Rigour versus relevance revisited: evidence from IS conference reviewing practice
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A commonly held belief in the IS discipline is that rigour and relevance are contrary to each other and that addressing both is virtually impossible. It is also believed widely that the editorial practices of our premier conferences and journals over-emphasise rigour on the cost of relevance. However, while these two topics have been filled with numerous subjective discussions, more solid evidence into the true relationship between rigour and relevance and the impact of conference editors on this relationship is still outstanding. This paper contributes to this debate by deriving empirical evidence from a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the characteristics of the submissions and the reviewing practices of three recent IS conferences. It provides first insights into the actual relationship between rigour and relevance and into the role conference chairs play in balancing rigour and relevance. Besides the outcomes that the current set of evaluation criteria does not provide a straight forward proxy for relevance to practitioners, the paper offers two main contributions. First, empirical insights are provided that rigour and relevance do in fact not have to be mutually exclusive. Second, the editorial practices at conferences are skewed towards rigorous papers rather than relevant papers.Keywords:
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Success factor studies seem to offer a way out of the rigor verses relevance dilemma: Researchers, in their attempts to identify factors that are causes of performance and can be manipulated by managers, apply sophisticated analyses in rigorous ways. As it turns out, however, the findings of performance analyses usually contradict each other, and practitioners are unable to follow and to evaluate the discussions between the researchers that are published in scientific journals. Thus, rather than a correspondence, as implied by performance studies, a trade-off between rigor and relevance is the overall outcome of this kind of research. On the basis of sociological concepts, the authors show that this effect is a consequence of the inner dynamics of science as a social system. This means that the potential of performance research to create actionable knowledge is limited.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the opinions of a number of editors of accounting journals on the value they attach to the practical relevance of management accounting research and the potential role of qualitative methods in conducting this type of research.Design/methodology/approach – This paper collects together commentaries from these journal editors about the theme indicated above, together with an overview and reflections by the editors of this special issue.Findings – The journal editors do not regard a lack of practical relevance in management accounting research as a key concern. Most of them see practice‐relevance and theoretical advancement as complementary, while the latter is given by far the most weight as the core of academic work. Furthermore, most journal editors have no clear preference for either qualitative or quantitative research in relation to the practical relevance issue. Neither do they seem to have strong opinions about the specific benefits of qua...
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The purpose of the paper is to perform a systematic review of the research methods sections of texts published in 2012-2016 in journals ascribed by their editorial boards to the discipline of management science in the field of economics and/or the humanities. Its main conclusion is that the way in which case-study research is described in these journals is inconsistent with the purported principles of methodological rigour. In Polish journals we detect a gap between the recommendations for conducting case-study research and the way it is actually presented. The present study shows that it is essential for authors to address more closely the issue of justifying the research method they are applying, along with its associated components, in the sections that describe their research methodology
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We use the parable of the blind men and the elephant to suggest that Barney and Zhang (2009) and Whetten (2009) analogously touch on only a part of the Chinese management research puzzle. Their analyses remind us of many attempts at anchoring the research purpose – etic versus emic approaches, exploration versus exploitation approaches, rigor versus relevance scenarios – touched on by the many commentators in this issue. We suggest researchers first answer the ‘purpose’ questions before embarking on the research design. The research design should fit the purpose of the knowledge, which is either to improve the performance of Chinese organizations (meeting the relevance criterion) or to replicate, extend or refine a theory developed in the US (meeting the rigour criterion). We believe the strength of applied management research allows us to create knowledge that can meet the criteria of both rigour and relevance. We support the use of academic international research teams and dialectic debate as tools to move the field of Chinese management research forward.
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This commentary discusses why most IS acade- mic research today lacks relevance to practice and suggests tactics, procedures, and guidelines that the IS academic community might follow in their research efforts and articles to introduce rel- evance to practitioners. The commentary begins by defining what is meant by relevancy in the context of academic research. It then explains why there is a lack of attention to relevance with- in the IS scholarly literature. Next, actions that can be taken to make relevance a more central aspect of IS research and to communicate impli- cations of IS research more effectively to IS pro- fessionals are suggested.
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The last 20 years in South Africa and abroad have evidenced huge changes in the ways in which research is accessed and produced. These changes were facilitated by the rapid developments in technology. Collaborating with researchers across the globe and accessing articles and research can be done at the push of a button and response times are as instantaneous. Conducting and communicating one’s own research are also much easier. This led to a veritable explosion of publishers and journals, some of which are legitimate and others predatory. In this climate, the adage of ‘publish or perish’ has become a lived reality placing increasing pressure on scholars to publish. An unintended consequence of this is the increasing lack of methodological rigour in studies. This article advocates for increasing attention to methodological rigour in quantitative research. In so doing, guidelines and suggestions are provided in terms of elements to be considered within each of the broad aspects of a study, namely, sampling, instrumentation, methods, design, and data analysis. These are drawn from the literature as well as the author’s own experiences in teaching quantitative research methods, supervising postgraduate student research, reviewing articles for local and international journals, as well as experiences of reviewing articles located within the quantitative paradigm as Associate Editor for the South African Journal of Psychology. Ultimately, this article seeks to create awareness among researchers around the necessity for methodologically rigorous research to enhance the quality of outputs. This will have the effect of producing impactful research that can confidently inform policy, practice, and training within the discipline.
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Concerns exist that practical relevance is becoming devalued as accounting scholars respond to signals about what sort of research ‘counts’. We categorize public sector management accounting papers in six leading journals according to two criteria: the practical orientation of the research objective(s), and whether the conclusions communicate issues of practical relevance. The findings reveal that most of the papers are directed towards understanding or critiquing the use of management accounting techniques, while other practically oriented research objectives are largely absent. Although half of the papers identify practical research implications, few suggest guidelines for practice. Reflections are offered on the role of leading journals in shaping how practical relevance is valued in accounting research.
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