Skip to main content
Log in

Contributing Institutions and Authors in International Business Research: A Quality-Based Assessment

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Management International Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We use a quality-based approach to assess contributing institutions and authors in international business (IB) research. Specifically, we use Google Scholar citations of individual articles to weigh the number of IB research articles in core IB and other non-IB elite journals. Our approach mitigates concerns about the quality difference among articles across different journals and within individual journals. We find evidence to suggest that IB research in the European and Asia-Pacific regions exhibits an upward trend over the 1995–2011 period. With respect to institutional research quality, we document that an IB program with faculty members working with their peers in foreign countries and the presence of a doctoral program can enhance an institution’s research quality. Prolific authors are very mobile and typically have global experience.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The 5-year impact factor of a journal is defined as the total number of citations received in five future years from all articles that appeared in the journal in the year, divided by the total number of articles published in the same year. In short, impact factor is a quantity of article-adjusted citations.

  2. A dummy citation means that the citation is not related to a research study. It is cited because the authors of the citing study have other considerations. A negative citation means that the research study is being cited for its wrong findings or conclusions. Hence, the cited study does not contribute to the knowledge.

  3. These journals are: Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics (Accounting), Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies (Finance), Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Management Sciences (Management), Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research (Marketing), MIS Quarterly, and Information Systems Research (information systems).

  4. Journal of International Management (JIMgt) began publishing in 1995, but it was not associated with a major publisher until 1998. The data from 1995 to 1997 were not available online and not available in all of the authors’ libraries. Thus, JIMgt coverage begins in 1998 in our analysis.

  5. Specifically, we have two research assistants conducting independent identification of IB articles in these non-IB elite journals. If there was any discrepancy in their results, one of the authors reviewed the results for further analysis and made the final decision.

  6. SSCI began coverage of IBR in 2005, JWB in 1997, MIR in 2008, and IMR in 1999. Thus, it is not possible to get SSCI citation data from the non-covered articles (a total of 884 articles or about 22 % of the sample), because they are not in the SSCI database. For instance, SSCI does not account for the citations in IB articles in our set of IB and other non-IB elite journals from the articles that published in IBR before 2005, because SSCI did not include IBR articles before 2005 in its database. That is, the citation statistics of all articles in our sample will be severely undercounted if we use SSCI to look up citations.

  7. We combine articles in non-IB elite journals as a group.

References

  • Ball, D. A., & McCulloch, W. H, Jr. (1984). International business education programs in American schools: how they are ranked by members of the Academy of International Business. Journal of International Business Studies, 15(1), 175–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ball, D. A., & McCulloch, W. H, Jr. (1988). International business education programs in American and non-American schools: How they are ranked by the Academy of International Business. Journal of International Business Studies, 19(2), 295–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, K. C., Chang, C. H., & Chang, Y. C. (2013). Ranking of finance journals: some Google Scholar citation perspectives. Journal of Empirical Finance, 21(2), 241–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, K. C., Fung, H. G., & Lai, P. (2005). Membership of editorial boards and rankings of schools with international business orientation. Journal of International Business Studies, 36(3), 452–469.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, K. C., Fung, H. G., & Leung, W. K. (2006). International business research: trends and school rankings. International Business Review, 15(4), 317–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, K. C., Fung, H. G., & Leung, W. K. (2009). Influential research and institutions in international business research. Multinational Business Research, 17(1), 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chandy, P. R., & Williams, T. G. E. (1994). The impact of journals and authors on international business research: a citational analysis of JIBS articles. Journal of International Business Studies, 25(4), 715–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chow, C. W., Haddad, K., Singh, G., & Wu, A. (2007). On using journal rank to proxy for an article’s contribution or value. Issues in Accounting Education, 22(3), 411–427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, P. D., & Zhan, G. (2011). How international are the international business journals? International Business Review, 20(1), 100–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, E. (1973). Citation frequency as a measure of research activity and performance. Essays of an Information Scientist, 1(2), 406–408.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W. (2008). Arbitrary decisions in ranking studies: A commentary on Xu, Yalcinkaya, and Seggie. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 25(4), 685–689.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W. (2013). A preliminary test of Google Scholar as a source for citation data: a longitudinal study of Nobel Prize winners. Scientometrics, 94(3), 1057–1075.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W., & van der Wal, R. (2009). A Google Scholar H-index for journals: an alternative metric to measure journal impact in economics and business. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 41–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inkpen, A. C., & Beamish, P. W. (1994). An analysis of twenty-five years of research in the Journal of International Business Studies. Journal of International Business Studies, 25(4), 703–713.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kumar, V., & Kundu, S. K. (2004). Ranking the international business schools: faculty publication as the measure. Management International Review, 44(2), 213–218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lahiri, S., & Kumar, V. (2012). Ranking international business institutions and faculty members using research publications as the measure. Management International Review, 52(2), 314–340.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacRoberts, M. H., & MacRoberts, B. R. (1996). Problems of citation analysis. Scientometrics, 36(3), 435–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meho, L. I., & Yang, Y. (2007). Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science vs. Scopus and Google Scholar. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(4), 2105–2125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morrison, A. J., & Inkpen, A. C. (1991). An analysis of significant contributions to the international business literature. Journal of International Business Studies, 22(1), 143–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nehrt, L. C. (1987). The ranking of masters programs in international business. Journal of International Business Studies, 18(1), 91–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Singh, G., Haddad, K. M., & Chow, C. W. (2007). Are articles in “top” management journals necessarily of higher quality? Journal of Management Inquiry, 16(4), 319–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, S. D. (2004). Is an article in a top journal a top article? Financial Management, 33(1), 133–149.

    Google Scholar 

  • Starbuck, W. H. (2005). How much better are the most-prestigious journals? the statistics of academic publication. Organization Science, 16(2), 180–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Treviño, L. J., Mixon, F. G, Jr, Funk, C. A., & Inkpen, A. C. (2010). A perspective on the state of the field: international business publications in the elite journals as a measure of institutional and faculty productivity. International Business Review, 19(1), 378–387.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, S., Yalcinkaya, G., & Seggie, S. (2008). Prolific authors and institutions in leading international business journals. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 25(2), 189–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers. Nianhang Xu acknowledges the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71172180), the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of the People’s Republic of China (Grant No. 201085), and the Fok Ying Tong Education Foundation (141080). The usual caveats apply.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kam C. Chan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Xu, N., Poon, W.P.H. & Chan, K.C. Contributing Institutions and Authors in International Business Research: A Quality-Based Assessment. Manag Int Rev 54, 735–755 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-014-0207-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-014-0207-6

Keywords

Navigation