the impact of knowledge created in business schools.

Many of the metrics used in the Erkut study are both interesting and potentially useful; however, they have to have their meanings established substantively and their measurements examined critically so that their relevance to the research questions becomes more explicit. There are a number of heuristic decisions that Erkut had made throughout the data collection and analysis. They all need some debate on the pages of CJAS for purposive justification.

Given the analysis and the results that Erkut provides, I would like future research to speculate and debate possible strategic directions at the macro, meso, and micro levels. For example, what needs to be done at the level of government-education ministries, ministries responsible for colleges and universities, ministries responsible for science and technology, ministries responsible for enterprise, opportunity and innovation, and other economic ministries? Further, what are the possible strategies at the institutional level, Faculty or School level, at the level of individual Areas or Departments, and finally strategies of scholarship at the level of individual scholars? We also know that different types of papers get cited differently, for example, an empirical paper will have a shorter citation history than a review or methodological paper or for that matter, a theory paper. While the Erkut paper is silent about the implications of those differences, it is definitely worth exploring them in future research. I mention this because I know of a business school that encouraged empirical work over theoretical works and quick publications over works that have longer gestation periods. In other words, it valued volume and frequency of publication in its reward allocation. With reward systems favouring short and frequent work, the shape of scholarship changes and so does its impact. Future research may have something to say about such phenomena and their impact on scholarship.