Is management research visible outside the academic community?

Abstract

We address the question of the visibility of management research for practitioners by measuring scientific journal citations in nonscientific publications. While the social and economic relevance of research in management has been largely commented, it has been more rarely measured. This is due to the fact that management research is mostly aimed at the production of knowledge rather than at giving direct prescriptions for actions. Consequently, the relevance of management research is often of a conceptual, rather than instrumental, nature. While conceptual relevance is not easily measurable, the visibility of management research in managerial publications might give some insight into the perceived interest of management research to managers. We estimate the yearly number of citations in the press of a panel of 63 topranked journals in all fields of management over a 15-years period. Our results show that the visibility of academic journals in the press is very modest, and mostly restricted to top-ranking (“world elite”) journals. The visibility of management research seems to have, on average, significantly increased over the period 2000-2014. We also report strong field specificities. In particular, the visibility of World Elite Journals in Marketing has increased dramatically over the last decade, while the visibility of Accounting journals has decreased.