Google,and Harzing,and Thomson! Oh My! Why Impact Is More Than Just Numbers

In an increasingly competitive academic world, “simply” publishing an article in a high-quality peer-reviewed journal is no longer enough—now we have to promote the article and demonstrate that our work influences the field. Enter electronic promotional platforms such as ResearchGate, Twitter, and LinkedIn (not to mention the efforts of publishers via social media platforms), the ubiquitous Impact Factor measure for academic journals, and individual article citation rates readily available on Google Scholar. Truly, it can seem like an almost full-time job managing and positioning our current research for “impact” (i.e., get “re-tweeted”). But what gives an article lasting impact on our thinking and practice? How do we acknowledge it when work remains relevant and fresh over decades?

The Journal of Management Education (JME) has established the Lasting Impact Award, a designation that honors the longevity and continued relevance of articles published within it. In this issue, we celebrate the inaugural recipient, the winner of the 2015 Lasting Impact Award, “Why Some Groups Fail: A Survey of Students’ Experiences With Learning Groups,” by Susan Brown Fiechtner ¹ and Elaine Actis Davis and originally published in 1985. We are delighted to reprint the article for our readers today, along with a foreword by its Lasting Impact Award nominator, Ben Arbaugh. In his introductory comments, Arbaugh notes how Fiechtner and Davis’ work influenced his own teaching research and practice, and how their research design—that of including student voices—has fundamentally shaped the scholarship of teaching and learning. It is hard to believe now that there was a time when teaching and learning research mostly ignored the student experience, making Fiechtner and Davis (and JME) pioneers in that regard.

In his nominating remarks for that article, Arbaugh noted its significant citation rate as part of the mix of relevant impact measures. Yet, in 1985, none of the promotional platforms noted above were available, and the Thomson Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) was just gaining prominence. Also, in 1985, one could not measure impact using article downloads—a critically important metric these days for publishers and authors alike. So, before counting became the rule of the day, what mattered? And what now makes us read, reread, and remember certain articles and not others?

As we have reflected on those questions, we think at least part of an answer is that impactful articles chronicle some shared experience wherein we see ourselves, our students, or our broader work lives. There is some persistent “truth” the authors have tapped into that resonates with us. Maybe an article allows us to be brave, because by reading about an author’s own experience of innovation and outcomes—be they failure or triumph—they help us know that we are not alone when we go out on a limb and try something truly new. Or, some lasting research insight serves as a “big tent” or umbrella under which all kinds of teaching and learning experiences may take shelter. For example, Arthur Chickering’s work on student development, first published in 1969, has inspired management educators for close to 50 years. Those who recently have drawn on Chickering’s work for JME articles include a Roethlisberger Memorial Award winning article by Amoroso, Loyd, and Hoobler (2010), a most-downloaded ‘Wisdom of the Sages’ Special Issue article from Dave Whetten (2007), and Arbaugh and Hwang’s (2013) seminal review of how we assess online business education. Chickering’s body of research connects us to specific students we have encountered over the years, with clarity, humor, and insight, such that we return to it over and over for inspiration. Other work shapes the field in more subtle ways, such as Bilimoria’s (1999) JME editorial asserting that learning outcomes had to be measured in some way—well before the institutionalization of assurance of learning. Articles that last speak to us in some deep, often paradigm-shifting or “aha moment” kind of way that goes beyond their hypotheses, results, or service to our literature review.

We do not mean to say that citations and other quantitative measures of article usage do not matter; how much others have used our work is an important metric, and we have certainly run our own Harzing Publish or Perish analysis for annual performance reports. But we also worry about what we are missing as a field when we focus on “counting” in such a myopic, simplistic way. For example, Steve Kerr’s “Folly” article from 1975 in the Academy of Management Journal is listed on Google Scholar as having been cited 1,506 times, a number that grossly underestimates the impact of a work that is so well known, and so embedded as seminal thinking about motivation systems, that referring to a “folly” imparts a shared understanding even when Kerr’s article is not cited!

Academic research, as a cornerstone of knowledge creation, holds in tension how we honor and acknowledge past understanding of shared experiences while generating something substantially new. JME continues to be at the forefront of some of the most creative, generative work in management education. There is a cost, however, to the ever-increasing publication churn that the academy is fostering: rather than moving all of our fields forward, the burgeoning number of pages being published actually dilutes our collective knowledge, contributes to editorial and referee burnout, and provides an illusion of impact (Bauerlein, Gad-el-Hak, Grody, McKelvey, & Trimble, 2010). While we often complain that our students are ahistorical, we, too, often overlook our own massive body of knowledge in the quest for what is new, what is publishable, and what we can send out over our blogs. Impact Factor for journals does not count citations outside of a rolling 2-year window, and AACSB institution performance reviews do not acknowledge author citations outside of a rolling 5-year window, leading to what Kerr would tell us is a strong disincentive to utilize work that is both old and wise.

We invite you to consider this tension in academic publishing and how (or whether) the past informs your thinking and/or spurs you to innovation. The JME Lasting Impact Award is designed to counteract what we (and most other editors with whom we interact) experience as a pernicious effect on true innovation that the counting mania has created. The Call for Nominations for the 2016 Award is included in this issue, and we invite you to reflect on what JME article has spurred your creativity, your bravery, your engagement, your research design—the choice is yours! Thanks to Ben Arbaugh for nominating last year’s winning article, and for contributing his thoughtful foreword.