The Ethics of Predatory Journals

Predatory journals operate as vanity presses, typically charging large submission or publication fees and requiring little peer review. The consequences of such journals are wide reaching, affecting the integrity of the legitimate journals they attempt to imitate, the reputations of the departments, colleges, and universities of their contributors, the actions of accreditation bodies, the reputations of their authors, and perhaps even the generosity of academic benefactors. Using a stakeholder analysis, our study of predatory journals suggests that most stakeholders gain little in the short run from such publishing and only the editors or owners of these journals benefit in the long run. We also discuss counter-measures that academic and administrative faculty can employ to thwart predatory publishing.     

How prevalent is academic misconduct in management research?

We survey 1215 management researchers, including editors, researchers, and reviewers, about their views and experiences with four types of academic misconduct: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, coercive citations, and questionable reviewing practices. Management researchers hold strict views on plagiarism, though editors report on frequent instances encountered. We find that many management researchers consider self-plagiarism acceptable. There is also a high percentage of editors who report on authors being coerced to add citations of reviewers or journals to their submission. Similarly prevalent is so-called “honorary authorship,” where colleagues and supervisors who did not take part in the work are added as co-authors. Lastly, nearly half of the editors who responded report having witnessed conflicts of interest in peer reviewing. We conclude that the current system of peer reviewing is in need of change, and we discuss possible ramifications to overcome the persistence of academic misconduct.     

Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction: U.S. and German Insights in Business Ethics

In recent times, representatives of American management science have been arguing increasingly for a functionalization of ethics to change economic thinking: what they are seeking is the systematic integration of ethics into the economic paradigm. Using the insights developed by Hirschman, I would like to show how one must first expose the rhetoric of those critics of change (referred to below as conservatives or reactionaries) in order then to implement that which is new (representatives of this approach are referred to below as progressives). Such an ‹unmasking’ works particularly well when one can defuse the arguments of the reactionaries – which is precisely what one achieves by strategically integrating ethics into economics. In his work The Rhetoric of Reaction Hirschman examines three basic forms of reactionary thought: the perversity thesis, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, intended goals are transformed into their opposites. The futility thesis argues that the setting of goals is useless since history runs its own course independent of those goals. The jeopardy thesis claims to preserve what already exists since change might substantially endanger that which has already been achieved. The importance of Hirschman’s ideas for the strategic interplay between the academic disciplines can be seen quite clearly in the example of German business ethics. This will be displayed below with reference to Hirschman’s three theses. Finally, implications will be drawn for business ethics in general and for management theory in particular.     

Journal and author impact metrics: An editorial

This editorial offers a few thoughts on making sense of journal and article impact metrics. The editorial advocates measures of journal productivity and author impact that go beyond the use of a single measure of journal impact factor. The editorial includes data on the ranking of business and finance journals by journal productivity-impact metrics as well as journal impact factor values that editors sometimes refer to in off-site “Meet the Editors” sessions. Members of tenure and promotion committees frequently refer to impact factors of the journals candidates' publications appear in. Such metrics sometimes are the primary rationale for hiring, promoting, and firing faculty candidates even though the metric dominating thinking is unrepresentative of most faculty candidates' scholarly impacts and is highly unrepresentative of the majority of articles in all academic journals. This editorial suggests the use of multiple metrics for evaluating journals and candidates scholarly contributions. The editorial demonstrates a proposal for using a weighted journal productivity-impact factor and the creation of formal templates for evaluating the impact of individual candidate's scholarly contributions.     

PROLIFERATION OF ACADEMIC JOURNALS: EFFECTS ON RESEARCH QUANTITY AND QUALITY

There have been significant structural changes in research markets in recent years reflected in the increase in the number of academic journals. This paper uses a differential game model of authors and journal editors to examine the effects of an increase in competition among academic journals. Does an increase in the number of academic journals lead to an increase in scholarly articles published? Will an increase in publishing outlets adversely affect research quality? The results show greater competition does not affect research output and in fact enhances research quality. The number of journals and the relative discount rates of authors and editors are crucial determinants of the effects of competition.     

