Global and empirical management history?
Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Management History, Volume 18, Issue 3
Welcome to Issue Number 3 of Volume 18 of the Journal of Management History. As I write this editorial the number of citations for Journal of Management History papers has increased from 1,655 to 1,777 since the last issue. Our h index is still 18 but our g index has increased from 28 to 29 thanks to the additional 122 citations. I just came from a formal dinner recognizing the top 36 professors encouraging student research scholarship at my university. Unfortunately we only had one from business. Of the 1,000+ faculty members over 1/3 are business faculty – and only 1 is from business! Why would I bring this up? In this issue we have six articles including one about publishing and citations – and the idea of a global citation market. We have had 122 additional citations since the last issue but most of these have been from the most cited 18 articles which is why our h index is still 18. Within the Journal of Management History it is possible that we could publish a large number of articles but it would be nice to have articles that have an impact on the field as we are competing in a global citation market– and we want to publish articles that matter. I recently have had the opportunity to talk with a number of other editors from Emerald and Academy of Management journals and citations are of a major concern among editors,publishers, and administrators but rarely thought about by authors. At the 2011 SouthWest Academy of Management meeting Michael Hitt, former editor of the Academy of Management Journal and the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journaland former President of the Academy of Management, remarked that even he has been surprised by how rapidly citation rates are becoming increasingly more and more important. Even at Research intensive universities not only is it important where one publishes but also the citation rates of individual’s articles. Within the next several years to be considered to be academically qualified it is likely that not only shall faculty need to have published research but that this research should be cited. If work isn’t cited it won’t count!With the Journal of Management History we want to publish research that counts – and that is cited. Because of this it would be nice to have more work performed about the journal itself such as comparing it to other journals. We need research that shall look at management history topics in an empirical fashion globally and within particular cultural settings. What are the differences between views of management in the USA and Japan or between Greece,Germany, Estonia, and China (Healy, 2011a, b, 2012; Pundziene, 2011a, b)?Pundziene (2012) even talks about the changes in the impact factor of her journal from 0.565 to 0.7 from June to September, 2011. Why this interest in numbers such as this? Might it be the value placed on raises, the ability to have an impact on one’s field, recognition, or promotability? Interestingly Gomez-Mejia and Balkin (1992) found citations to be worth $192 in 1988– but not to have an impact on raises – only on nine-month salary. How can this be? Citations increase occupational mobility and therefore influence salary but not annual raises. The value of citations has changed since 1988. Gomez-Mejia and Balkin (1992) looked at citation rates from the Social Science Citation Index. Currently we can differentiate citations from “top tier” journals, ISI (previously SSCI) journals, and Google Scholar and each has its own value. While we can identify what is included in ISI and Google Scholar we can’t really identify what journals are actually “top tier.” I have boxes of such lists I have collected for over 20 years. The lists vary from university to university and subdiscipline to subdiscipline, and they might change from time to time. For instance even the Financial Timeslist has changed over time. In 2012 ISI citations are worth over $800[actually $837], have essentially zero impact on annual raises but impact annual salary and occupational mobility. When it comes to top tier journals the University of Texas at Dallas likely has the most exclusive list which includes only 24 journals. At the other extreme some universities consider all peer reviewed journals listed in Cabell’s to be “top tier.” In between – and adjustable – is the idea of any journal with an ISI impact factor of 1.0 or higher being “top tier.” This is a fairly typical standard at mid-level doctoral research intensive universities. It makes more sense to use a combination of citation rates and surveys of researchers and/or administrators [including faculty members who are part of promotion and tenure committees] and/or governmental officials who might link university funding with research productivity. When using the h index it might make sense to say that a journal should have an h of 18 times the number of decades that the journal has been in print based on Publish or Perish. Emerald also likes to use the number of downloads of articles to compare the impacts of articles however this is likely more useful for publishers than for researchers as the information is not generally widely available.
In regards to citation rates it could prove useful to study journal articles from several journals [comparing four to six journals at a time] in terms of characteristics of their top 10 most cited articles or the publication records of editorial review board members and editors. How do articles impact their fields of research? How do authors have an impact on their fields of research?How can journals better influence a field of research? What types of differences exist between different research areas and different fields of research within the social sciences and between the various areas of science? We need to have more research in the Journal of Management History that makes a difference. In addition to the article on citations we also have “Narrative Analysis of Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Using Psychological Capital as the Analytical Framework” “Groupthink and the Sanhedrin:An analysis of the ancient court of Israel through the lens of modern social psychology,” “The history of overseas Lebanese entrepreneurs operating worldwide” “The Origins of Personnel Management:Reasserting the Public Sector Experience” and “The personification of an object and the emergence of coaching.” We have articles from Canada,France, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and the USA. Please enjoy these articles.
Shawn M. CarraherEditor
