Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 1160–1164

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Research

Assessing contribution of research in business to practice☆

Tony Ellson
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This editorial offers some thoughts on wider criteria of evaluation than journal and article impact metrics.
Received 1 September 2008 The editorial suggests that the measurement of journal and article impact metrics simply confirms the status
Received in revised form 1 October 2008 quo rather than the promotion of resonance between practice, research and theory. The editorial proposes a
Accepted 1 October 2008
more holistic recognition of impact, influence and usefulness that elevates the importance of three further
dimensions of application, context and involvement. The editorial considers the value of scientific research to
Keywords:
business practitioners and students concluding that an ingenuous and on-going scheme of exchange
Impact factor
Journal
between scholars and practitioners would lead to cross-fertilization of ideas and experience and enhance
Author empathy, learning and understanding. The alternative pursuit of scientific “respectability” by scholars in the
Practice, research and theory most myopic academic sense has become less and less useful to students as well as the business community
Application, context and involvement leaving the suspicion of business schools obsessed with making money whilst pretending to pursue
Business practitioners knowledge and produce future citizens to make the world a better place.
© 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The publication of business papers in learned journals is the outcome
of scholarship, even perhaps the ultimate acclamation of application,
contribution, knowledge, and skill. The application of approved (in the
sense of reliable and trustworthy) research processes punctuated by
fashionable (in the sense of current and popular) etymological and
epistemological derivations and formulaic patterns of rude (in the sense
of robust) paradigmatic proportion is surely a productive (in the sense of
useful) and noble (in the sense of contributing or making a difference)
pursuit. Yet the evaluation of such academic contribution remains
illative and moot, subject to diverse, conflicting and contradictory
patronage, and controversial in application.
The number of author citations alongside journal ranking as a
measure of scholarly contribution, impact, influence, and usefulness
are increasingly the touchstones supported by investment of time and
effort by senior members of educational institutions (see Editorial:
Journal and author impact metrics by Woodside 2008). If research
success dictates hiring, promoting, and firing of faculty candidates,
then perhaps the wider rationale for such diligent yet monopolizing
application within an assumptive scholarly and prospectively intel-
lectual environment requires more critical and rigorous examination.
The evaluation of impact of scholarly contributions of journals and
authors is typically contentious and not least because most journals
depend upon the readership and the support of the academic
☆ The author appreciates comments by Farooq Chudry (University of the West of
England), Gordon Foxall (Cardiff University), John Pallister (Cardiff University), Joe
Plummer (Advertising Research Foundation), Greg Rose (University of Washington),
Charles M. Schaninger (University at Albany — SUNY) and Arch Woodside (Boston
College) on earlier drafts of this editorial.
E-mail address: ellsontj@cardiff.ac.uk.
community. A citation system of measurement of research output in
combination with journal ranking offers one form of measurement to
identify the impact of an author's work. The use of multiple metrics for
evaluating journals and scholarly contributions has the appearance of
being informative, objective and tangible as well as an independent
confirmation of impact, influence, and usefulness.
The value of any writing must be the ability to communicate
thoughts and understandings. The impact of those understandings is a
matter of degree and may shape future action, attitude, belief, emotion,
knowledge, sentiment, thought, or perhaps a combination of these and
other components. Outcomes may include action and improvement,
anger and dismissal, argument and discussion, shame and disgust,
thought and creativity.
A citation system does not necessarily delineate the respective
contributions of researcher, scholar and intellectual unless popular
acclaim is a measure of value. Faculty candidates looking to make their
mark (with recognition of the ascendancy of H G Wells one-eyed man
in appropriate circumstances) may be forgiven for confusing quantity
and ownership as subservient to, for example, learning and practice.
Only a more holistic recognition of impact, influence and usefulness
can accurately evaluate the impact of journals and an author's
contribution and scholars should not relegate business research as a
living discipline to philosophical insignificance by simplistic measure-
ments of scholarly and intellectual prowess.
The mission statements of business schools provide rich evidence of an
essential and fundamental dictionary of perceptions of excellence. Words
such as “leading”, “successful”, “international”, “challenging”, “rigorous”,
“relevant”, and “high quality” abound. The words represent how an insti-
tution would like to be perceived and represent a fundamental positioning
statement of business education and research. A declaration of excellence

0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2008.10.008
 T. Ellson / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 1160–1164
is of course simply a declaration of intent. Anyone can make a statement
of intent and, whilst behavioral psychologists for many years believed
that intention was the primary antecedent of future behavior, increas-
ingly, the importance of attitude, past behavior, experience and
involvement receive recognition as better predictors of future behavior.
