666691 Master Thesis Brunau
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THE GEOGRAPHY OF RESARCH IN STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT An analysis of focal countries, author affiliation and drivers involved in leading journals Master’s Thesis MSc Economics and Business Administration – International Business Copenhagen Business School, 2019 Authors: René Brunauer, Andreas Scherg Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Phillipp C. Nell Hand-in date: 15.01.2019 Characters: 189,447 equivalent of 83 standard pages Abstract Studies on the global knowledge dispersion and production have particularly highlighted significant imbalances in terms of research origin and targeted countries. Though the world as of today is highly globaliZed, scientific activity still remains concentrated in certain regions of the world. To shed further light on the magnitude of international research activity in specific academic disciplines, bibliometric analyses are commonly performed to further illustrate aspects of the geography of research. The aim of the thesis is to answer how international and representative of the world research in the field of strategy and management is, by analyzing bibliometric data from 2003 to 2017 in discipline six leading journals. Furthermore, drivers of focal country choice are identified to understand why certain countries are targeted more frequently in research than others. Particularly the US is identified as an overrepresented target country in the chosen journals, followed by China and the UK. Since those countries alone account for 65 percent of single country studies identified, it is concluded that research in the underlying journals is not as representative of the world as one might think. With regards to the author affiliation, the US is even more overrepresented than it is as a target country. It is followed by the UK and Canada. As part of the explanation, the US location of most of the journals is identified. As partly explanation of the findings, home bias of the US authors is detected. Since Most journals are located in the US, the share of US affiliated authors is particularly high in the data. Those US authors mostly target their home country in their academic articles and therefore contribute to the high share of US targeted articles observed. As drivers of research intensity, gdp per capita and the population are identified. Further variables, namely cultural distance, geographic distance and a dummy variable for English language do not further explain focal country choice of US authors and are therefore rejected as possible explanation for target country choice. I Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS & HYPOTHESES ............................................................................................................ 5 1.2 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY ........................................................................................................... 6 1.3 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ............................................................................................................................... 7 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................ 9 2.1 THE ACADEMIC PUBLISHING INDUSTRY ............................................................................................................ 9 2.1.1 The Publishing Process .............................................................................................................................. 10 2.1.2 Types of peer review ................................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.3 Problems with peer review ......................................................................................................................... 11 2.1.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 13 2.2 “GEOGRAPHY” OF RESEARCH - (HOME AND FOREIGN BIAS) ............................................................................. 13 2.2.1 Overall research output ............................................................................................................................. 14 2.2.2 Bias against non-US topics anD non-US researcher origin ....................................................................... 15 2.2.3 Drivers of target country choice ................................................................................................................ 16 2.2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 16 3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................................. 17 3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN & METHODS ..................................................................................................................... 17 3.2 BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY ..................................................................................................................................... 19 3.2.1 Preparation ................................................................................................................................................ 19 3.2.1.1 Selection of Journals ......................................................................................................................................... 20 3.2.1.2 Selection of Database ........................................................................................................................................ 23 3.2.1.3 Selection of “focal country identification” method ........................................................................................... 23 3.2.1.4 Selection of technology ..................................................................................................................................... 25 3.2.1.5 Data Collection .................................................................................................................................................. 26 3.2.2 Processing .................................................................................................................................................. 27 3.2.2.1 Data selection/filtering – “focal country identification” ................................................................................... 27 3.2.2.2 Data Cleaning & Accuracy Assessment ............................................................................................................ 32 3.2.3 Analysis ...................................................................................................................................................... 33 3.3 LINEAR REGRESSION MODEL .......................................................................................................................... 34 3.3.1 Simple linear regression ............................................................................................................................ 34 3.3.2 Multiple linear regression .......................................................................................................................... 37 3.3.3 Choice of Variables .................................................................................................................................... 39 4 RESULTS ................................................................................................................................................................ 43 4.1 BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................ 43 4.1.1 Sample characteristics ............................................................................................................................... 43 4.1.2 Focal countries .......................................................................................................................................... 48 4.1.3 Countries of author affiliation ................................................................................................................... 55 II 4.1.4 Home-bias & foreign bias .......................................................................................................................... 57 4.2 REGRESSION ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................... 61 5 DISCUSSION ......................................................................................................................................................... 71 6 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................................... 74 7 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ..................................................................................... 75 I. REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................................... 77 II. LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................................................. 82 III. LIST OF FIGURES ..........................................................................................................................................