Association Of Business Schools Research Articles

Multi-theoretical Perspectives for Corporate Risk Disclosure: a Literature Review

The purpose of this article is to review and discuss theoretical approaches commonly used to study corporate risk disclosure (CRD) behaviour. The review presents areas of convergence and divergence in understanding CRD so as to build a case for an integrated theoretical perspective. The multi-theoretical approach will provide wide conceptual lens to understand, explain CRD behaviour, and identify ways in which CRD can attain high quality. The paper reviewed 52 articles from accounting and non-accounting journals published between 1990–2019. The journals reviewed were identified according to the UK's Association of Business Schools (ABS) journal quality ranking guide. The paper responds to literature calling for CRD quality to improve among policymakers, regulators, and academicians. The paper argues that any attempts to enhance CRD quality should start by establishing an integrated framework that will help in understanding the phenomena in several perspectives in order reconcile inconsistent results of prior studies.

Insights from a systematic review of literature on social enterprise and networks

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to better understanding of where and how network concepts, theories and perspectives, organisational networks, and networking practices, are being studied and deployed in social enterprise research. This is done through a systematic review of social enterprise and networks literature in business and management journals. Key trends and developments in this literature, and gaps and limitations, are identified, culminating in discussion of what next for social enterprise and networks research. The papers in this special issue on “Social Enterprise and Networks” are introduced.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review was undertaken of social enterprise and networks literature in business and management journals. Journals sampled included all those in the Entrepreneurship and Small Business subject area of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) Academic Journal Guide 2018, the journals in the Financial Times 50 research ranking, and selected wider business and society, non-profit management and public administration journals.FindingsAnalysis of publishing patterns of social enterprise and networks research finds that such research is growing, and that varied network perspectives, concepts and theories are being deployed. Social enterprise and networks are also being studied globally, using different methodologies. Nevertheless, there remains scope for deeper theoretical engagement, and for a wider range of network theories to be used. More even geographic coverage is also needed, and further insights can be gained through use of alternative methodologies.Research limitations/implicationsDiscussions in this paper have implications for research through outlining systematically the state of current scholarship on social enterprise and networks. In so doing, insight is provided on what is known about social enterprise and networks. But also on what is not known and where further enquiry is needed. Direction is thus provided for future social enterprise and networks scholarship.Practical implicationsIn this paper, how, and the extent to which, social enterprise and networks scholarship offers implications for practice and policy is considered.Originality/valueThis paper makes a valuable contribution to social enterprise scholarship. It outlines the state of current knowledge and research on social enterprise and networks, identifying where and how relationships between social enterprise and networks have been studied, whilst also providing insights for what next in future social enterprise and networks research.

A data‐driven method for rating management information systems journals in the same scale of the Association of Business Schools Journal Guide

AbstractAn appropriate measurement of journal quality is essential in accreditation, funding allocation, hiring, merit pay, tenure, and promotion decisions in academics. The current best practice to rate journal quality is to combine journal bibliometrics with expert assessment. For example, the Association of Business Schools (ABS) Journal Guide generated by this method is widely used by many business schools. However, different journal bibliometrics calculated in the citation network sometimes provide inconsistent ranking, and it is hard for domain experts to utilize the conflicting information. Therefore, given a journal, if the ABS Scientific Committee members are not familiar with it and different journal bibliometrics provide conflicting information, the given journal is hard to be rated and will not be included in the ABS journal list. In order to solve the above issue and maintain a comprehensive list of journals in the management information systems (MIS) field, this paper proposes a data‐driven method to predict the ABS rating based on six popular bibliometrics for any given MIS journal. To the best of our knowledge, our method is the first work on this type to predict ABS ratings, which can serve as a more reliable rating reference and is much easier to be used to generate the rating for a comprehensive list of journals in the MIS field. In this paper, comprehensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the rating performance of our method from four different perspectives, including new journals, top journals, and interdisciplinary journals, and identifying overrated and underrated journals by ABS. Experiment results show our method can provide very reliable estimated ABS ratings for most MIS journals with few exceptions. Since our method is not perfect, expert knowledge is encouraged to be included to correct our estimated ABS ratings. However, such correction must be conducted under the following two constraints. First, domain experts must have sufficient evidences to do the correction. Second, correction can be adding or subtracting 1, but not beyond 1.