So, perhaps, whilst the intention (or possibly a desire to be perceived in a
certain light) may exist, statements of intention are no guarantee of
attainment or even necessarily commitment.
These institutional statements of intent are often paralleled by
authors' biographical contributions on book jackets and websites.
Outsiders might be excused for believing that business authors have
had successful careers in the business world. Whilst some academics
have indeed had successful and productive careers in business, the
importance of context and application of business research is not
dissimilar to the derived advantage and contribution of practitioner
medics and other symbiotic professional relationships of mutualism
rather than parasitic or commensalism. This observation is not to
demean but rather to highlight the importance of a positioning image
that reflects a meaningful impact for business through practical
output, influence and usefulness rather than a tendency to perpetuate
isolation within the existing confined paradigm.
Self-perception of business education lacks the wider context of
education and social policy, driven by potential insularity and guarded
by a passion for research output, often forgetful of basic business
tenets such as change, flexibility, enterprise and the importance of
application, experience and practice portrayed by the same research
outputs. Academics often lack the experience of practitioner and
business needs, the dichotomy of business practice, and the “scientific
truth” of business research, the remoteness and small readership of
most academic business journals, and the lack of relevance and
practitioner exposure often shade theory. Real practical problems do
exist. Who is going to teach business practice if practitioners are
practicing and academics are teaching and researching? How is the
experience of business going to be acquired by those teaching and
learning within higher education? What form of assessment would be
most appropriate to the practice of business?
Social pressures exist. Higher payments for education through
loans, taxation, parental contribution and part-time work are under-
standable stimuli for students and parents' specific expectations of a
relevance of business education. This context should provoke an active
exchange that questions the relevance of business school teaching and
learning and provides some reassurance to the expectations of
students, parents, and indeed business and society. Business is a series
of contradictions; complex, simple, exciting and yet sometimes dull, a
confusion of events, ideas, values and beliefs. Collaborative and
synergistic research is not possible without the opportunity to “crawl
inside companies to observe carefully the causal processes at work”
(Christensen and Raynor, 2003: 70) and “increase cross-functional
perspectives in management research and practice” (Wind, 2005:863).
A business school operating in isolation from and without authentic
involvement in business lacks personal awareness and identity, suffers
from an introverted, inward-looking, egotistical, ideological, and self-
righteous predisposition. Business schools tend towards conforming to
these norms and behaviors — and they bring new revenue streams, attract
more students, and supported by perceptions of “leading”, “successful”,
“international”, “challenging”, “rigorous”, “relevant”, and “high quality”. A
heavy reliance on scholarly contribution, impact, influence and usefulness
measured by the number of citations is not convincing to students,
parents, business and society that performance is serving the intention.
Business schools are poor practitioners of their own research
limited perhaps by long-running divisions on the nature of “scientific”
and “scholarly” contribution. The debate initiated by Pfeffer and Fong
(2002, 2003, 2004) with wider contributions and reactions of
Connolly (2003), Ghoshal (2005) and Pfeffer (2005) are important
contributions to discussion about impact, influence, and usefulness.
The debate is perhaps more about issues of extrinsic and intrinsic
1161
contribution to business, even maybe the distinction between
research, scholasticism, and intellectualism. The debate must include
consideration of the relevance of business schools and business
research to business practice and should compare with the application
of other living disciplines. A myopic preoccupation with measurement
of research based more on quantity and ownership is perhaps the
result of mistaking the effect for the cause. Business research is the
consequence of business practice.
1. Ideology and shared values
If the dominant ideology is merely the shared values of the ruling
elite (Abercrombie et al., 1980) and the learning society is an ideological
concept serving ideological purposes (Hughes and Tight, 1995), then
identifying the elite and the concept is important. The collegiate
environment and scholarly tenure of institutions of higher education
sustains the ideology on the basis that, “When people are asked to
describe their ideology, they start with examples that imply patterns of
belief within which those examples make sense” (Weick, 1995: 131).
The development of business schools within a university environment is
subject to the established norms and acceptable behaviors often steeped
in history, tradition, established practices, and a professorial elite with a
sturdy adeptness for and contumely habit of inside-out thinking rather
than outside-in thinking. An increasingly limited dependence on
government funding, a growing competitive market to attract high-
fees paid by international students, and demands for collaborative links
and knowledge transfer turns into an akrasian journey for the ill-
equipped or unwilling.
