One of the strangest things about being a professor is that outsiders think this means you are primarily a teacher. As a researcher, you feel that you aren’t primarily a teacher. (Some snooty colleagues even find being called a teacher a bit of insult). The particularly strange thing is the outsiders do have a sensible…
Search Results for: academia
Net Promoter And Lessons For Academic Research
I value academic work that speaks to the issues of managers and others outside of academia. The Net Promoter Score/System (NPS) is widely used by managers and so it can be valuable when academics look into this metric. What then can we say about Net Promoter and the lessons for academic research? Reviewing The Literature…
Colleges And Universities
Andrew Delbanco’s discussion of college in the US is at its most interesting discussing the origins of college. He is keen to emphasize that colleges and universities are not the same things. He suggests that college, a place for undergraduate education, developed from early American Puritan ideals. This was a place for moral and intellectual…
The Sokal Hoax
A fascinating event in academic history was the Sokal Hoax. A physicist reacted to the idea that reality is completely socially constructed and determined he would get published in a cultural studies journal. Satirizing Academic Publishing Before we celebrate Sokal’s inter-disciplinarity it is worth noting that he was satirizing social studies. The text he sent…
What Performance Outcomes Do Marketers Use?
A question I think should be asked more in academic marketing research is “how do we define performance?” Lots of people do analysis that aims to show what creates good performance. Still, there is surprisingly little attention paid to what good performance means. What performance outcomes do marketers use? What Performance Outcomes Do Marketers Use?…
What Do Business People Think Research Rigor Is?
A common theme in this blog is the problem of the connection between practitioners and research rigor. So what do business people think research rigor is? The Academic/Practitioner Divide It is hard not to notice that what academics do doesn’t seem to impact managers much. Indeed rigorous research often doesn’t seem to have any obvious…
In Defense Of A Really Silly Idea
One the silliest things that academics do is compare the number of ‘A’ publications people have. Who thinks that a career can be summarized by a single number? It is clearly an absurd idea. Even if research publications are all that count (and I think that is obviously nonsense) ‘A’ publications aren’t all the same….
Why Aren’t Academics More Relevant?
Much academic research is not connected to any immediate practical outcomes. This isn’t necessarily bad. Some research can have value to society more broadly or over a longer period. Saying that will happen can be a bit of a cop-out however. ‘This will be extremely valuable a long time after I die so give me…
Problems In Academic Research
Writing in the Journal of International Business Studies Klaus Meyer and his colleagues outline some problems in academic research. The authors tell us how they suggest dealing with the problem. Familiar Problems In Academic Research The problems they outline will be quite familiar to anyone following recent controversies in academia. The file drawer problem is…
Research And Popular Advice
Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind is a curious book. It is highly influenced by academic research (the author is an academic). Yet, I wouldn’t say it was an academic book. It tells us something about research and popular advice and how they mix. Academic Self-Help Levitin’s doesn’t read like the standard academic book: “here —…
