Academic business research: Impact on academics versus impact on practice

Abstract

Business journalists and editors of academic business journals have lamented that academic research has little use for any nonacademic stakeholders, including companies, nonprofits, regulators, and governments. Although emotionally unsettling, these commentaries are bereft of evidence on how well a journal’s academic impact (measured by impact factor) translates into practice impact. The authors provide this evidence. Specifically, they sample 56 journals, spanning 12 business disciplines, from 2000 to 2020. For each journal-year, they measure two- and five-year impact factor, which proxies the impact on academics. Next, for each article published in each journal-year, they collect attention score—a weighted sum of the number of times the article is cited in 19 types of practitioner outlets—from Altmetric. The authors then measure the correlation coefficient between the impact factor and attention score for each journal in periods of two-year and five-year. The coefficient indicates how well the journal’s academic impact has translated into practice impact. Among the 12 disciplines, international business discipline tops the chart, while information systems, accounting, and finance occupy the bottom positions. American Economic Review leads the 56 journals, with Journal of Marketing Research and California Management Review as close followers. The findings highlight the impact of academic business research—or the lack thereof.