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Citation for published version
Mingers, John and Willmott, Hugh (2013) Taylorizing Business School Research: On the 'One
Best Way' Performative Effects of Journal Ranking Lists. Human Relations, 66 (8). pp. 1051-1073.
ISSN 0018 7267.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726712467048
Link to record in KAR
http://kar.kent.ac.uk/32785/
Document Version
Author's Accepted Manuscript
1
Taylorizing business school research: On the one best w
performative effects of journal ranking lists
Abstract
The paper critically examines how work is shaped by performance measures. Its specific
focus is upon the use of journal lists, rather than the detail of their construction, in
conditioning the research activity of academics I
logic of journal lists is to endorse and cultivate a research monoculture in which
particular criteria, favoured by a given list, assume the status of a universal benchmark of
performance (research quality). The paper demonstrates, with reference to the
Association of Business Schools (ABS) Journal Guide, how use of a journal list can come to
dominate and define the focus and trajectory of a field of research, with detrimental
consequences for the development of scholarship.
Keywords
performance measurement, work culture, journal lists, Taylorization, knowledge
development, research evaluation, performativity
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Introduction
The creation of `journal quality lists’ in the field of business and management in the UK has
coincided with the growing importance and formalization of national research evaluation
exercises (Geary, Marriott and Rowlinson, 2004; Keenoy, 2005; see also Gendron, 2008).
The compilers and advocates of these lists say that their intention is to provide an objective
measure of the comparative esteem of journals using a standardized quality metric, thereby
overcoming information asymmetries associated with the use of ‘insider’ knowledge (e.g.
Rowlinson et al, 2011)
i. Their use, it is further suggested, can correct the biases ascribed to
evaluators of research quality (see, for example, Taylor, 2011). However, when the lists are
used as a standard to calculate the equivalent of an exchange value of outputs (e.g. journal
articles) and authors on the academic hiring, promotion and transfer markets, such
justifications largely disregard the extent to which lists contribute to, and have further
potential to promote, a commodification of academic labour and a narrowing of scholarship
(Bryson, 2004; Willmott, 1995; Harley and Lee, 1997; Van Fleet et al, 2011).
The pressures upon business school academics are particularly intense where these schools
have become amongst the largest of University departments, with corresponding implications
for institutional funding and reputation. The significance and influence of journal lists
increases as competition between institutions for resources, symbolic as well as material,
intensifies. As journal quality lists (e.g. those created by the Financial Times and the
Association of Business Schools) become influential for processes of recruitment, promotion
and the selection of staff/outputs for submission to evaluation exercises, they come to shape
the nature, structure and conditions of academic work (Espeland and Sauder, 2007; Sauder
and Espeland, 2009). Such performative effects are, of course, greatest when they weaken or
marginalize alternative criteria and processes of evaluation. Examining the use and effects of
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journal lists is therefore important not simply for better understanding, or refining, how such
metrics are devised (see Truex et al, 2011 for a critical review) but also, and more
significantly, for appreciating and questioning their constitutive role in defining and policing
the focus and direction of research activity.
Regardless of the particular methodology or algorithm used to compute journal lists (see
Morris, Harvey and Kelly, 2009 for a typology), their design shoehorns horizontal diversity
of research and scholarship into a single, seemingly authoritative vertical order. By valorising
the ’research agenda’ institutionalized in the topics, methods and perspectives favoured by
‘A’ category journals, the use of journal lists to assess the quality of research sends out a
strong ‘market signal’: it privileges the research agenda pursued in those journals; and,
conversely, it devalues research published elsewhere, irrespective of its content and
contribution. When an article’s place of publication, as indicated by its ranking in a journal
list, becomes more significant or valued than its scholarly content, faculty find themselves
increasingly in receipt of the following kind of ‘advice’ from Deans, research directors and
senior colleagues. “If you wish to be counted as ‘research active’ and so be submitted to the
XXX evaluation exercise or to improve your promotion prospects, your work should be
designed, shaped and honed to emulate the genre of research published in journals most
highly ranked in the prescribed journal list. Failure to demonstrate this competence risks
staying on probation / not being counted as research-active / not being considered for
promotion/ being moved to a teaching only contract”. Whatever its intended purpose, the
journal list has become a potent instrument of managerial decision-making whose use, we
will argue, has the performative effect of homogenizing, in addition to commodifying and
individualizing, research activity.
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This concern complements a number of other objections levelled against journal lists which
range from issues about the technicalities of their construction, through criticisms of their
neglect or devaluation of other kinds of publication (e.g. monographs), to their exclusion of
“research that matters” and their obsessive or “fetishised” use (zbilgin, 2009: 113; see also
Harzing and Metz, 2012; Worthington and Hodgson, 2005; Keenoy, 2005; Clarke, Knights
and Jarvis, 2012; Knights, Clarke and Jarvis, 2011; Willmott, 2011). Our focus here, in
contrast, is upon the performative effects of a “one size fits all” logic of research evaluation.
(see also Nkomo, 2009). To illustrate these effects, our analysis examines in some detail the
development, justification and application of the Association of Business Schools’ (ABS)
Academic Journal Quality Guide. Our example is taken from the UK context where the use of
journal lists is probably most widely and deeply embedded. But, of course, their use has been
widespread, and seems set to become more influential. Downloads of the `Guide’ from the
ABS website are reported to have been, in one year (2010), `90,000…from nearly 100
countries’ (Rowlinson et al, 2011: 443).
We begin by considering the squeeze on heterogeneity by the “one size fits all” philosophy
enshrined in the compilation of journal lists – a restrictive process that is increasingly
reinforced by reliance upon citation counts and impact factors. To underscore the
homogenizing influence of journal lists, we draw a parallel between the “one best way”
design of industrial production advocated by Frederick Taylor (see Kanigel, 1995) and the
“one size fits all” design philosophy enshrined in journal lists. Detailed consideration is given
to the establishment and use of the ABS ‘Quality Guide’ before we assess claims that its use
brings cultural and economic benefits.
Measuring scholarship