MARRII Indexing: Why We Exist

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

-Leonardo da Vinci (1942-1519), Polymath.

The value of an idea is in the using of it

-Thomas Edison (1847-1931), inventor.

For decades, there has been a well-documented 'lack of relevance' problem in management research. Despite the vast body of work rigorously produced, much of it remains disconnected from the practical needs of managers and organizations. This issue - also referred to as the ‘rigor-relevance gap’ in academic spheres has historically and consistently been highlighted across more than five consecutive decades of scholarly and practitioner literature by members of both management academia and management practice respectively.

Some notable documentation of this problem within management academia include the works of Susman & Evered (1978); Kilmann et al., (1983); Miner, (1984); Rudolph & Peluchette, (1992); Hambrick, (1994); Staw (1995); Abrahamson, (1996); Mowday, (1997); Stokes, (1997); Porter & Kibbon, (1998); Rynes et al., (1999); Brannick, (2000); Huff, (2000); Pfeffer & Sutton, (2000); Anderson et al., (2001); Beer, (2001); Lundberg, (2001); Starkey & Madan, (2001); Pettigrew, (2001); Rigby, (2001); Rynes et al., (2007); McLean et al., (2002); Pfeffer & Fong, (2002); Van de Ven, (2006); Ghosal, (2005); Vermeulen, (2005); Brannick & Coghlan, (2006); Shapiro et al., (2007); Van de Ven, (2007); Vermeulen, (2007); Keiser & Leiner, (2009); Khurana & Spender, (2012); Mohram & Lawler, (2012); Panda & Gupta, (2014); Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, (2022); Joullie & Gould, (2022); Wood et al., (2022); Hamel & Birkinshaw, (2023); Vílchez-Román et al., (2023); Hanisch, (2024); Hoyer et al., (2024); Grewatsch & Montgomery, (2024); Logman, (2024); Kalling & Bengtsson, (2024); Madhavaram, (2024); O'Boyle et al., (2024) and Paterson et al., (2024) among others.

Similarly, some notable documentation of the problem within management practice include the following works: Bennis & O'Toole, (2005); McGrath, (2009); Mazzarol, (2013); Eckhardt & Wetherbe, (2014); Davis, (2015); Lutchen, K. R. (2018); Shapiro & Kirkman, (2018); Stephen & Pauwels, (2019); Jack, (2021); Hoffman, (2023); Jack, (2023) and Seckler & Mauer, (2023); Symonds, (2023) among others.

While the rigor-relevance debate in management academia and practice continues, it is clear from a thorough synthesis of the problem, that management research needs to move away from armchair theorizing, transcend citation-centered impact and provide substantial, measurable and practical real-world value to both businesses and the larger society. It is also clear that to do so, a new ecosystem has to emerge that fundamentally re-thinks how each aspect of the traditional management research system operates- from how business schools measure and reward management research impact to the re-imagining and re-engineering of traditional management research publishing models away from today’s predominantly citation-centered models, to ones that are fundamentally practitioner- and practice-centric.

Over the years, very few attempts have been made to reform traditional management research beyond intellectual debates from management academia and criticisms from both management academia and management practice. Some of these few and very recent initiatives - notable among which is the Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) have set the foundational grounds for developing a network of primarily academics committed to the development of a new management research ecosystem centered around pivoting management science away from siloed and citation-centric research, toward management research that is not only rigorous, but also relevant and useful to management practitioners. While still nascent, a lot of critical infrastructure is necessary to both develop and engender such an ecosystem to eventually replace or become the predominant system for conducting the management research of the future.

One critical aspect of the ecosystem that is fundamentally inadequate, is current methods for judging and curating the quality of management science from a relevance and usefulness perspective. This aspect of the ecosystem is not only still predominantly citation-centered, but current efforts aimed at measuring quality based on practitioner-relevance and usefulness begs for a more robust initiative to enable business schools, funding agencies and most importantly, management practitioners to easily and effectively identify, access, measure, reward and use management research that is both practitioner-relevant and makes real world impact on business organizations and the society at large.

