The REF Dilemma: true international excellence or playing the REF game? Kent Business School, January 2013 John Saunders
The REF Dilemma:true international excellence or playing the REF game?
Kent Business School, January 2013
John Saunders
Commenting upon the RAE The Robert Report concluded that the process was an
“extremely successful…competition for funding…successfully retaining its original function of driving up standards through reputation incentives”,
Commenting upon the RAE The Robert Report concluded that the process was an
“extremely successful…competition for funding…successfully retaining its original function of driving up standards through reputation incentives”,
although the Report provided no evidence in support of the eulogy.
But doesn’t it look good!
1
2
3a
3b
4
5
5*
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Figure 1: B&M improvement RAE 1996 to RAE 2001
RAE 2001 RAE 1996
Percentage in each RAE category
RA
E c
ate
gory
1
2
3a
3b
4
5
5*
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Figure 1: B&M improvement RAE 1996 to RAE 2001
RAE 2001 RAE 1996
Percentage in each RAE category
RA
E c
ate
gory
“Generally, B&M still lagged behind the overall assessment of academic disciplines, where 80% of the researchers whose work was submitted received one of the top grades (4, 5 and 5*) – with a 55% majority being awarded 5 or 5*” (JFC, 2003).
“The RAE results suggest that, not only has B&M drawn level with social science as a whole, it has done so while the quality and quantity of social science research has accelerated.” (JFC, 2010).
Background to the research
Globalization of authorship in marketing journals and impacts on the discipline- Stremersch and Verhoef (2005)
Globalization and marketing productivity project- Saunders and Tynan (2007)
Globalisation of Marketing Academy and Productivity
Rising productivity of Dutch and Belgian
Steady erosion of USA domination
Emerging market talent (e.g. HK, China, India, Turkey)
Britain’s share declining
Top UK Marketing talent almost all ‘imported’ (overseas origin)
Globalization of Business Research Project: Research
Questions?
Is it true across disciplines?
Research Methodology
Extension of globalization of authorship in marketing study (Stremersch & Verhoef, 2005)
Selective sampling - audit leading Business and Soc Sci journals- 1968 – 2008
Information (bio’s, Internet, libraries, obituaries)- affiliation- PhD education- pre-PhD education
Selection of ‘A’ Journals: Lists Employed
UTD
Financial Times 40
Association of Business School if corroborated by BSs it reports (Kelly et al, 2009)
B&M panels (UK 2008 RAE; 2009 Dutch EcBusSci Research review Committee)
JCR citations rates > 1.4
Table 3a: National Share in Top Non-Marketing (Marketing) Journals
1968 1976 1984 1992 2000 2008
Affiliation %
Canada 1.1(.9) 5.7(1.0)
5.8(1.7)
4.8(2.0)
3.4(2.8)
3.9(3.6)
France 1.1(0.5)
1.6(.9) 1.3(.8) 1.2(.9) 2.8(2.4)
2.1(1.7)
HK 0(0) .1(.1) .1(.1) .1(.1) 2.8(2.4) 1.2(2.4)
Israel .2(1.0) 3.7(2.7) 1.9(2.4) 2.2(1.8) .8(.9) 1.3(1.0)
Neth’d 0(.1) .3(.1) .8(.6) .5(.6) .7(1.3) 1.6(2.1)
S’pore 0(0) .1(.1) .1(.2) .1(.1) .5(.5) 1.5(1.4)
UK 1.7(2.0)
2.5(2.8)
3.2(1.9)
1.4(2.5)
2.7(2.9)
4.1(3.9)
US 89.5(95.9)
80.7(89.7)
81.7(89.8)
86.4(92.1)
78.7(84.4)
77.1(74.3)
Countries with %>1 in 2008 or %>1 more than one occasion
Table 3b: National Share in Top Non-Marketing (Marketing) Journals
PhD% 1968 1976 1984 1992 2000 2008
Belgium 0(0) 0(0) .6(0) .6(0) .6(0) 1.3(1.3)
Canada 0(0) .8(1.7) .9(.5) 2.2(.4) 2.9(1.7) 2.1(4.0)
France .7(0) .8(0) .6(0) 1.1(0) 2.6(1.3) 2.4(1.2)
Israel 0(0) 1.0(0) 1.2(0) 1.4(0) 1.0(0) 1.0(0)
Neth’d .3(0) .5(0) .9(0.5) .4(.4) .9(3.0) 1.5(4.8)
UK .7(0) 2.5(.9) 3.8(1.5) 1.5(.8) 2.2(.4) 2.2(1.0)
US 95.9(95.2)
91.6(97.4)
89.2(93.3)
90.7(97.9)
85.7(91.1)
84.1(81.8)
Table 3c: National Share in Top Non-Marketing (Marketing) Journals
Pre-PhD % 1968 1976 1984 1992 2000 2008