Containing big soda: Countering inducements to buy large-size sugary drinks

Health concerns about overconsumption of large portions apply to a wide range of highly calorific foods and drinks. Yet, amongst all products, sugar-sweetened soft drinks and especially sugared soda are the ones which seem to raise the most ire because they contain little or no nutritional value beyond their sugar content and because of the way that vendors encourage excessive consumption by pricing jumbo-size portions to look like bargains while making smaller portions appear overpriced. This paper considers the logic of such extreme value size pricing and reveals why this marketing practice can harm economic welfare beyond public health concerns. The paper shows why policy interventions, including portion cap rules and soda taxes, seeking to reduce portion sizes and curb the consumption of large-size sugary drinks might fail when they do not fully take into account or appreciate the strategic responses that vendors might adopt to retain value size pricing.     

Ethics and the Accounting Publishing Process: Author, Reviewer, and Editor Issues

Are codes of ethics needed to guide author, reviewer and editor publishing practices in accounting journals? What practices are considered unethical, and to what extend do they occur? A survey of ninety-five journal editors who publish accounting articles rated author, reviewer and editor practices as ethical or unethical, and estimated the frequency with which these practices occur. Respondents also commented on current publishing practices regarding the double-blind review process, payments for reviews, confirmatory bias, and whether codes of ethics are needed for the publication process. More than half the editors supported the status quo, and felt that that codes were not necessary for editors and reviewers. They were evenly split on the question of an author code of ethics.     

中小投资者的风险态度与市场环境

按照期望效用理论所揭示的风险厌恶、风险中性和风险追逐的3种风险态度的划分以及前景理论中投资者损失规避风险态度的特征,我们对我国A股市场投资者的风险偏好进行研究,发现在我国A股市场中小投资者风险态度受获得收益的显著影响,当投资者获得正收益时,总体呈现风险追逐,收益越高风险追逐的倾向越明显;当投资者获得负收益时,总体呈现风险中性,收益率与后市判断没有明显关系。我国中小投资者的风险态度不符合损失规避的特征。牛市环境下中小投资者总体呈现风险追逐,熊市环境下中小投资者总体风险中性。     

Returns to networking in academia

This paper examines effects of academic networks in a Stackelberg differential game between journal editors and authors. Authors choose research papers to maximize satisfaction, while editors determine research quality to maximize journal reputation. Verifying the system for stability, results show that academic networks neither affect the number of publications nor the quality of an author’s papers. Networks only affect the number of an author’s citations. Editors’ preferences for publishing an author because of her network membership seem irrelevant. This happens because editors compete to increase their journal’s reputation by publishing high quality papers. Consequently, there is little room for editorial bias. Further, increased journal competition has the potential to erode the citation gains. The equilibrium research quality is below the maximum possible quality. Increases in publication benefits are shown to leave citations unaffected, increase the number of publications, and decrease research quality. The results generally carry through when publishing markets tend to a monopoly.     

Corporate Entrepreneurs or Rogue Middle Managers? A Framework for Ethical Corporate Entrepreneurship

Corporate entrepreneurs -- described in the academic literature as those managers or employees who do not follow the status quo of their co-workers -- are depicted as visionaries who dream of taking the company in new directions. As a result, though, in overcoming internal obstacles to reaching their professional goals they can often walk a fine line between clever resourcefulness and outright rule breaking. A framework is presented as a guideline for middle managers and organizations seeking to impede unethical behaviors in the pursuit of entrepreneurial activity. This paper examines the barriers middle managers face in trying to be entrepreneurial in less supportive environments, the ethical consequences that can result, and a suggested assessment and training program for averting such dilemmas. We advise companies that embrace corporate entrepreneurship: (1) establish the needed flexibility, innovation, and employee initiative and risk-taking; (2) remove the barriers that the entrepreneurial middle manager may face to more closely align personal and organizational initiatives and reduce the need to behave unethically; and (3) include an ethical component to corporate training which will provide guidelines for instituting compliance and values components into the state-of-the-art corporate entrepreneurship programs.     

