Faculty Research Incentives and Business School Health: A New Perspective for Marketing

Prior research has heavily debated the value of academic research of faculty to the business schools that employ them. We study, conceptually and empirically (by surveying faculty and interviewing (associate) deans), the role of the faculty research incentive system in business school health. We find that higher research health is congruent with higher teaching quality, stronger resource support, and stronger external stakeholder support. R-quality of research (i.e., rigor) contributes more strongly to research health than research quantity, while q-quality of research (i.e., relevance) contributes positively to teaching quality and external stakeholder support. We also find that research task incentives are misaligned: (1) in faculty evaluations, the number of publications receives too much weight, while creativity, literacy, practical relevance, and awards receive too little weight; and (2) the faculty feels that they are insufficiently compensated, while (associate) deans feel faculty is compensated too much for its research. These incentive misalignments are largest in schools that perform the worst on research and business school health overall. We explore improvements that business schools and faculty can introduce