Academic Research in Marketing and Business School Health: Limiters and Improvement Opportunities

Academic research in marketing is of key importance to the health of business schools. However, there has been considerable debate in recent years whether academic research in marketing, and business in general, delivers enough on this promise. Our goal is to add a coherent and novel faculty management perspective to this debate. We identify three limiters in the faculty management system that restrict the impact academic research in marketing may have on business school health: (1) the imperfect metrics used to evaluate marketing academics that focus primarily on quantity, (2) the weak professional alignment between marketing academics and professionals relevant to marketing, and (3) the incentives for marketing academics that have started to emphasize extrinsic rewards such as bonuses for publications. In response to these limiters, we offer three improvements for increasing the impact marketing can have on business school health. These include: (1) supplementing the quantitative metrics with a qualitative assessment of the work, (2) socializing marketing academics into the practice of marketing, and (3) strengthening intrinsic rewards and reducing extrinsic rewards.