Stratography: The art of conceptualizing and communicating strategy

Representations of strategy tend to either be so generalized as to have little real meaning for employees, or go into such detail that people struggle to understand what is really required. The problem is this: a strategy not understood by those charged with implementing it is as bad as, or even worse than, not having a strategy at all. In 1983, a classic Business Horizons article by Karl Weick highlighted the importance of using graphical approaches to overcome strategy relation challenges; however, since then, little has been written regarding how managers might accomplish this successfully. Our article argues that individualized drawings of strategy, or what we term ‘stratography,’ could enable more effective conceptualization and communication of the strategic complexity that organizations face and the paths they are seeking to follow. Herein, we employ the latest thinking in cartography, educational philosophy, optics, graphic design, and military protocol to outline seven good practices of effective stratography.     

Developing strategic partnerships in the supply chain: a practitioner perspective

The idea of managing supply chain partnerships for competitive advantage is receiving considerable interest amongst both academic researchers and industry executives. This article describes some current practices in several industries with respect to managing supply chain relationships. Focus group interviews and multiple case studies were conducted to gain insights into practitioners’ experiences. Six salient content themes are identified and structured into a managerial framework, to provide guidance to the increasing number of organisations that are now seeking to manage integrated supply chains.     

Student evaluation of teaching effectiveness: an unresolved dilemma

Content analysis techniques were used to analyse the criteria used for student evaluation of teaching effectiveness in college and university home economics programmes. Student evaluation forms were obtained from 29 state institutions representing 21 states. The evaluation forms varied in length from seven to 36 objective items. Most provided for flexibility. including such options as add-on items, open-ended response format, and choice of forms. The evaluation criteria fell into six categories: course organization and content, course requirements, evaluation procedures, student participation, teaching skills, and global value of course. All of the institutions included items related to teaching skills. This was also the most heavily weighted factor, accounting for nearly 40% of the total evaluation. This is a significant finding, given that many college and university faculty have limited opportunities to develop teaching skills prior to beginning an academic career. Home economics administrators might use the results of the study to design faculty development programmes to help both novice and experienced faculty acquire or improve the skills on which they are being evaluated.     

The Future of Private Labels: Towards a Smart Private Label Strategy

Modern day store brands (SB) or private labels (PL), now also popularly called private brands, are brands generally owned and marketed by retailers. They have been active on the market for about 70 years. Over this time span, these brands have evolved from generic, cheap, low-quality economy or budget private labels to lower-priced-than-national brand but acceptable-quality value or standard private labels. Over time, retailers extended the value proposition to the consumer segment seeking higher quality by offering premium private labels. This strategy, called the tiered-private label, comprises offering economy PL to the price-sensitive but not quality sensitive consumers, standard PL to mainstream consumers seeking acceptable quality at lower prices, and premium PL to the quality-sensitive segment seeking value. Over the last 40 years (1980–2020), these versions of private labels have witnessed substantial growth around the world, though the growth is said to be tapering in recent times.As retailers chart the future strategy for their private labels in 2020 and beyond, a pertinent question they face is: Should they continue to offer value or even tiered PL with the same formula that brought them success in the past, or should they morph and adopt new strategies in keeping with current market trends? We support adopting a new strategy that we call the smart PL strategy. The value PL strategy and its manifestation as the tiered PL strategy cater to different consumer segments but focus primarily on price and quality as attributes of choice. In the current marketplace, consumers care not only about price and quality, but also about sustainability, ethics, social responsibility, image, so forth, perhaps more so than earlier generations. They are also more tech-savvy in using digital tools for search and purchase. Retailers, on their part, are now endowed with rich, extensive data that they can tap into to understand customers’ diverse needs, and they are able to harness technology for developing the right product and communication. Thus, the smart PL strategy is a strategy by which retailers can leverage data and technology to market private labels that meet diverse customer needs and achieve greater retail differentiation, store loyalty, margins, and profits. This thought piece provides a road map for developing such a smart PL strategy and directions for future research.     

Reasons for not volunteering: overcoming boundaries to attract volunteers

ABSTRACT

Research on volunteering has mainly focused on the explanatory demographics and functional motives to volunteer, but little is known about the reasons that people might have not to volunteer. However, these reasons need more academic attention, as they form the barriers that organizations have to overcome when attracting new volunteers. We examine a sample of 1248 respondents on whether they volunteer, are interested in volunteering, or have no interest to volunteer. We verify whether demographic differences exist between these groups. By means of an exploratory factor analysis, we analyze the reasons not to volunteer for those who have no interest to volunteer. This complements earlier research by focusing on the barriers that people might have, instead of the benefits of volunteering that have extensively been documented.     

