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CHINA JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Vol 1 Issue 1 LexisNexis, 2008

Shyam Sunder
Yale School of Management
Commentary
Building Research Culture
Business school faculty and administrators in Asia often ask their foreign
colleagues: Why wont your journals publish our research? What kind of research
should we conduct in order to have the chance to have it published in international
journals? Tis is no idle talk; these urgent and sincere questions arise in the face of
impending promotion and tenure decisions under university or government rules
calling for publication in international journals. Such external publications often
are an important consideration in these decisions that are widely believed to make
or break academic careers.
Rules requiring publication in international journals (and presentations at
international conferences) as criteria for promotion have been promulgated by
many universities and ministries of education in Asia. Te intent is to introduce
research cultures to old institutions which may not have such a tradition, or to
build such a culture from the outset in new institutions. Tis is an admirable goal.
Trying to achieve this goal through international publication rules may serve
the short term goal of selecting the qualified faculty, but not without paying
a heavy price in the form of undermining the longer term goal of building an
indigenous research culture to address the important problems of society.
In many emerging economies, there are few universities and even fewer
business schools with a robust tradition of research. Some universities publish their
in-house journals to disseminate the work of their own faculty without the benet
of independent evaluation of its quality. Sometimes, the evaluation processes that
exist get closely entangled in interpersonal relationships. Tere may not be enough
active scholars engaged in research in domestic universities who can be relied upon
to conduct such evaluation.
Processes of international journals are hardly perfect, and there exist Asian
journals that compete with the very best in the world. Still, on the whole, many
more of the international journals have established themselves in their respective
elds for decades. Tey are edited and refereed by renowned scholars, many of
SHYAM SUNDER 82
them pioneers in their fields. These editors and referees are unlikely to know
most of the authors who live in other countries, and even if they did, their well-
established processes can be relied upon to be reasonably free of favoritism and
interpersonal conflicts. It is understandable that under such circumstances,
educational administrators, eager to identify the research talent in their own
faculties, would use publication in the better known international journals as a
way to address the problem of objective evaluation of faculty research.
Tis strategy runs into several diculties. First, the Asian countries are so large,
with so manyand fast growinguniversities and faculty that there is no way
for the journals published in US or Europe to have enough space to publish more
than a handful of papers originating in Asia. Te strategy of outsourcing the task
of assessing research conducted by thousands of Asian faculty to international
journals is simply infeasible, especially for giants like China and India. Tey must
bear the burden of devising their own solutions.
Second, even if space were not a constraint, international journals focus their
attention on addressing the problems of the economies in which most of their readers
reside. When a research article crosses an editors desk, the rst question the editor asks
is if it is important and of interest to the journals readers. Given that a considerable
volume of business research is economy-specic, only a small fraction of articles from
Asia are able to cross this importance-and-interesting hurdle at international journals.
Tis perceived and real hurdle generates the questions mentioned at the outset.
Tird, scholars faced at home with rules of promotion that call for international
publications, and with the importance-interesting hurdle at the international
journals, tend to turn away from addressing the research questions of their home
economies toward the problems of societies in which their target journals are
published. As much as they might try, most of Asian scholars have no comparative
advantage in this task. What is worse, the scarce time and talent of these scholars get
diverted away from addressing the important issues and pressing problems at home
where their research might yield signicant results and better policies. Te policy
of requiring international publications induces them to turn toward addressing
unfamiliar problems of distant lands for the sole purpose of getting a publication or
two so they can get promoted. Tis turns the very purpose of research on its head
instead of doing research in order to serve society, faculty start doing research
so they can get it published, so they can get promoted and in turn be able to do
more such research. One might reasonably ask: Why should a society, especially a
developing one, pay for the time and resources spent on this activity?
Fourth, Asian universities culture of research and innovation suers under the
heavy burden of hierarchy and rank. It is dicult to claim credit for better ideas if
the older folks whose ideas are being improved upon hold the veto power and they
are not reluctant to exercise it. Workshops in which people present their work,
answer questions and face criticism are not quite as frank and open in Asia. Te
processes to add rigorous reasoning, innovation, and cross-disciplinary insights is
weak. Independence of the editing and refereeing processes also shows gaps when
BUILDING RESEARCH CULTURE 83
compared with international standards. Most important, separating interpersonal
relationship from criticism of research is harder to do in Asia. Developing research
culture in Asia calls for working on these aspects of universities and their faculties
by changing their shared expectations.
Tere is no better way of building research cultures in Asia than to develop
healthy authorship, workshop, refereeing and editorial processes of the indigenous
journals. Unfortunately, the international publication requirement undermines
this fundamental goal. It not only diverts the best minds to try to publish abroad,
it undercuts the attempts to develop good journals and research culture at home.
Educational administrators and policy makers in Asia have to address a basic
policy dilemma. Should they continue to focus their attention on the immediate goal
of making sure that the faculty who get promoted or appointed to senior positions
have scholarly accomplishments comparable to elsewhere in the world? But pursuing
this worthy short term goal too vigorously undermines the progress toward building
an indigenous research culture through domestic processes and journals. If building
domestic research culture is also an important goal, how can the two to be balanced?
While there are no xed formulas for building a culture of any kind, much less
of research, a few steps taken under judicious (not bureaucratic) supervision may
help. De-emphasizing the power of hierarchy and rank over the creative younger
faculty, especially when those in power are not themselves productive researchers,
could be a first step. Innovation itself, as reflected in their work and activities,
could be considered a plus in faculty assessment. Starting new kinds of journals
with radical new ideas would be a kind of innovation that could receive special
attention. Any steps that will increase the mobility of faculty across educational and
research institutions would be helpful by creating an external market for research
talent. Lowering the cost of transactions that involve moving from one institution
will prevent faculty from getting trapped in institutions whose needs do not match
their abilities and talents. Allowing greater discretion and subjectivity in promotion
and tenure decisions may also help, although the immediate question of favoritism
comes to mind. If the transactions cost of moving across institutions can be reduced,
favoritism can be counterbalanced, and the mistakes made by the subjective processes
of one institution can be checked if not corrected by the market place for
talent. Overall, most systems of higher education in Asia treat faculty as just another
civil service which can be managed through the standard bureaucratic procedures.
Obviously they can be, and are, managed in this manner. But then they cannot be
expected to produce radical innovation that a research culture calls for, and they dont.
In the recent half-a-century, many Asian economies have achieved rapid
advancements in many elds that they themselves had earlier thought were beyond
their ability due to presumed cultural barriers. Te fact is that human beings are
essentially the same everywhere; the dierences in their achievements are rooted
in what they believe about themselves, and expect from one another. In the recent
decades, American and European scholars have made rapid advances in the level of
scholarship in many elds. Asian research need not be an exception.