A Time-Series Analysis of the Scale of Coercive Journal Self-Citation and its Effect on Impact Factors and Journal Rankings

ABSTRACTThe growing institutional significance of impact factors and journal rankings currently stands alongside serious concerns about the scale and distorting effects of the practice of coercive journal self-citation. Survey-based studies have highlighted journals suspected of such coercion but there has been very little empirical analysis of actual citation practice and the respective impact on journal quality rankings. This paper collects information on actual self-citation trends over the period 2000–2012 for all business and management journals indexed in Journal Citation Reports and finds evidence of sudden and sharp increases in self-citation relative to outside citation. This paper also finds that two leading hybrid journal ranking systems, the UK’s 2010 Association of Business Schools (ABS) and the 2013 Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) rankings, do not discriminate between legitimate and coercive self-citation. Collectively, these findings have implications regarding the institutional reliance placed on citation counts as quantitative measures of accountability. However, the deterrent potential of our analysis, especially given the ease with which coercive self-citation behavior can be empirically detected from publicly available data, could provide an important limit on the spread of performativity.

Artisan entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review and research agenda

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review and critique the extant body of literature on artisan entrepreneurship and to develop a research agenda for future studies based on the identified trends and themes.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken across 96 journals ranked by the Association of Business Schools. The initial search yielded 86 papers. Further scrutiny of these studies led to the development of exclusion criteria, resulting in a refined list of 32 articles which advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship. Using an open coding approach, this SLR then identified seven core themes and 16 sub-themes which the extant literature examines.FindingsThis SLR finds that artisan entrepreneurship research contributes to understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour, context, motivation, development, resources, diversity and classification. It provides timely insights into coopetition practices, the reciprocal relationship between place and entrepreneurship and the coexistence of social and economic goals. It also reveals characteristics which facilitate venture development, discovers the mutability of various forms of capital, highlights the necessity of studying diverse experiences and identifies benefits and limits of typologies. Main elements of the resulting research agenda include calls for more quantitative research, further attention to context and more holistic treatment of a wider variety of stories.Originality/valueThis paper presents the first SLR of craft and artisan entrepreneurship research. It not only identifies, analyses and critiques the main streams in the literature, therefore providing an overview of the state of the field, but also highlights areas where this scholarship contributes to understanding of entrepreneurship and upon which future research can build. Artisan entrepreneurship is thus established as worthy of investigation in its own right and as an appropriate context in which to explore entrepreneurial processes. Furthermore, this SLR presents an agenda for future research to advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship.

What Influences Business Academics’ Use of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) List? Evidence From a Survey of UK Academics

AbstractThe development of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) list in 2007 and its rapid adoption by UK business schools has had a profound effect on the nature of business and management academics’ ways of working. Using a large‐scale survey of UK business academics, we assess the extent to which individuals use the Academic Journal Guide (AJG/ABS) list in their day‐to‐day professional activities. In particular, we explore how their perceptions of the list, the academic influence of their research, academic rank and organizational context drive the varied use. Building on prior research on the importance of univalent attitudes in predicting behaviour, we find those who have either strong positive or negative views of the list are more extensive users than those who are ambivalent. We also find that the extent of use of the AJG/ABS list is greatest among those academics who have lower academic influence, in the middle or junior ranks within business schools and in middle and low‐status universities. We explore the implications of these findings for the value of journal rankings and for the management of business schools.

Does good corporate governance lead to better firm performance? Strategic lessons from a structured literature review

The objective of this paper is to disclose proven relationships between good corporate governance variables and the financial and/or non-financial performance of companies based on a meta-analysis of relevant studies. A meta-analysis was performed by means of academic research published between 2006 and 2016 in the five highest-ranked academic journals according to the Association of Business Schools (ABS) ranking. The relevant academic studies were selected on the basis of the relationship between corporate governance and performance. Our study provides evidence for the correlation between five corporate governance variables (board independence, board diversity, CEO characteristics, remuneration and oversight) and company performance. Furthermore, several mediating and moderating factors influencing the relationship between corporate governance variables and company performance were identified in this meta-study. The overview of corporate governance variables and their relation to company performance serves as input for a better understanding of this relationship and subsequently the ongoing dialogue on enhancing corporate governance in practice.

