Building Research Culture

Shyam Sunder, Yale UniversityFifth International Conference on Accounting and Finance

University of Namibia, Windhoek, November 5, 2013

An Overview• What is research?• Why do research in universities?• Support, promotion and evaluation of

university research• Steady commitment over long haul

What is research?• Active engagement with the relevant domain of the world

around us• Leadership in thinking and doing• Continual learning from, communication with, and

dissemination to others• Unafraid to differ, and advocate change/innovation• But not pursue change just for the sake of change

And what it is not…• Publications• Conferences, international or not• Innovation and change• Mathematics and data analysis• These may sometimes accompany research, but when

pursued for their own sake, their link to research gets lost easily

Why do research in universities?• Intergenerational transfer of a massive storehouse of learning is

unique to human species: takes a couple of decades• Universities were created to facilitate this social learning under

adult supervision• Creating new learning is a separate function from transfer, mostly

occurs outside universities• Combining the two functions in universities has some advantages

Why do research in universities?• Problem of selecting adults who are tasked to supervise

learning of the young• Psychology: adults interested in and excited about the subject

induce better learning• Therefore select interested and excited adults to teach• Such people may also come up with new ideas and share them• Use new ideas as a proxy for good teachers

Why do research in universities?• But it was only meant as a proxy measure to promote better

learning environment• Sometimes, proxy measure takes over as the principal: faculty

pursuing research for its own sake• Teachers have advantages (specialization, less bias) and

disadvantages (remoteness) as innovators• With excessive emphasis on research, learning can take the back

seat and undermine the primary function of research in universities

Support, promotion and evaluation of university research• When many universities adopted research as a secondary function of

teachers, it was not long before some sought to distinguish themselves by raising research to the primary level

• It is difficult to publicly highlight good or even great teaching, but is easier to do with research

• Competition among elite universities placed research on high pedestal, and soon other universities followed suit

• Support, promotion and evaluation of research received increasing weight in university policies

Research Support• In physical sciences, research support takes the form of expensive

laboratories and graduate students• In social sciences: field work, data collection and analysis• But the most costly support is the blocks of faculty time set aside from

teaching and service• Competition for government support consumes significant time devoted to

writing five or ten research proposals for every one that might be funded• Competition for industry support brings along conflicting loyalties to

students, common knowledge base of the discipline, and benefactors

Promoting and Evaluating Research• In the remainder of this talk, let us assume that we have

already decided that it is desirable to allocate a certain amount of educational resources to research

• Although there is plenty to debate about in that decision, we shall not enter that debate here

• Instead, focus on: What might be an efficient way of utilizing these scarce resources for promoting society’s welfare?

Evaluation of Research• Evaluation of research is inherently difficult and problematic• New theories that challenge the status quo way of thinking

can be right or wrong• In judgment of others, they are almost always questionable• Who should assess research, if the knowledgeable people in

the fields are already invested in the prevailing wisdom?

“Independent” Journal Review System• Most academic disciplines have editors and expert referees to evaluate

research and decide on its publication• This system is better developed in the U.S. and Europe than in most

other parts of the world– Even there, the editors and referees cannot not reliably independent

(celebrated failures, to be ignored for now)• Temptation to rely of journals published in these countries (often called

international journals) to evaluate research everywhere• Rules for faculty appointment and promotion in Asian, African and Latin

American universities based on publications in “international” journals

Administrative Perspective• From the perspective of ministries of education and university rectors,

evaluating faculty research by “international” publications makes eminent sense– High standards of such journals– Unbiased and beyond local manipulation– Help appoint and promote only deserving faculty

• Dependence on “international” journals serves the short term goal of creating meritocratic universities

• This is a well-meaning and laudable objective

Outsourcing faculty evaluation• This “outsourcing” of faculty evaluation to journals edited in

remote lands appears to be an eminent solution to the problem of building quality universities

• But closer scrutiny also reveals the high costs of this option• In fact, I shall argue that, in the longer run, this approach has

the potential to nullify whatever benefits a society might hope to achieve from allocating its educational resources to research

Costs of “international” Free Ride• Dependence of universities on

“international” journals have high costs– Low chance of publication– Wasted effort and high opportunity costs– Failure to develop domestic research culture

Why Would They Publish Your Work?• Journals publish papers of interest to their readers, most of

them in their home countries• Few such readers are interested in reading research about

problems of other countries and societies• Most work published to high reputation journals is rejected,

chances of a paper about foreign problems is even lower• This leads researchers to turn attention to addressing problems

of countries in which their target journals are published

High Opportunity Costs• Instead of using their scarce talent and resources to address the

problems of their own societies, “international” focus redirects resources to foreign problems

• If the domestic problems are going to be largely unattended by research, why should such countries devote any significant part of their resources to such research

• High opportunity cost of addressing and publishing about foreign problems

• Lack of any competitive advantage in addressing such problems further reduces the chances of publication

Failure to Build Research Culture• All research must be subject to critical debates to sort out good from

bad• Effectiveness of such debates depends on the social norms governing

such debates so they are free of favoritism, nepotism, and enemities• The most insidious consequence of dependence on “international”

journals is that it fails to build or strengthen such social norms within the society and research community which is a necessity for sustaining research

Remedying Domestic Weaknesses• To summarize consider:

– Low chances of publication, – Wasteful redirection of research efforts to foreign problems, and – Failure to remedy domestic weaknesses, and to build research culture

• There is little capacity in the handful of international journals to handle to publications traffic to support evaluation of millions of faculty members from Asia, Africa and the Latin America

• These journals do not have and will never have enough capacity to process all this “outsourced” work load

Fork in the Road• Unless the higher education systems of three continents are modified in

the direction of greater self-reliance and building their own domestic research cultures,

• The result will be the proliferation of “fake” international journals in every discipline run on internet

• We already see daily spam emails inviting authors to send their research papers for publication in such “international” journals

• With continuation of this free riding, the academic endeavor of research itself is rapidly headed towards becoming a farce

Long Term View of Academic Research• If university research has the chance to make any significant

contributions to society in Asia, Africa and the Latin America, their educational systems will have to rethink the role, structure, financing, and evaluation of research in their systems.

• Else, the high-minded rhetoric is already on its way to become wasteful expenditure of scarce resources with highly questionable benefits

Thank You.Shyam.sunder@yale.edu

www.som.yale.edu/faculty/sunder http://

faculty.som.yale.edu/shyamsunder/Research/Accounting%20and%20Control/Published%20Articles/156.Building_Research_Culture/Building_Research_Culture.pdf