Australia 1.8((0) 1.5(1.0) 1.7(.06) 1.2(0.5) 0.7(0.4) 1.8(0.3)
Belgium 0(0) 0.8(0) 0.3(0.6) 0.9(0.5) 1.3(2.8) 1.8(3.1)
Canada 3.5(2.9) 3.5(7.1) 1.8(2.8) 6.3(0.5) 5.6(2.3) 2.9(5.3)
China 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) 0.6(0) 3.7(2.3) 7.5(7.4)
Denmark 0(0) 0(0) 0(0.6) 0.3(0) 0.7(0.5) 1.1(0.2)
France 0.7(0) 2.4(2.0) 0.7(2.3) 1.5(0.5) 3.2(2.3) 2.5(0.3)
Germany 0.4(0) 0.6(0) 0.3(1.1) 0.5(0) 1.3(1.8) 2.6(3.0)
India 2.8(5.7) 3.7(6.1) 5.0(10.2) 7.2(22.1) 8.4(23.5) 10.8(19.5)
Israel 1.8(0) 5.2(4.1) 4.3(4.0) 3.7(2.8) 2.9(4.8) 3.5(2.6)
Italy 0.4(0) 0.2(0) 0.5(0) 0(0) 1.9(0) 2.0(0)
Japan 2.1(0) 1.1(0) 0.8(0.6) 0.5(0) 0.9(0.5) 0.4(0)
Korea o.4(0) 0(1.0) 0.2(0) 1.7(0.9) 1.2(1.8) 1.2(0.9)
Neth’ds 0(0) 0.6(0) 1.0(0.6) 1.1(0.5) 1.2(3.2) 1.2(4.6)
Turkey 0(0) 0.2(0) 0.2(0.6) 0.2(0) 0.9(1.4) 2.4(2.4)
UK 2.1(0) 4.7(5.1) 3.8(1.1) 2.8(0.5) 3.6(0.5) 3.5(0.7)
US 81.0(85.7) 69.8(71.4) 74.1(70.6) 63.4(65.4) 54.7(45.2) 43.1(39.7)
Affiliation Co = PhD Co
Affiliation Co = pre-PhD Co
Country of affiliation
US
Euro-area
UK
✔ ✔ 69%(59%)
50%(41%)
36%(0%)
✔ ✖ 26%(38%)
23%(17%)
10%(9%)
✖ ✔ 1%(1%) 4%(9%) 15%(9%)
✖ ✖ 4%(3%) 37%(32%)
38%(82%)
6644(1120)
228(65) 234(22)
Table 4: Business Journals (Marketing Journals) 1968 – 2008: Country of Affiliation, PhD and pre-PhD compared
Chi-square = 544, p = 0.000
Four Types of Country
US - “bring me your poor”
“Send you my clever”- India, China, Turkey
Closed ‘systems’ model- Netherlands, France, Germany
UK - Premier League model
“If you have a toss-up over a home grown …it’s cheaper to bring in players from outside…
Philosophically, what we are doing is asking,
‘Is there more we could do to develop the English talent, which would negate the need to go abroad and look for talent? Can we do anything to make sure that the home talent is as good as it can be?’”
“If you have a toss-up over a home grown …it’s cheaper to bring in players from outside…
Philosophically, what we are doing is asking,
‘Is there more we could do to develop the English talent, which would negate the need to go abroad and look for talent? Can we do anything to make sure that the home talent is as good as it can be?’”
Richard Scudmore, Premier League chief executive.
RAE strategy and payoffResearch strategy Players RAE reward
International players(internationally recognized output)
LBS, Imperial, Cambridge, Oxford
Hugely underfunded
Big RAE players(insignificant internationally recognized output: high RAE rated output)
Lancaster, Warwick, etc.
Highly over funded
Poor little suckers(Medium schools with proportional international research)
Cass, Bath, Aston, etc
Relatively underfunded
Moderate scholars The mass Appropriately little funding
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascending power among mankind
(John Stuart Mill)
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities(Albert Einstein)
A couple of trends
Table 5: Simpson’s Diversity IndicesJournals/Average across Articles
Discipline
1968 1976 1984 1992 2000 2008
Account’g
.18/.01 .21/.05 .20/.03 .07/.03 .17/.05 .31/.10
Economics
.30/.05 .47/.09 .51/.10 .40/.05 .50/.12 .42/.13
Finance .09/.10 .11/.03 .28/.05 .13/.02 .25/.05 .40/.13
General .05/.02 .19/.01 .09/.00 .22/.04 .34/.10 .39/.15
Marketing
.01/.00 .19/.04 .29/.06 .19/.03 .38/.10 .45/.14
OS HRM .17/.02 .35/.04 .16/.00 .18/.02 .29/.10 .40/.15
OPS IT .28/.03 .41/.03 .39/.07 .32/.07 .48/.11 .45/.14 N D = 1 – Σ Pl
2
l=1
No longer alone
1968 1976 1984 1992 2000 20080
20
40
60
80
100
Figure 3: Proportions of papers with number of authors
Four+ThreeTwoOne
ConclusionsGlobalization of authorship not unique to marketing, but reflected across management
Main contributing countries to top journals suggest global flow of talent
While journals reflect increasing diversity of author teams…
Globalization of authorship is multicultural rather than intercultural
Different models of success
It is increasingly large teams