Pan-Pacific Conference XXXIV. Designing New Business Models in Developing Economies

An Empirical Analysis of Promotion Standards in the Operations Management
Discipline of UK Academic Institutions
Soteriou, Andreas C.
Hadjinicola, George C.*
Katsifaraki, Georgia
University of Cyprus
Department of Business and Public Administration, University of Cyprus, 1 University Avenue, P.O. Box 20537, +357
22893625, *Corresponding Author (bageorge@ucy.ac.cy)
ABSTRACT
In this paper we examine the research requirements for
academic tenure and promotion schemes within the
Operations Management discipline. We focus on leading
UK research schools and monitor the research
productivity of active academics in prominent Operations
Management and Operations Research journals. Drawing
from various online resources we create a database of
career path and publications data for these academics,
and develop a number of respective quantitative indices
for each promotion stage. This way we manage to
empirically measure research productivity and research
quality within the Operations Management discipline in
the UK. Results on research productivity are presented
for three promotion periods, namely, from obtaining the
Ph.D. to the first promotion, from the first promotion to
obtaining professorship status, and thereafter.
INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW
This research attempts to shed additional light on
academic tenure and core requirements of promotion
schemes in academic settings in the Operations
Management discipline. Promotion requirements are
important both for the quality of research conducted and
for the future of the field at large. We focus on the
Operations Management/Operations Research (OM/OR)
discipline in leading UK 1 research schools and monitor
the publication productivity of active academics in
prominent OM/OR journals. We do so for each of the
following promotion periods: from Ph.D. completion to
first senior promotion (equivalent to the level of
Associate Professor), from first senior to second senior
promotion (equivalent to Professorship) and from
Professorship and onwards. We draw from various online
resources to create a database consisting of career path
and publications data. We then develop quantitative
indices to empirically measure research productivity and
research quality per each promotion period at an
aggregated level.
Academic literature provides a number of reasons for
evaluating research output. First, hiring, promotion and
tenure decisions for individual academics are driven by
such evaluations. In fact, literature suggests that faculty
research productivity is the dominant factor when
allocating rewards such as promotion and salary
1 Academic tenure was abolished in the UK with the
1988 Education Reform Act; we, therefore, focus on
senior promotion schemes of permanent contracting,
equivalent to those of Associate Professor and Professor,
namely Senior Lecturer and above.
increments [3]. Second, ranking and funds allocation for
schools, research teams, and journals are further based on
evaluating research. Thus, metrics for assessing the
research contribution of academics, departments, and
journal outlets have been researched widely in many
disciplines. Relevant research has been conducted within
the OM/OR field and a number of studies have appeared
that evaluate OM/OR journals through either peerreviewing,
citation analysis, or hybrid approaches
([9][7][2][4][11][8]). Other studies focus on capturing
research productivity trends and reveal a significant
growth in OM/OR research productivity over time [5].
There has also been great interest in measuring the
influence of individual researchers and institutions within
the OM/OR field ([10][1][6]).
In light of the importance of understanding promotion
standards in academia, the aim of our research is
threefold: (1) to unveil how tenure requirements vary for
each academic period (from young researchers to newlytenured
academics to established senior Professors); (2)
to understand how tenure prerequisites evolved over
time; and (3) to capture trends of promotion requirements
within the OM/OR discipline. This research thus can
serve as a useful reference for academics, Deans, and
other decision makers. More specifically, we initially
discuss quantitative promotion requirements, which are
derived from the analysis of our data.
METHODOLOGY
We have included in the project’s database all senior
(equivalent of Associate Professor and above) OM/OR
academics of those UK schools that appear in the
database of UT Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of
Management as leading in OM/OR research from 1990
onwards. A total of 47 UK schools appeared in the UT
Dallas list, whose faculty has published since 1990 at
least once in the following prominent OM/OR journals
(included in the UT Dallas journal list): Operations
Research, Journal of Operations Management,
Manufacturing and Service Operations Management,
Production and Operations Management, and
Management Science. A total of 371 UK OM/OR faculty
members were subsequently identified in these schools
by searching the official websites of the universities. For
the identified academics, we collected career-related
information available online (position and title, career
path and timeline, academic field and main research
interests, publications, etc.) and we verified the collected
data through a series of diverse publicly available
resources (such as official university websites, personal
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