Does Culture Matter? A Systematic Literature Review on How Culture Interacts with Management Control Systems

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize evidence about how culture affects management control systems (MCS). To accomplish this, a systematic literature review is conducted based on 57 journals in the accounting field ranked 4 – 2 in the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ Academic Journal Guide 2015. 98 articles were initially chosen and the most significant of these articles are used for a discussion. The paper takes a wide approach to culture, combining national culture with upper echelon theory and organisational culture. The framework, by Malmi and Brown (2008), on management control systems structures the paper, as it focuses on five groups of control systems, and the effect of culture is considered in relation to these groups.It is found that the literature on the effects of culture on MCS is fragmented, as a variety of definitions of culture is in use, resulting in a lack of coherence of the cultural influence. Several examples of how culture influences management accounting practices are identified for each of the five groups, but several papers are also found to report no effect of culture. This relates to the Malmi and Brown framework, and a discussion of why the results differ is undertaken, where it is argued that it is mainly due to a negligence of considering internal and external aspects of culture in cohesion. The main contribution of this paper is that it shows that culture does matter for MCS, but that culture needs to be seen from a perspective combining internal aspects of culture such as cultural controls, sometimes driven by upper echelon theory, with external aspects of culture such as national culture. The discussion of whether national culture matters for MCS, as such, is slightly misguided, as focus should rather be on which of the two aspects of culture dominates. In addition, a model is developed for practitioners showing where different elements of culture are found to have an influence on selected MCS based on the literature reviewed.

Incoming Editor-in-Chief Note

I am honored to be the new editor-in-chief of ASCE’s Journal of Management in Engineering (JME). I would like to thank the search committee for entrusting me with this opportunity. A special thanks goes to the outgoing editor-in-chief, Professor Makarand Hastak at Purdue University, who has demonstrated great leadership for the last seven years to achieve significant milestones for JME. I have been a faculty member at George Washington University School of Business in Washington, DC, since 1999. I joined the JME editorial board in 2008 upon invitation from Professor Irtishad Ahmad at Florida International University, who was the editor-in-chief at the time. During the last couple of years, I have served as an associate editor for JME. In addition to JME, I serve as a specialty editor for the case studies section of ASCE’s Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. I also serve on the editorial boards of IEEE’s Transactions on Engineering Management and International Journal of Project Management, the leading journals in engineering management and project management. Therefore, I am very familiar with the recent research trends in our field. JME has its competitive advantages as one of the few management in engineering journals that are recognized by the community of scholars. It receives a respectable impact factor from the Thomson Reuters journal-citation reports, is listed as a wellregarded journal in the United Kingdom’s Association of Business Schools (ABS) academic journal guide for business and management academics, and was ranked an A* journal by the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), just to name a few. I believe that there is room for improvement to raise the visibility and reputation of JME by attracting new readers and contributors who conduct management in engineering research that incorporates economics, technology, innovation, decision sciences, psychology, social and behavioral sciences, leadership, organizational theory, etc., into civil engineering, construction, infrastructure, and the built environment. I am committed to bringing JME to the next level, as the management in engineering field is maturing into an interdisciplinary, vibrant, and dynamic discipline. Exposing JME to various disciplines will bring new insight and great appreciation to the growing field, and I would like to be a facilitator to introduce the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities. My ultimate goal is to see JME become a preferred journal by researchers and practitioners to acquire and disseminate essential ideas, theories, knowledge, and practices in management in engineering. I will work closely with associate editors, editorial board members, and the ASCE journal publications staff to make this possible. Most importantly, I will seek your continued interest, support, and commitment. I look forward to working with all of you to receive high-quality papers as an author and constructive feedback as a reviewer. If you have any suggestions or comments regarding JME, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you very much.

ABM News: An update on rankings and boards

I am happy to announce that Asian Business & Management is now listed as a level-2journal in the Academic Journal Guide 2015 by the Association of Business Schools(United Kingdom). This should increase the attractiveness of the journal to UK-based scholars, which in turn should give a boost to the further development of ABM.

Practice Weeks @ Bedfordshire: An innovative response to criticisms of management education

The purpose of this paper is to position and appraise the University of Bedfordshire Business School's initiative – ‘Practice Weeks’ – as a potentially innovative response to the current criticisms facing Management Education (ME). Criticisms of ME, we argue, are founded on the ‘irrelevancy’ debate, which is conceptualised in the first half of our literature review. The second half of the literature review examines Association of Business Schools (ABS) reports and reviews how business schools are responding to these critiques, reliant primarily on the tried and tested experiential learning models to do so. Building on these, ‘Practice Weeks’ are then presented as a case example from the University of Bedfordshire Business School (UBBS) as an innovative response to surfaced criticisms. Data is drawn from interviews carried out with students and employers who have participated in UBBS Practice Weeks, supported by quantitative insights from student survey questionnaires. Findings evidence that Practice Weeks have the potential to go further than existing experiential learning models to deliver practice-based education to business school students, whilst also capturing an effective and efficient approach to supporting business and community organisations in meeting their objectives.

