Rarely business and management students discuss in the open about the tacit rules that govern the conduct of their research but it surely is important to understand how this process works to involve with it. The management researchers’ common outlet is to get their findings published in reputed academic journals. These are reviewed anonymously by academic referees and a decision is made by the editor based on their comments. The editor would give certain relevant comments and if he feels unsatisfied with the revision work, the process may still result in rejection.
It is unusual for an article to be accepted in the first submission the process is called as ‘peer review’ the articles that are consequently published are not only a result of lengthy research process but also the outcome of an generally lengthy feedback and review process that can also take excess of two years.
In recent years there has been much debate about the politics of business research and also the pressure that the researchers face to get their work published in reputed academic journals. The pressure has increased because of staff publishing in such journals is a measure of business school performance.
The ‘publish or perish’ culture has resulted in gamesmanship on part of the researcher to increase their possibilities of success within the system. There could be use of few political strategies like self-citation and citation of articles in high-ranked management journals. The researcher also might end up writing articles that the reviewers may view as uncontroversial and not to challenge the existing theory or experiment with new research.