Johnson (1984) proposes “professionalism” as an ideology based
on claims of superior knowledge, and “professionalization” as the
process by which an occupation seeks to advance its status and
progress within that ideology. An emphasis on process and proposi-
tional knowledge without application and context has led to teaching
a more mechanistic and “less skilled” business role. The adoption of
strategies dominated by bureaucratic demands and political
expedience merely asserts and emphasizes claims of prepositional
knowledge and professionalization. A lack of regular contact and
experience with business and practitioners pronounces and favors the
adoption of professionalization rather than professionalism.
Some indications of professionalization include a lack of practical
experience and skills in the business environment; a high regard for
quantitative research that seeks “scientific truth” in preference to
participation and observation; a priority of research over teaching
activity endorsed by reward structures, status, and expectations; a
propensity for the classroom or lecture hall rather than the office or
factory; courses and modules that emphasize an inflow of funds rather
than an outflow of practical skill, knowledge and understanding; and
narrow pedagogical learning and teaching methods. This Pirandellian
pedagogy (i.e., abandoning ties with reality) may be validation of
professional recognition claiming the guardianship of knowledge.
Different pedagogical methods undoubtedly exist amongst institu-
tions of higher education teaching business including the constituent
use of business placement schemes recognizing that participation and
reflection is an essential formative and experiential learning experience.
Henry Mintzberg's advocacy of alternative pedagogical frameworks (as
well as concepts of strategy) is well-known. However, in the main, the
teaching of business takes the form of book-teaching by the book-taught
supported by normative assessment. This method combines knowledge,
though not necessarily application or skill, with an emphasis on the
“right” way of thinking usually within well defined boundaries.
2. Problems of outside-in experience and inside-out thinking
Whilst the recruitment of business practitioners into higher
education is not unknown, salary structures, lifestyle, teaching,
marking, emphasis on academic qualification and involvement in
1162 T. Ellson / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 1160–1164
research activity are some reasons making recruitment of business
practitioners problematical.
Clarity and understanding of practitioner and business practices
are surely not unreasonable expectations to have of business schools.
Whilst there may be exhortation of the benefits of practitioner
learning, few institutions can obviously and straightforwardly claim
teaching staffs that either offers wide experience of business practice
or a pedagogy that reflects authentic and legitimate practitioner
learning. The tendency for mechanical dissertations based on research
method rather than innovative epistemological flair may be excusable
on grounds of lack of experience of candidates but little excuse
supports such work by professional researchers. An increased
utilization of student samples and long-term and repeated application
of models and statistical techniques highlights a lack of connectivity to
the cause of the disciplines role.
A strong evangelistic following and repetitious application of
favored research outputs has the ability to inhibit alternate possibi-
lities and promotes narrow thinking, sameness, and limited contribu-
tion beyond the pages of a journal. A nepotistic and almost incestuous
community that attempts to prove a rule true (cf. Popper's 1959 ideas
on falsifiability and problem of induction), an element of “illusion of
control” (Langer, 1984), and possibly an in-group halo effect creates
the dangers of fundamental attribution error. Repeated citation can be
a vital ingredient for comfortable sterility and self-aggrandizement in
a process disconnected or distanced from business practice.
Pfefer and Fong (2002:79) cite problems “including concerns
about the relevance and centrality of business schools” through “an
overemphasis on analysis at the expense of both integration and
developing wisdom as well as leadership and interpersonal skills, or
teaching the wrong things the wrong way” (79–80) and recognizes
“the picture is reasonably bleak” (80) when it comes to outcomes of
relevance and importance, careers of graduates and the knowledge
they produce. Furthermore, Pfeffer and Fong (2004:1501) identify
distinction between “a value proposition that primarily emphasizes
the career-enhancing, salary-enhancing, salary-increasing aspects of
business education” rather than “a sense of intrinsic interest or even
service”. Ghoshal's (2005:81–82) bemoans the lost taste for pluralism
and highlights the “error to pretend that the methods of the physical
sciences can be indiscriminately applied to business studies ... in our
desire for respect from scholars in other fields, we have become even
more intolerant of the scholarship of common sense” and “our venture
to make business studies a science — we may have gone too far in
ignoring the consequences not only for our students but also society”
(88). Specifically on the subject of governing boards of business
schools, Ghoshal suggests that: “The agenda typically focuses on fund-
raising, external relations or on vacuous vision statements and the
like.”(88)
A major element of discretionary funding of higher education in
the UK focuses on research and publication in academic journals by
the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and overseen by a govern-
mental agency known as the Higher Education Funding Council
(HEFC). The RAE takes place over five or six years. The major criteria
for assessment remains hidden for perhaps up to two years although
journal outputs have prospered as the key measure of success. Final
ratings of journals are decided during the final year of the RAE making
any prospect of targeting publications albeit impossible excepting
expectations based on past practice. The timetable and uncertainty
makes assessment unpredictable and enables a ruling elite (and those
of their institution) the opportunity to protect and promote their own
achievements and proclivities (should they so wish) by matching the
criterion for success to their own outputs. The manner of evaluation
spawns a potentially lively and lucrative market for trading of authors
with as few as four published papers in journals of “international”
standing over a five or six year period. Impact on the business
community and practitioners is less determinate than potential self-
interest of the scholarly community.