In light of the preceding exposition, I am thrilled to introduce MARRII - Management Research Relevance and Impact Indexing—an innovative initiative poised to transform the curatorial landscape of management science. MARRII is our solution to the evaluation and curation issue of the new management research ecosystem. It exists to address the long-standing challenge of evaluating and curating management research that is not only scientifically rigorous but also highly relevant and useful to practitioners in the field. Our novel method evaluates, curates, ranks, and indexes management research based on its relevance and impact on real-world management practices.

MARRII does not merely seek to solve the evaluation and curatorial issue, it is designed to bring about a paradigm shift in how management research is conducted and disseminated. It encourages publishers of management research to integrate relevance and usefulness to practitioners into their publishing processes and place them on the same pedestal as scientific rigor, thereby compelling researchers to consider practical real world applications or implications irrespective of the type of research (theoretical or applied) being conducted, and at every stage of their work. By championing and instilling a focus on relevance to practice and usefulness to practitioners, MARRII’s curatorial process ensures that research is not only academically sound and scientifically rigorous, but also immediately beneficial to management practitioners and by extension, the society at large.

Furthermore, MARRII provides a new metric for funding agencies and institutions to assess the impact of their research investments. Unlike traditional citation-based metrics which often reflect academic influence, or recent altmetrics that at best use ‘number of downloads’ or 'number of captures’ as a proxy for practitioner impact rather than practical utility, MARRII measures the relevance and most importantly, the ‘actual usage’ impact of management research on management practitioners. This shift not only places an increased emphasis on relevance and usage impact, but is envisaged to drive the development of more meaningful, valuable and impactful management research for real world managers and in turn, encourage management practitioners to both interact and engage with scholarly management research more frequently ultimately benefiting the entire management community and ecosystem.

In a nutshell, by prioritizing and highlighting management research with real-world applications, MARRII empowers publishers, researchers, practitioners, and funding agencies to work in tandem towards a shared goal: management research that truly matters to real world management practice.

For publishers, MARRII provides an incentive to prioritize research with demonstrable real-world impact on the one hand, and a robust framework for integrating relevance into the publishing process on the other, ensuring that the research disseminated is impactful and valuable to management practitioners.

For researchers, MARRII offers a clear path to conduct meaningful research that directly addresses the needs of managers, fostering innovation and societal impact. It also provides a novel pathway for rewarding and incentivizing research that is not only theoretically sound, but also directly applicable.

For practitioners, MARRII provides a curated body of research and a reliable source of actionable insights truly relevant to their needs enabling them to make research-informed decisions and drive organizational success.

For institutions and funding agencies, MARRII offers a more robust metric to evaluate the effectiveness of investments/funding initiatives in management research/scholars, ensuring that institutional or public funds are used to support research that are not only rigorous but make tangible usage impact on the key management research stakeholders: management practitioners and the larger society.

At MARRII, we are of the position that it is time to move away from the decades of back and forth concerning the rigor-relevance gap. The time to take action is now. We strongly believe that MARRII will serve as a catalyst for positive change in the field of management science by bridging the gap between academia and practice from a curatorial perspective. In so doing, we hope to bring about a future where management research serves its intended purpose: to inform, enhance, and improve management practices.

This is Why We Exist.

We acknowledge and embrace the fact that what we have set out to do requires both disruptive and incremental innovation, the engenderment of change across the breadth of the current ecosystem & most importantly, its associated challenges. Yet we are committed to this mission for the long haul. We invite you to join us on this exciting journey. Together, we can elevate the relevance and usage-impact of management research, making it a vital and accessible resource for management practitioners worldwide.

Thank you in advance for your support as we set out on this unique path to advancing the field of management science.

Warm regards,

Prof. Lawrence Emeagwali,

Founder, Management Research Relevance and Impact Indexing (MARRII)

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References

From Management Academia

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From Management Practice

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Eckhardt, J., & Wetherbe, J. C. (2014). Making business school research more relevant. Harvard Business Review.

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