Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Simon Cadez and Vlado Dimovski
objectivity <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> measurement is more complicated. In general, bibliometric methods are considered
to be more objective and universal since <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong> articles published as well as citations are
measurable and internationally comparable categories and which additionally comprise a qualityrelated
dimension. Contrary to quantity, quality can not be measured directly, but can, however, be
assessed through various indicators. The two most frequent indicators <strong>of</strong> quality are <strong>the</strong> following: <strong>the</strong>
quality <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> journal in which an article is published and <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong> times a published article is
cited. Despite its advantages, this method has at least two drawbacks. The first one is its
presupposition that published articles can serve as an approximation <strong>of</strong> research productivity. The
second disadvantage <strong>of</strong> bibliometric methods is related to <strong>the</strong> manner <strong>of</strong> measuring bibliographies
and citations. For this purpose, <strong>the</strong> ISI Web <strong>of</strong> Knowledge database is <strong>of</strong>ten used, which is managed
by <strong>the</strong> ThomsonReuters company. Although <strong>the</strong> database includes approximately 12,000 journals
from all scientific fields, its representativeness differs greatly across disciplines (Van Raan, 2005).
Although bibliometric methods were traditionally used primarily in <strong>the</strong> Anglo-Saxon world (Geuna and
Martin, 2003; Van Raan, 2005), <strong>the</strong> bibliometric paradigm has also seen a significant increase in o<strong>the</strong>r
countries lately (Abramo et al., 2008). Bibliometric methods also prevail in Slovenia in <strong>the</strong> evaluation
<strong>of</strong> research work, which is evident from <strong>the</strong> universities' conditions for habilitation, as well as from <strong>the</strong>
methodology <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Slovenian Research Agency for assigning projects and allocating research funds.
2.3 Research questions
In accordance with <strong>the</strong> established objectives <strong>of</strong> this study, we are interested in <strong>the</strong> following research
questions:
1. What is <strong>the</strong> research productivity <strong>of</strong> individual schools and individual researchers?
2. Is research output consistent with organizational strategy?
With regard to <strong>the</strong> first research question, we are interested in <strong>the</strong> total number <strong>of</strong> articles published in
<strong>the</strong> period examined, according to individual years. We expect an increasing trend in <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong>
articles published for at least two reasons: (1) habilitation conditions at all three faculties are
becoming ever stricter, including formal requirements for publishing articles in journals in <strong>the</strong>
SCI/SSCI database, and (2) every year more journals are included in <strong>the</strong> SCI/SSCI database,
<strong>the</strong>refore being published in <strong>the</strong>se journals is becoming easier. Fur<strong>the</strong>r, we expect differences to exist
across schools and even more so across researchers. Some publish a lot, o<strong>the</strong>rs not much, some not
at all. In our study we have defined those individuals who had at least one article published in a
journal included in <strong>the</strong> SCI/SSCI database in <strong>the</strong> period 2000 – 2009 as “active in <strong>the</strong> field <strong>of</strong>
research”, which is, <strong>of</strong> course, a very undemanding criterion with regard to demonstrating “activity in
<strong>the</strong> field <strong>of</strong> research”.
Second, we are interested whe<strong>the</strong>r organizational strategy affects research productivity. The field <strong>of</strong>
economics and business sciences is very broad and includes many sub-disciplines (e.g. <strong>the</strong> field <strong>of</strong>
business sciences includes sub-disciplines such as finance, accounting, marketing, entrepreneurship,
management, and o<strong>the</strong>rs). We wish to examine in which fields Slovene researchers most actively
create new knowledge. The SSCI database comprises 55 social science categories, <strong>of</strong> which four
directly refer to economics and business sciences. These categories are (1) economics
(approximately 300 journals), (2) business sciences (approximately 100 journals), (3) finance
(business, finance, approximately 90 journals), and (4) management (approximately 150 journals).
Although <strong>the</strong>re also exist o<strong>the</strong>r categories in addition to <strong>the</strong>se “primary” economics-business
categories that at least partially cover <strong>the</strong> field <strong>of</strong> economics and business sciences, we expect that
<strong>the</strong> majority <strong>of</strong> articles are published in journals from <strong>the</strong> four mentioned categories. Fur<strong>the</strong>r, we wish
to examine <strong>the</strong> quality <strong>of</strong> publications. Typically, <strong>the</strong> best scientific research is published in <strong>the</strong> most
prestigious scientific journals (Bonner et al., 2006; Reidpath and Allotey, 2010). The quality <strong>of</strong> journals
can be measured in two ways. The first is qualitative and is usually based on perception i.e. <strong>the</strong>
perception <strong>of</strong> researchers regarding <strong>the</strong> quality <strong>of</strong> a journal within a certain category or field. The
second is quantitative and is usually based on <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong> citations <strong>of</strong> an individual journal (Bonner
et al., 2006).
3. Research methodology
The method deployed is a multiple case study. For comparative reasons we investigate two business
schools which are different with respect to <strong>the</strong> process <strong>of</strong> interest, i.e. organizational strategy. The
analysis is conducted exclusively using publicly available data hence we are allowed to use real
names <strong>of</strong> case organizations. The Faculty <strong>of</strong> Economics <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> University <strong>of</strong> Ljubljana is a business
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