3. Context in business education
The context of knowledge is what matters in business education.
Business schools organize the curriculum in a way that is compatible
with their own paradigm, their own resources, and their own
competencies and capabilities. Examinations provide a codified and
propositional knowledge highlighting four properties of specialized,
firmly bounded, scientific, and standardized “professional knowledge”
(Schon, 1983) remote from the reality of the often inherently messy
business of business. Qualification itself is often seen as a means to an
end, better job prospects, an advantage, or a passport to future success
(Brown and Scase, 1994). The preservation of “scientific” objectivity, the
acceptability of “convention” offer stability that conflict with the reality
of management practice. These approaches are directed by dominant
paradigms and methods (Kuhn, 1962) or exemplars (Kuhn, 1970) and
key actors (Friedson, 1985). A “cultural pedagogy” (Kincheloe, 1995;
Giroux, 1997; McLaren, 1997; Berry, 1998) under the control of elite
members of the academic profession (Greenwood and Levin, 2000)
exists in order to publish and to obtain funding.
Ryle (1949) uses terms “knowing that” and “knowing how” whilst
Bloom (1956) suggests a difference between professional competence
and professional expertise using terms like “knowledge”, “comprehen-
sion”, and “application”. Oakshott (1962) develops Aristotle's distinc-
tion between “technical knowledge” and “practical knowledge”.
Schon (1987) highlights raised awareness of tacit knowledge and
transforming knowing-in-action. The result is conflict in combining
knowledge with practice through “book” pedagogy without facilita-
tion of an integrated learning approach with practical issues of
business. The emphasis on citation to judge impact and usefulness
propagates such shortcomings.
The measurement of scholarly contribution, impact, influence, and
usefulness must promote and demand and require partnership and
involvement of business as an integrated approach to business education.
The suggestion is not new. However, a lack of connective educational and
social policy, the historic freedom and independence of universities,
perhaps an unwillingness or inability to adopt the challenge, results in a
lackluster immobile response.
4. Possible ways to promote impact and usefulness
Placement and “secondment” offers an important contribution to
the development of impactful, influential and useful research. The
secondment or temporary exchange of executives and educator
researchers mutually advances cross-fertilization of ideas and experi-
ence and lead to greater empathy, learning and understanding. Both
parties should encourage the exchange process to produce individual
as well as joint quantitative and qualitative research based on
participation, observation, and involvement, and wide dissemination
through teaching and publication in journals and magazines. The
participation of educators and practicing managers on an exchange
basis could potentially lead to a flow of ideas mutually beneficial to
both parties. New ideas and relevance enhance the ability of
practitioners and academics to bring relevance to management
training through the encouragement of cross-cultural understanding
that is so important to business education.
The involvement of business practitioners and academic second-
ment and exchange enables a more formative approach to business
education and placement programs and the wide use of participatory
case studies within businesses. A formative approach with established
goals and ongoing appraisals linked to criterion-referenced assess-
ment would enhance deeper and more meaningful reflection and
evaluation. Neither business schools nor businesses should shelter
behind a cloak of core concepts and paradigms that stifle pragmatic
yet original thought.
Tool-box thinking cannot govern the practitioner; the practitioner
cannot ameliorate the need for personal judgment, decision, and
 T. Ellson / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 1160–1164
elements of risk. Neither should the business school. The partnership
and involvement of businesses as part of learning and teaching
including placement of students in business, secondment and
exchange of academic staff to encourage a more formative approach
to business education, and the regular adoption of business practi-
tioners by business schools in part-time or visiting capacity would
promote greater resonance between practice, research and theory.
