Perceived Institutional Research Climate and Motivation to Publish in Journals: A Study of Faculty at

leading Indian B-Schools

By Payal Kumar & D Israel

Low research productivity in India

Goverdhan Mehta report: “In terms of

research publications, we seem not to be

keeping pace with other emerging

economies and account for less than 2 % of

world publications in these areas of research.

In terms of citations and impact factors, our

standing needs to be considerably

enhanced” (Mehta 2009 p 3).

The Report of the IIM Review Committee

echoes this concern: “The IIMs have come in

for criticism because they have lagged

behind leading global business schools in

publishing papers in internationally peer-

reviewed management journals” (Bhargava

2008: 10).

Study objective

Purpose: This study taps an

underdeveloped area of scholarship,

namely seeing motivation for publishing

through the eyes of faculty members,

rather than top-down from the

Government or from higher educational

institution bodies.

Design

A survey was conducted amongst all

the faculty of the top nine B-schools of

India, to compute a logistic regression

model based on factor loadings, with

faculty research productivity as the

dependent variable.

3 aims of this study

The three-fold objective of this study is:-

To explore factors that motivate Indian B-

school faculty to conduct research.

To identify meaningful factors that motivate

B-school faculty to conduct research.

To identify the impact of each of these

factors on faculty research productivity in

terms of the most important and the least

important factors.

Top 9 business schools

1. Indian Institute of Management Calcutta

2. Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode

3. Indian Institute of Management Indore

4. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

5. Indian Institute of Management Lucknow

6. Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

7. International Management Institute, New Delhi

8. Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI)

9. Management Development Institute (MDI)

Hypothesis 1: There is a significant

relationship between salary increase and

faculty research productivity.

Hypothesis 2: There is a significant

relationship between receiving a research

grant/financial incentives and faculty

research productivity.

Hypothesis 3: There is a significant

relationship between receiving a promotion

and faculty research productivity.

Institutional spending on faculty

Hypothesis 4: There is a negative

relationship between time spent in teaching

and on faculty research productivity.

Time spent by faculty on teaching vis-à-vis research

Hypothesis 5: There is a positive

relationship between self motivation and

faculty research productivity.

Self motivation of faculty

Hypothesis 6: There is a significant

relationship between years in academics and

faculty research productivity.

Hypothesis 7: There is a significant

relationship between seniority in faculty rank

and faculty research productivity.

Years in academics

Hypothesis 8: There is a positive

relationship between job confirmation and

faculty research productivity.

Job security and research output

Survey

Part 1: Measured the faculty members’

perception of the importance to the 25

questions posed to them on a 5-point scale

Part 2: Demographic profile

Part 3: how much they have published.

(Chen et al, 2006; Mullen et al, 2008)

Testing for validity

1. Content validity: Content validity

10 business professors were asked to list

other motivational factors.

2. Pre-test for content validity

20 faculty from India, UK and Australia.

The content validity index was 0.92.

3. Non-response test:

It was found that there was no response bias

for gender (chi square .443), status (.977),

discipline (.882) and rank (.918).

A two sample t-test showed that there was a

negligible difference in the first and last

responses to surveys via e-mail, which also

rules out the possibility of response bias.

Data analysis

Once the survey was conducted, a logistic

regression analysis was computed based on

factor loadings, to find out the impact of the

independent variables on the dependent

variable.

The model

•Financial incentives Amount of time spent on teaching Self motivation of faculty Years in academics Job security

Faculty

research

productivity

Factor analysis

Factor analysis was conducted and 25 variables were

loaded onto six factors (accounting for 62 % variability):

Peer pressure

Market value

Perceived benefits

Aspiration for remaining updated in the teaching

profession

Benchmarking

Teaching quality

Each of the factors has an Eigen value of more than one.

Findings

(a) faculty assign importance to the intrinsic

reward of self motivation;

(b) faculty assign importance to the extrinsic

rewards of research grants and job security–

–in fact, faculty that have been confirmed

have been found to produce six papers more

than those on probation or on contract;

(c) years in academics and seniority in rank

are favourable to faculty research

productivity;

(d) there is no relationship between teaching

and faculty research productivity;

(e) there is no relationship between

promotion and salary increase and faculty

research productivity.

Discussion

It is evident that the lack of ‘publish or perish’

pressure on faculty in India is closely linked

to the dearth of faculty research productivity,

and that positive steps need to be taken to

rehaul the higher education system so as to

incentivize and motivate faculty to publish to

the fullest extent.

THANK YOU