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