Derrick F. Ball

Commentary: The publications of marketing faculty – who are we really talking to?

The current environment in higher education drives faculty members towards research and publication. What the system values most is publication in refereed journals, preferably those which have achieved high reputation. Examines the extent to which academic research informs practitioners engaged in marketing. Clear evidence was obtained that academic marketing journals are neither read nor recognised by the great bulk of the sample. The consequence for academics and other writers in the subject area is significant. They can either strive to meet the demands of academically rated journals and publications which will undoubtedly further their career or they can publish their work in outlets more likely to be read by the practitioner. In the latter case, they then risk their colleagues and superiors taking them less seriously. Finally, they can attempt to achieve both, although this is a somewhat difficult task. The evidence from this study confirms, however, that whatever efforts are made by marketing faculty to publish their work, their readership, most likely, will be disappointingly exclusive.

Working Effectively in Strategic Alliances Through Managerial Fit Between Partners: Some Evidence From Sino-british Joint Ventures and the Implications for R&D Professionals

To succeed in RD and (2) there is often a mismatch of perceptions between the British and Chinese managers with regard to who plays a particular managerial role in a JV. Managerial implications are discussed and issues for further research are highlighted.

Executive Search and Selection Consultancies in France

Examines the characteristics and structure of executive recruitment consultancies in France. Search consultants recruit through “head‐hunting” while selection consultants recruit through advertising. These consultancies play an important part in the market for executive recruitment. The nature of the product has implications for the behaviour of the consultancies and the structure of the industry. There is little or no price competition in the market; instead there is a reliance on non‐traditional non‐price competition. There are two factors which have affected the industry: the recession, which has led to changes in the focus and role of the consultancies; and the creation of the Single European Market, which has led to the increasing internationalization of business.

Characterisation and measurement methods for author productivity and research vitality: a study of the R&D management field

This paper concerns methods of analysing publication data which may assist policy makers in ascertaining the vitality of particular scientific fields. A method to indicate author productivity and the relationship with the vitality of the research field is presented, based on techniques from engineering control statistics, and employing transformations suggested by Tukey. The method employed analyses author productivity and gives useful indications of the potential within a research field, while avoiding the assumptions of earlier papers based on the use of event history analysis. Applying these new techniques to a data set of the entire publications from the field of R&D management over the last 43 years provides insight into the effect of changes in institutional context upon author productivity. Implications are then considered. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.