South African MBA’s Must Focus on Development Issues not Business and Finance Only and Must Redefine the Dominance of the Eurocentric Approach

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the critical need for the inclusion of development, cultural and social issues within the MBA curriculum of South African Business Schools. Hitherto, South African Business Schools have copied the models engineered by European and Western Business Schools. This was largely due to the imposition of Western models of education in South Africa, due to the policies of repressive colonialism and of apartheid. Given the all embracing reality that the fundamentals of business education must not be compromised in articulating the core curriculum of the MBA because, of its universal application and acceptability. The call in this paper is that South African Business Schools must begin to think out of the box, not mimic, all aspects of Western models and attempt to focus on the global political and African economy with particular reference to development, cultural and social issues that permeate African educational discourse. Global and national South African rankings use a range of indicators to rank universities. Many of these criteria are abstract and not relevant to the so – called ‘Third World” but, in reality should focus more on the many important and critical development challenges that confront South Africa and African countries in general. It is therefore, a clarion call to South African higher education authorities and, to the administrators of the South African Association of Business Schools, and the African Association of Business Schools (controlled largely by South African White functionaries), including the administrations of the traditional white South African Business Schools of universities, to engage with the wider South African and African community, and not to solely rely on business research initiatives, but to meet the requirements of South Africa’s and the continents development and social needs. The paper therefore, outlines the major objectives of critical management studies which must be included in the MBA programme in South Africa which has been paid scant reference to in the past and continues to do so. It also enunciates the importance of culture to MBA teaching and its impact on technology. The paper very briefly articulates and underscores the thesis that, Western interpretation of education models, Western technology and political domination have served to hinder rather than help African economic growth. Design / Methodology / Approach: The paper does not use the traditional methodology used in classical research, but attempts to synthesize the thought processes of the writers from observation and experience with particular reference to South Africa. However, the researchers use some literature to garner their thoughts, in order to examine the issues raised in this paper. The paper does not aim to capture all issues that permeate this controversial and debatable issue, but attempts to place this crucial issue on the agenda of MBA programmes in South Africa and the continent, in order to stimulate reasoned discussion. Findings: There are no explicit findings that emanate from this paper and discussion. The findings are therefore dispersed throughout the discussion in this paper. However, the distinct findings, conclusions and recommendations are made at the end of the paper. These are synthesized through observations, experiences and the critical thinking within the ambit of the paper, which indicates an overt bias and thinking in South African MBA programmes, which are heavily loaded towards a Eurocentric bias. This bias has therefore, led to a lack of appreciation of the developmental dynamics and socio – economic realities that confront South Africa, post 1994, given its historic past and, the challenges that confront the continent of Africa, since 1957, when Ghana became the first African country to gain independence. It is against this background that the discussion in this paper is formulated and discussed. Originality Value: The original value of this paper exemplifies the reality of thinking out of the box and, in some ways challenges the status quo in terms of the subject matter taught in MBA programmes in South Africa and, the continent of Africa. The paper therefore, calls for new thinking and remedial action, in terms of the course offerings within traditional MBA university programmes, in South Africa in particular. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p108

New journal classification methods based on the global h-index

In this work we develop new journal classification methods based on the h-index. The introduction of the h-index for research evaluation has attracted much attention in the bibliometric study and research quality evaluation. The main purpose of using an h-index is to compare the index for different research units (e.g. researchers, journals, etc.) to differentiate their research performance. However the h-index is defined by only comparing citations counts of one’s own publications, it is doubtful that the h index alone should be used for reliable comparisons among different research units, like researchers or journals. In this paper we propose a new global h-index (Gh-index), where the publications in the core are selected in comparison with all the publications of the units to be evaluated. Furthermore, we introduce some variants of the Gh-index to address the issue of discrimination power. We show that together with the original h-index, they can be used to evaluate and classify academic journals with some distinct advantages, in particular that they can produce an automatic classification into a number of categories without arbitrary cut-off points. We then carry out an empirical study for classification of operations research and management science (OR/MS) journals using this index, and compare it with other well-known journal ranking results such as the Association of Business Schools (ABS) Journal Quality Guide and the Committee of Professors in OR (COPIOR) ranking lists.