The selfish pursuit of research has no place in business disciplines. If
features of intellectual life embrace “insights, perceptions, arguments,
beliefs, observations, redescriptions, characterizations, judgments,
assessments” (Collini, 2006:6), then Pettigrew's (2001: 61) observation
that “if the duty of the intellectual is to make a difference, the manage-
ment research community has a long way to go to realize its potential” is
surely a wake-up call to seek more inspired and hyperopic leadership in
the establishment and evaluation of scholarly contribution, impact,
influence and usefulness through closer involvement. If the intention is
“to make a difference” then there is a need to search harder for scholarly
and intellectual contribution within our discipline than a simplistic
measurement of recitation. Well worn patterns of belief, and continued
expressions of such belief, are not inspirational to progress and offer only
comfort yet ultimate stagnation.
In total, then, normative assessment methods of research output
tends to perpetuate a sort of management class elite, an elite professorial
class, a breed of successful rather than effective exponents. The
suggestion of a more formative approach challenges the bureaucratic
and political hierarchy of higher education but this should be
subservient to the need for reliability, validity of outcomes, and
importantly, the relevance of learning and teaching to effective
management and expertise in the business environment. The business
school in higher education should seek to be the educational nexus of
researcher, student and business, “professionalism” rather than “pro-
fessionalization”, and offer relevance to management training through
active involvement and participation in the practice of management as
much as the practice of business theory and research. A tripartite
resolution is the best way to achieve relevance is not exclusive to any one
of the educational partners; researcher, student and practitioner.
5. Commentary on the future
Business research must not become isolated, “distracted from
distraction by distraction” in “tumid apathy with no concentration”
(T. S. Eliott, Burnt Norton No.1 of ‘Four Quartets’), trapped by self-imposed
exemplars (Kuhn,1970), and incognizant of the comfort and consequence
of an unchanging episteme. Business research offers no truth other than
that determined by arbitrary divisions. Business scholarship cannot offer
the certainty or the precision of Hooke's Law and Young's Modulus. Yet
business scholars so easily delineate interdependent aspects of critical
and empirical, eschatological and positivistic in an effort to mathema-
tically formalize human science with a teleological fervor for intrinsic
finality rather than the more inclusive intellectual consciousness
and possibility suggested by a more extrinsic convergence of purpose.
The value (and impact) of journals and articles is limited to (and
perhaps by) the readership (and contributors). How many people
read the learned journals and indeed the scholarly articles?
Forster (2007) focusing on readership of business and manage-
ment journals in Australia highlights opinions business people express
as well as claimed credentials of mainstream academic publications
(including the Journal of Business Research) alongside a study of the
impact of academic research on leaders of companies and organiza-
tions. The conclusions are clear: university academics who publish for
each other, increasing marginalization and irrelevance to practitioners
in business, industry, commerce and public sector organizations, and a
lack of vocational and professional guidance, development and
teaching, and applied research.
The problem with discrete measurement of scholastic disciplines is
the failure of such an approach to provoke “discontinuity” (Kuhn,
1163
1962) or “punctuated equilibria” (Eldredge and Gould, 1972; Gould
and Eldredge, 1977). The growth of confirmatory methods when
exploratory methods are appropriate (cf. the respective use of
structural equation modeling and factor analysis) and the common
use of students for sampling purposes are only two symptoms of a
fatigued inductive perspective suckled by narrow measures of
scholarship. Many more conforming etymological behaviors reflect
narrow evaluation of business research. Pluralism and eclecticism are
often portrayed as undisciplined threats to territorial limitations
imposed by a conditioned pedagogy. The discrete measurement of
impact and usefulness by ranking and citation is an affront to true
scholarship and intellectual contribution succoring mediocrity, nour-
ishing gradualism, even confusing the distinction between successful
and effective research, through the application of “tool box” thinking.
The suspicion of business schools obsessed with making money whilst
pretending to pursue knowledge and produce future citizens to make
the world a better place is a harsh burden for committed and well-
meaning educators.
The question of who will make the changes to such deep-rooted
proclivities is problematic. Immolation is not popular and whilst change
and change management is subject of many scholarly papers across all
business domains, educational institutions are possibly a close second to
business organizations in ignoring many research findings. Leadership,
vision, inspiration, and irreverence associated with growth are required
to challenge an inductive taxonomy that confirms rather than confutes
the existing order. The application of author citations alongside journal
ranking as a measure of scholarly contribution, impact, influence, and
usefulness merely proliferates repeated visits to applaud, examine, and
utilize the same grains of sand and largely ignores the importance of
application, context, and involvement. Indeed, these three dimensions
are more likely to achieve the undoubtedly worthy objectives of
scholarly contribution, impact, influence, and usefulness.
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