BizEd

SeptOct2014

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improve the careers of faculty," he says. "But what do you do with research? Do you just talk about it within the Academy of Manage- ment or other professional groups? Or do you bring it into the world and use it for the greater good?" The problem goes back to the way faculty are evaluated. "Typi- cally we measure faculty perfor- mance by counting journal articles and how many times those articles are mentioned in other journal articles—but those are really only read by other faculty, or internal stakeholders," says Aguinis. "If we want to reach external stakehold- ers, should our faculty performance metrics consider textbooks writ- ten for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education? Should we measure the extent to which practice is affected by the research we publish in journal articles? At the moment, at the majority of research-oriented business schools, textbooks do not count at all in terms of faculty performance." Shapiro points out another problem. "If books and book chap- ters count as nothing when schools conduct annual faculty reviews, then who will write them?" she asks. "My own interest in writing chapters for books, even presti- gious research-based handbooks, has been diminished because I know the work will count as zero. And on the occasions I have decided to co-edit a book, I've had difficulty finding authors who are willing to contribute chapters because they know the work won't count in their own schools' evalu- ations of their productivity and impact. This mentality of only counting A-journal publications not only harms the learning envi- ronment of schools, but also the advancement of knowledge that is possible in management science." Redefining Rewards But where should schools start if they want to amend their evalu- ation metrics? As in any other industry coming to terms with change, administrators must begin by defining performance, says Agu- inis. They need to ask key ques- tions, he says: "What do we want faculty members to do? What are our strategic objectives? What indi- vidual behavior will show value- added activities, and what metrics will measure these activities? "For instance," he adds, "if we want the school to receive attention from the media, we have to consider if professors receive any kind of reward for spending an hour on the phone talking to a reporter versus working on their own papers. We cannot reward A while we hope for B. We cannot hope faculty will talk to the media when all we reward is publication of papers." Business faculty teach about performance and how to measure it, Aguinis points out. "We should use that knowledge to help create new systems for business schools." He believes faculty also should use their knowledge of organizational change to help revamp the whole culture of higher education. He says, "One thing to do is to make sure the faculty understand the new pressures facing schools, particularly budgetary pressures. But the easiest and fastest way to encourage change in any organiza- tion is to change the reward struc- ture. The obsession with publishing in A journals is driven to a large extent by a reward system in which schools tell faculty, 'You have to publish in these journals if you hope to get tenure or get promoted.'" Investigating Impact Shapiro, Aguinis, and Antonaco- poulou are not alone in focusing on the impact of scholarship. Cur- rently, the entire higher education field is considering how it can measure the impact it makes both internally and externally—that is, on practitioners, legislators, media, and society at large, not just on other scholars. "Impact" is one of the pillars of AACSB Internation- al's recently revised standards, and AACSB's former board chair Rob- ert Sullivan has discussed how the new standards might change the way research is assessed. (See "The Future of Scholarship" on page 19 of BizEd's July/August 2014 issue.) There is some indication that the metrics for evaluating professors are already beginning to broaden. Some individual schools do con- sider books, chapters, professional service, and other measures of impact when assessing faculty per- formance, though Shapiro notes that these rarely receive the same weight as publication in top jour- nals. And some nations also are looking for ways to broaden their definition of impact—and using government funding as a way to ensure that schools follow through. "We cannot reward A while we hope for B. We cannot hope faculty will talk to the media when all we reward is publication of papers." —Herman Aguinis, Indiana University September/October 2014 BizEd 22

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