Exploring the Financing Gap Between Young Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists*

Purpose - This pilot study explores the gap between venture capitalists and young business graduates in Pakistan. Though the young graduates remain enthusiastic about choosing entrepreneurship as a profession, their success is subject to financial constraints. Research design, data, methodology - We administered a Likert-scale based questionnaire to 200 business graduates from June to July 2012, and interviewed ten venture capitalists from Islamabad and Lahore-two highly business oriented cities of Pakistan-to collect the data. The survey participation was on a voluntary basis without any financial sponsorship. Findings- There is a communication gap between the two parties (venture capitalists and business graduates), and a lack of trust in the entrepreneurial education and training offered in the educational institutions in Pakistan. The study, however, reveals the leading role of the Government in reducing this gap through certain measures. Conclusions - Some measures that can reduce the gap between venture capitalists and young graduates are: association of business schools with industry; financial institutions'initiatives to financially support the small and medium level projects of the economics and business students during their studies; establishment of placement bureaus in the business schools; and organization of regular open houses in the universities.

Journal list fetishism and the ‘sign of 4’ in the ABS guide: A question of trust?

The emergence of journal quality lists such as that issued by the UK’s Association of Business Schools (ABS) has instigated a wave of ‘journal list fetishism’ throughout the business school sector. Business school deans and research managers have become fixated on whether the publication records of current staff and new applicants include the requisite number of ‘hits’ in the best ranked journals. Little attention is paid to additional measures of research quality, or to the broader context within which the research has been produced. This paper examines the current fetishizing of the ABS guide in general, and the magical ‘4’ rating in particular (the symbolic token for top journals). It begins by looking at how ‘trust in numbers’ may have assisted the uptake of the ABS guide through developing a perception of ‘trustworthiness’ and then raises questions regarding the current fetishizing of ‘4’ ratings using additional data within the ABS guide.

Research in Information Systems: A Study of Diversity and Inter-Disciplinary Discourse in the AIS Basket Journals between 1995 and 2011

The paper investigates how Information Systems (IS) has emerged as the product of interdisciplinary discourses. The research aim in this study is to better understand diversity in IS research, and the extent to which the diversity of discourse expanded and contracted from 1995 to 2011. Methodologically, we apply a combined citations/co-citations analysis based on the eight Association for Information Systems basket journals and the 22 subject-field classification framework provided by the Association of Business Schools. Our findings suggest that IS is in a state of continuous interaction and competition with other disciplines. General Management was reduced from a dominant position as a reference discipline in IS at the expense of a growing variety of other discourses including Business Strategy, Marketing, and Ethics and Governance, among others. Over time, IS as a field moved from the periphery to a central position during its discursive formation. This supports the notion of IS as a fluid discipline dynamically embracing a diverse range of adjacent reference disciplines, while keeping a degree of continuing interaction with them. Understanding where IS is currently at allows us to better understand and propose fruitful avenues for its development in both academia and practice.

Taylorizing business school research: On the ‘one best way’ performative effects of journal ranking lists

The article 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. It is argued that an effect of the ‘one size fits all’ 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 article 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.

How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research: A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management

This study provides quantitative evidence on how the use of journal rankings can disadvantage interdisciplinary research in research evaluations. Using publication and citation data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity and the research performance of a number of Innovation Studies units with that of leading Business & Management Schools (BMS) in the UK. On the basis of various mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) Innovation Studies units are consistently more interdisciplinary in their research than Business & Management Schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business Schools’ rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower-ranked journals; (iii) this results in a more favourable assessment of the performance of Business & Management Schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. This citation-based analysis challenges the journal ranking-based assessment. In short, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly ‘excellence-based’ journal rankings exhibit a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in particular how the bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary research organisations, and may result in researchers becoming more compliant with disciplinary authority over time.

Explicit and Implicit Subject Bias in the ABS Journal Quality Guide

This paper addresses issues raised in two recent papers published in this journal about the UK Association of Business Schools' Journal Quality Guide (ABS Guide). While much of the debate about journal rankings in general, and the ABS Guide in particular, has focused on the construction, power and (mis)use of these rankings, this paper differs in that it explains and provides evidence about explicit and implicit biases in the ABS Guide. In so doing, it poses potentially difficult questions that the editors of the ABS Guide need to address and urgently rectify if the ABS Guide seeks to build and retain legitimacy. In particular, the evidence in this paper shows explicit bias in the ABS Guide against several subject areas, including accounting and finance. It also shows implicit bias against accounting and finance when comparing journal rankings in sub-areas shared between accounting and finance and the broader business management subject areas.

Food for Thought on the ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide

This paper discusses issues relating to the use of the Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Academic Journal Quality Guide within UK business schools. It also looks at several specific issues raised by the Chair of the British Accounting Association/British Accounting and Finance Association regarding the ratings for top international journals, and for accounting education and accounting history journals. The increasing use of this guide by business school deans/heads as a tool for staffing and research resource allocation has significant implications both for individuals and specialist areas of research.