The fairness of performance evaluation is a concern for all professions, and the appraisal of research output is of particular interest to business scholars and academic administrators. We describe research assessment as a process of social construction that is heavily influenced by journal valuation in business schools. Using journal quality data from multiple sources, we empirically investigate whether the journals in each of eight business disciplines (Accounting, Economics, Finance, Information Systems, Management, Marketing, Operations Management, and Quantitative Methods) are treated evenly across the board. Specifically, we explore whether each business discipline exhibits recognition fairness (i.e., actual institutional journal evaluations are the same as market expectations) and inclusion fairness (i.e., actual availability of publication space in top journals being the same as market expectations). Our findings indicate that faculty in some disciplines enjoy an advantage, while faculty in other fields are disadvantaged. Consequently, we offer recommendations to ameliorate this inequity.
The concept of organizational learning (OL) is receiving an increasing amount of attention in the research and practice of management information systems (MIS) due to its potential for affecting organizational outcomes, including control and intelligence, competitive advantage, and the exploitation of knowledge and technology. As such, further development of the salient issues related to OL is warranted, especially measurement of the construct. Based on a domain definition grounded in the literature, this research represents the initial work in developing an empirically reliable and valid measure of organizational learning. The rigorous method utilized in the derivation of this measure, which integrates two methodological frameworks for instrument development, is the main strength of this work. The result is an eight-factor, 28-item instrument for assessing OL, derived from a sample of 119 knowledge-based firms. The empirically derived factors are awareness, communication, performance assessment, intellectual cultivation, environmental adaptability, social learning, intellectual capital management, and organization grafting. MIS function managers can use these factors to gauge organizational or subunit success in the creation and diffusion of new applications of information technology.