Chapter 5: Playing the Game and Trying Not to Lose Myself: A Doctoral Student’s Perspective on the Institutional Pressures for Research Output^☆

When I entered the doctoral program in the fall of 2006 at a large North American business school, I was surprised to encounter the many forms of institutionalized pressures for research output. I commenced the program immediately after earning degrees – undergraduate and Master’s – in political philosophy, where expectations for research output, while being present, were not nearly as salient or vocalized. Ever more troubling for me at the time was the very stringent hierarchy associated with journal prestige that appeared to govern academic politics in the field. Indeed, from the very onset of the program there were dual demands cast upon doctoral students: (i) to publish and (ii) to publish in journals that count.¹

From the Dean’s message at the welcome reception to the comments made by professors with whom we had coursework to the sage advice offered by the luminaries of the field at various doctoral consortia, these two points transformed from words of guidance into a reified discourse; to which we as doctoral students were tacitly expected to acquiesce.