Editorial

EDITORIAL

While we invest in academic impact indicators of scientific production, we still lack consolidated indicators to measure its social impact. In fact, the main indicators used to assess the impact of scientific production (Impact Factor, H index, etc.) focus on internal assessment, i.e., on how the academic community itself acknowledges the relevance of peer production. In particular, these recognized indicators are essentially used as criteria to allocate the scarce resources available for research, as they create a hierarchy of academic productivity, which is the base to access funds.

We do not have very accurate indicators to assess how our research contributes, for example, to improving the quality of life or to increasing business performance or even the public sector's performance. We can reasonably argue that the research does not necessarily have an immediate application, and many of the results provided today by the academy should only have an impact in future decades. However, we also do not know if the internal assessment produced by the established indices of today will maintain the same relevance over time, and we remain without a good answer to the challenge of monitoring and making decisions based on the results of our production to our external stakeholders in the short, medium and long term.

Specifically in the area of Management, an applied science by definition, the lack of good indicators of our social impact makes us particularly vulnerable to criticism regarding the real social relevance of our research. A recent article published in the influential New York Times feeds the controversy by stating that some of the world's leading thinkers are university professors, but most of them are no longer relevant to today's "great debates". Whether or not one agrees with the view expressed in this article, which, incidentally, spares Economics professor from the same criticism, it does provoke us to reflection.

Take for example the agendas of the mainstream media, which is, by definition, more in tune with such "great debates", though it may also be considered ephemeral. Amid the serious management crisis we live today – for instance, the huge amount of human, material and environmental resources wasted by both the public and the private sector – researchers in the area of Management are rarely invited to show the general public how the results of their research could help mitigate these problems. More commonly, we find executives and politicians opining in these spaces, rather than Management researchers. Would this be a sign of low recognition of the relevance of research in Management?

Finally, although it is not a simple task, it is essential that we dedicate ourselves to measuring the social relevance of our research, the same way we already did to assess its impact exclusively in the context of the academia. Certainly, the discussion on the creation of social impact indicators should be on the center of our debates.

In this issue of RAE, we are publishing six new articles. "Fragmentação do conhecimento científico em Administração: uma análise crítica" discusses the fragmentation of science through the interface between the fields of Operations and Human Resources. "Earnings management and economic crises in the Brazilian capital market" verifies the hypothesis that, during economic crises, the companies listed on Brazil's capital market tend to adopt results management practices. "Brand equity in the Pakistani hotel industry" identifies the interrelationship of the dimensions of customer-based brand equity in the hotel industry. "Internet e participação: o caso do orçamento participativo digital de Belo Horizonte" investigates the social representations emerging from public participation, mediated by the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). "Empreendedorismo, marginalidade e estratificação social" examines the social stratum of origin of industrial entrepreneurs and their pattern of intergenerational mobility. "Key factors of process maturity in English-speaking Caribbean firms" is a study of the key determinants of the maturity of processes in small software development companies.

The issue is completed with a tribute to the "Sociologist of Organizations", Professor Fernando C. Prestes Motta, which can be given in the texts "Tributo a Fernando C. Prestes Motta: um acadêmico e sua obra docente", by Maria Ester de Freitas, and "Poder e resistências nas organizações: a propósito das contribuições de Fernando Prestes Motta", by Liliana Segnini and Rafael Alcadipani.

Enjoy your reading!

EDUARDO DINIZ

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  30 May 2014
• Date of issue
  June 2014