[AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List Revision

Wed Jun 8 23:19:05 EDT 2016

Does anyone know where the survey can be accessed? I need somewhere to point my dean.

Best,
Aron

On June 8, 2016 at 10:54:53 PM, Prof. Paul Benjamin LOWRY (paul.lowry.phd at gmail.com<mailto:paul.lowry.phd at gmail.com>) wrote:

Good question. The news organization involved is the Financial Times, which
is based in London but has a very global reach to the educated and wealthy
of the business community. Their target is theoretically any b-school deans
in the world, but of course, that's not how it works out. My understanding
is that the b-schools involved need to be participating in their annual
global MBA and e-MBA/ journal rankings, by filling out their surveys and so
on. There is some kind of eligibility criteria for schools to be considered
for their rankings each year (e.g., accreditation, minimum number of MBA
students, etc.). Not surprisingly, as a result, their rankings heavily lean
toward top universities in North America, UK, wealthy parts of Europe, and
wealthy parts of Asia. Of course, a much larger number of deans "vote" than
the number of schools that are ranked as several hundred deans are chasing
these rankings. An example of their recent global MBA rankings is at
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2016 . This
year, the top-5 schools are INSEAD, Harvard, LBS, Wharton, and Stanford, but
it does get more "diverse" as you move down the list. This year, one school
is from S. Africa and one is from Central America.

Anyway, the FT-45 list is used as a core part of their annual rankings.
Given the prestige of these rankings, the FT-45 list has had a huge effect
on promotion, tenure, faculty slots, and financial resources, because our
deans want to have globally ranked b-schools. Hence, in many b-schools, if
you're not publishing on the list, you do not exist. This has had a
demonstrably negative affect on IS faculty throughout the world because even
lower-ranked b-schools are insisting MISQ/ISR are the only valid IS journals
for tenure and promotion. We're stuck in a very unscientific and political
cycle of circular logic.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Johnston [mailto:robert.johnston at ucd.ie]
Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2016 10:17 AM
To: Paul.Lowry.PhD at gmail.com; 'Aron Lindberg' <alindber at stevens.edu>;
'Dennis, Alan R.' <ardennis at indiana.edu>; 'Templeton, Gary'
<GTempleton at business.msstate.edu>; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
Revision

Paul

Which "deans" are we referring to here?
Deans of US business schools?

Cheers Johno

On 9/06/2016 11:16 AM, Prof. Paul Benjamin LOWRY wrote:
> That is a good question, which reveals more problems with their process:
>
> The FT wants deans to suggest 5 journals to add to the list and 5
> journals to drop from the list. The journals that are "under review"
> for dropping consideration are the following:
>
> - Academy of Management Perspectives
> - Academy of Management Review
> - Administrative Science Quarterly
> - California Management Review
> - Econometrica
> - Harvard Business Review
> - Journal of Political Economy
> - Journal of the American Statistical Association
> - Quarterly Journal of Economics
> - RAND Journal of Economics
>
> FT is somewhat opaque about why they are "reviewing" these 10 journals.
> Supposedly, it is for low volume of publication in b-schools or low
> impact factor. Hence, it is baffling AMR is on this list. It is also
> odd that some lower-quality journals are not on this "review" list,
> such as J. of Business Ethics (impact = 1.32), Contemporary Accounting
> Research (impact 1.26), Review of Accounting Studies (impact = 1.39).
> Few b-schools treat these three journals as A journals. Nonetheless,
> this is a clear example of some of the problems of deans "voting" on a
> list that is set up by a news organization.
>
> Regardless, I think a strong case can be made to drop some journals
> from the above list: First both HBR and SMR are hybrid practitioner
> magazines that are more akin to CACM or IEEE Computer in style and
> scientific quality. They do not follow traditional peer-review and
> editorial practices, nor do they follow scientific standards of
> theory, evidence, analysis, and reporting/disclosure on studies.
>
> Moreover, the Journal of the American Statistical Association is not a
> business-discipline journal, so it is also an easy target.
>
> Finally, depending on one's business school (and the role of economics
> in it), one can further argue dropping several of the economics
> journals simply because of poor fit and volume. For example, the
> Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, RAND Journal of
> Economics, are definitely top economics journals, but most of their
> foci are outside of business disciplines. Thus, few business scholars
> ever publish in these, so at a large number of b-schools there is a
> serious fit issue. Listing these is somewhat akin to having "Science" or
"ACM Computing Surveys" on the list.
>
> Hopefully this information helps. Good luck out there!
>
> Paul
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of
> Aron Lindberg
> Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2016 8:28 AM
> To: Dennis, Alan R. <ardennis at indiana.edu>; 'Templeton, Gary'
> <GTempleton at business.msstate.edu>; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
> Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
> Revision
>
> Hi All,
>
> Is there any information available on what the contents of the survey are?
> How will the Dean's prioritize the journals? Can they leave free-form
> text comments?
>
> If we can provide a set of "talking points" to our Deans, we may be
> able to have a stronger impact on this process.
>
> Best,
> Aron
>
> ________________________________________
> From: AISWorld <aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> on behalf of
> Dennis, Alan R. <ardennis at indiana.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 8:17 PM
> To: 'Templeton, Gary'; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
> Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
> Revision
>
> We just finished examining the results of the AIS Senior Scholars
> Journal Basket survey. We got 975 responses. MISQ and ISR were one
> and two. JAIS was three and JMIS was four, although there was no
> significant difference between JAIS and JMIS.
>
> So I strongly recommend MISQ, ISR, JAIS, JMIS, and a journal of your
choice.
>
> Alan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of
> Templeton, Gary
> Sent: Monday, June 6, 2016 11:27 PM
> To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
> Subject: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
> Revision
>
> IS faculty,
>
> Financial Times is adjusting their list of top 45 business journals.
> Deans across the globe are being surveyed for journals that should be on
the list.
> IS faculty across the world are making suggestions to their deans
> about the proper contents of the list.
>
>
> How many IS journals should be on the list? The current list contains
> 2 (MISQ and ISR) of the 45, or 4.4%. My recent publication with Bruce
> Lewis on business journal fairness addresses this issue. According to
> AACSB faculty data, 9.45% of business faculty are in the IS
> discipline. This translates to
> 4.25 (9.45% X 45) journal slots for the IS discipline.
>
>
> Because FT45 is largely a public relations venue and not scientific,
> the IS discipline should respond accordingly. We should certainly have
> at least 4 on the list, but that assumes it is a scientific list. I
> think we should ask for 5 for fear of selling ourselves short.
>
>
> Bruce and I have published two rankings (one IS and the other all
> business) that summarize samples of institutional lists (those used in
> "practice"). We found strong evidence that our field views JMIS to be
> the clear third most esteemed journal in our field.
>
>
> At a minimum, I think the vast majority would agree that MISQ, ISR and
> JMIS should be in the top three. However, only submitting 3 (or 4) to
> our deans, may not serve our field well. I suspect there would be more
> argument about
> #4 and #5. It would help if members of our research community could
> come to an agreement and pose this top 5 to our deans.
>
>
> I wonder if our group could come to an agreement in such a short time,
> and we could make recommendations to our deans in a uniform way.
>
>
> Gary
>
>
> Reference:
>
> Templeton, G.F. & Lewis, B.R., 2015. "Fairness in the Institutional
> Valuation of Business Journals," MIS Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp.
523-539.
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--
Robert B. Johnston

Professor of Business Information Systems School of Business The University
of Sydney and Adjunct Professor Faculty of IT Monash University

Mobile +61 (0) 414 493 255
Skype: johno.home