What Influences Business Academics’ Use of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) List? Evidence From a Survey of UK Academics
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12294 |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Author | Evelyn Fenton,Ammon Salter,Rossella Salandra,James T. Walker |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 30, 730–747 (2019)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12294
What Influences Business Academics’ Use
of the Association of Business Schools
(ABS) List? Evidence From a Survey of UK
Academics
James T. Walker, Evelyn Fenton, Ammon Salter1and Rossella Salandra2
Henley Business School, University of Reading, Henley-on-Thames RG9 3AU, UK, 1School of Management,
University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK, and 2Imperial College Business School, Imperial College, London SW7
2AZ, UK
Corresponding author email: a.j.salter@bath.ac.uk
The development of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) list in 2007 and its rapid
adoption by UK business schools has had a profound eect on the nature of business
and management academics’ ways of working. Using a large-scale surveyof UK business
academics, we assess the extent to which individuals use the Academic Journal Guide
(AJG/ABS) list in their day-to-day professional activities. In particular, we explore how
their perceptions of the list, the academic influence of their research, academic rank and
organizational context drive the varieduse. Building on prior research on the importance
of univalent attitudes in predictingbehaviour, we find those who have either strong positive
or negative views of the list are more extensive users than those who are ambivalent. We
also find that the extent of use of the AJG/ABS list is greatest among those academics
who have lower academic influence, in the middle or junior rankswithin b usiness schools
and in middle and low-status universities. We explore the implications of these findings
for the value of journal rankings and for the management of business schools.
Introduction
In evaluating research quality there has been an
observable shift internationally towards utilizing
more rankings-based appraisal methods as a
means to measuring the quality of research,
with these approaches being embedded in other
methods of appraisal such as research assessment
exercises (Coup´
e, Ginsburgh and Noury, 2010;
Hicks, 2012). It is certainly the case that there is a
widely held perception that rankings have become
an intrusive element in academic life. However,
the literature provides a rich set of rationales,
both positive and negative, for the use of ranking
mechanisms such as journal lists. Some view the
diusion of ranking lists as a malicious devel-
opment, which further exacerbates the tendency
in academic life towards greater managerialism,
undermining academic integrity and leading to
a stale, uniform research culture (Aguinis et al.,
2014; Starbuck, 2005; White, Carvalho and Ri-
ordan, 2011; Winter, 2009). In contrast, others
suggest that lists have become a critical device to
enable ecient decision-making about research
quality among a broad range of fields, assisting
in activities such as promotions and hiring, work-
load arrangements, submissions to the research
evaluation exercises and allocating resources
(Agrawal, Agrawal and Rungtusanatham, 2011;
Beattie and Goodacre, 2012; Giles and Garand,
2007; Reinstein and Calderon, 2006; Voss, 2010).
The embeddedness of lists within every sphere
of academic life makes understanding academics’
perceptions of journal lists important as part of
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Academics’ Use of the ABS List 731
wider discussions about the changing nature of
universities, including the spread of the ‘audit cul-
ture’ to this domain (Craig, Amernic and Tourish,
2014). Given their perceived economic and social
importance, universities have been subject to
greater levels of attention in terms of accountabil-
ity and assessment from governmentsand students
(Antonelli and Fassio,2016). Assessing the quality
and quantity of the research generated has become
important to influencing the relationship between
the economic resources directed towards univer-
sities and the amount of knowledge generated
(Auranen and Nieminen, 2010; Hicks, 2012). This
discourse linking academia to the international
competitiveness of countries is supported by the
New Public Management ideology (Hood, 1995),
of which the UK (including Australia and New
Zealand) is regarded as a pacesetter (Lapsley,
2009). Lists are more broadly used in social
sciences, and to some extent the humanities, than
science, wherebibliometrics have a more dominant
role. The role of audit and assessment mechanisms
such as journal rankings may therefore be seen as
a specific case of the market-focused philosophy
impacting public institutions generally (Craig,
Amernic and Tourish, 2014).
UK universities have been absorbing manage-
rialist public sector trends since the Jarrat Report
(1985), and are now part of the ‘audit explosion’
(Power, 1994, 1997) aecting all public sector
agencies. This audit explosion has two features
common to all agencies, as outlined by Lapsley
(2009). First there is the preoccupation with target
setting. As a result, universities have been accused
of ‘gaming’ the Research ExcellenceFramework in
terms of numbers of sta submitted (Stern, 2016),
lobbying forjournals to be included in journal lists
such as the Financial Times 45 (Craig, Amernic
and Tourish, 2014) and the practice of individual
academics targetting journal outputs (Hussain,
2015). Second is the compliance mentality result-
ing from target setting, which maylead to perverse
and dysfunctional behaviour (Gendron, 2008;
Whitley, 2000) and reduced intrinsic motivation
(Morris and Lancaster, 2006), thereby weakening
engagement.
The case of business schools is of interest to
this debate as these are multidisciplinary institu-
tions of significance within the university due to
business and management academics making up a
significant proportion of sta and providing sub-
stantial income (Piercy, 2000). They also operate
under the shadow of a wide range of rankings and
accreditation systems, which shape their ability to
attract students and other resources. In this way
business schools are in the forefront of the wider
trends impacting how universities are managed,
and business school journal lists providean insight
into how one aspect of evaluation is perceived and
shapes the behaviour of academics. This raises
questions like: What factors lead academics to use
journal lists more extensively? What role does the
context in which individuals work and their personal
circumstances play in the extent of list use?
Our study is informed by the literature on
individual academics and institutional rankings
(Easton and Easton, 2003; Gendron, 2008; Gillies,
2012; Harman, 2000; James, 2011; Knowles and
Michielsens, 2011; Manna, 2008; Moed, 2007;
Morris et al., 2011; Northcott and Linacre, 2010;
Oswald, 2007; Piercy, 2000), the psychology
of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1988) as well as
attitude strength (Conner and Sparks, 2002;
Thompson, Zanna and Grin, 1995) and the
specific contextual features of business schools
(Butler, Delaney and Spoelstra, 2015; Hussain,
2015). To examine our research questions in de-
tail, we draw upon four dierent sources of data,
including a large-scale survey of academics work-
ing at UK business schools. The survey mainly,
but not exclusively, focused on the Academic
Journal Guide (AJG)/Association of Business
Schools (ABS) list, from here on referred to as
the AJG/ABS list. The reason for this is that,
while the AJG/ABS list is one of a number of
rankings, it is by far the most extensively used
ranking instrument in the UK, with over 89% of
academics working in business schools in the UK
saying that they use this list (Walker, Salter and
Salandra, 2015). Linking this data to information
on websites, the Research Excellence Framework
(REF) census and individuals’ publication records
in Scopus, we explore the predictors of academics’
extensive use of the journal list in terms of their
individual and contextual factors. The analysis
is based on both a descriptive account as well as
several generalized least-squares models.
Individual and institutional factors
determining use of the AJG/ABS list
University research in the UK is evaluated via
six yearly audits entitled ‘research selectivity
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