Winning the tournament for named professorships in management

Abstract

We apply tournament theory to explain the process within which selection of named professorships takes place and a procedural justice test to justify winning the named professorship tournament. Specifically, we estimate the probability that management professors hold one of the highest rewards for academic research productivity, a named professorship, as a function of his or her research credentials, as measured by the number of articles published in a small core of elite management journals. Alphabetically, these are Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, Operations Research, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. Although each of the eight journals is positively related to the probability of attaining a named professorship, the Academy of Management Review and the Academy of Management Journal emerge as the two most influential management journals.

Keywords:

• elite management journals
• named professorships
• procedural justice
• tournament theory

Notes

1. Given the size of the database (n = 3,220 management professors), we did not gather data on ‘forthcoming’ or ‘in press’ articles since they were not available in the archives and would have required contacting each individual faculty member. Most likely, ‘forthcoming’ or ‘in press’ articles would not be related to any of the chairs that were already in place on the websites. Since the database goes back to 1985, exclusion of ‘forthcoming’ or ‘in press’ articles should not be a major issue.

2. Several regional associations have their own governing body and journal (for instance, the Southern Management Association which publishes Journal of Management, the Western Academy of Management which publishes Management Inquiry, the Iberoamerican Academy of Management which publishes Management Research). In most cases, however, members of these associations are also members of the Academy of Management. Three of the journals in the present study, Organization Science, Management Science, and Operations Research are sanctioned by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

3. The insignificance of Organization Science may be due, in part, to its relatively recent inception (i.e., 1990). In fact, publication counts from this journal are missing for approximately 30% of the time period of our data set due to its recent inception.