Seven key steps for rapidly scaling up multi-unit operations

While there are many organizations that seek to quickly grow into multi-unit operations, the academic literature is surprisingly limited in what advice it provides to those confronting the managerial capacity limitations scaling up to multiple units presents. In this Executive Digest, we detail one co-author’s experience in rapidly developing the east coast market for Starbucks and outline the knowledge he brought to the process that came from prior rapid growth experiences with Burger King, Blockbuster, and Wendy’s. We present seven key steps for rapidly scaling that can guide any manager seeking to build a multi-unit operation quickly.     

A comparative analysis of location and non-location-bounded strategic asset seeking in emerging and developed market MNEs: An application of new internalization theory

Do emerging market (E)MNEs have a stronger strategic asset seeking FDI orientation than developed market (D)MNEs? If so, what are the properties of the strategic assets they actually seek and are they similar or dissimilar to those of DMNEs? Drawing from new internalization theory, we show that lying concealed within some mainstream EMNE models are important predictions regarding differences in the location-boundedness properties of the strategic assets sought by EMNEs compared with DMNEs. Using multinomial logit modelling on 2414 international M&A deals, we explore how acquirer characteristics shape location-bounded (trademark) and non-location bounded (patent) strategic asset seeking choices. In general, we find evidence that EMNEs have a comparatively stronger patent but weaker trademark seeking orientation than DMNEs. We discuss implications for EMNE related theory, focusing on the qualitative differences in asset seeking orientation between EMNEs and DMNEs.     

The Influence of Alternative Marketing Styles on Internal Competences in Small Manufacturing Firms: the Results of a UK Investigation

Increasingly firms are being encouraged to move away from traditional, transactional marketing and instead adopt a relationship marketing orientation. Concurrently another emerging academic concept is entrepreneurial marketing. Interest in this latter area has, in part, been stimulated by research on marketing processes within the SME sector. It is proposed that the merger of relationship and entrepreneurial marketing might result in 4 alternative marketing styles. To determine whether these styles exist, a mail survey of 300 small UK manufacturing firms was undertaken in the summer of 1996. The survey tool used the Covin/Slevin entrepreneurial measurement scale and a new scale developed specifically to measure relationship marketing style. Competence was measured by seeking managing directors' assessment of the current capability of their firm in the areas of positioning, innovation, H.R.M., employee productivity, quality and information management. Applying ANOVA to the responses from 104 firms suggests that respondent firms can be classified into 4 different marketing styles and that an orientation towards an entrepreneurial-transactional marketing style will generate the highest overall sales growth rate. Discriminant function analysis indicates that relationship orientated firms exhibit higher competences in areas such as the management of quality and the utilisation of information to enhance decision-making. The implications of these findings in relation to the future provision of support services to smaller firms are discussed, as is the need for further research.     

Personality Traits and Peace Negotiations: Integrative Complexity and Attitudes toward the Middle East Peace Process

Much of the literature on negotiation focuses on the effect that various personality factors, characterizing the parties or mediators involved in the process, have on negotiation outcomes. Nevertheless, there hardly can be found a study, which examines these factors with psychometrically reliable and valid tools. The present study uses psychodiagnostic projective method for measuring the personality trait known as integrative complexity, which is considered as a basic factor that connects cognitive traits to attitudes toward conflict resolution. In a sample of 26 Israeli students this trait, assessed by two Rorschach measures - the blend responses and the frequency of organizational activity - has been revealed as a personality characteristic that might explain seeking compromise agreements in negotiation. Individuals low in integrative complexity tend to rely on highly competitive and less cooperative tactics much more than highly integrative complex individuals. Projective measures for integrative complexity, assessed in this study, are suggested to test people as they are assigned to teams charged with important tasks involving complex group decisions and negotiation. In future studies of complex group decisions this psychodiagnostic approach might be used as a part of the support systems in the process of group negotiation.