Associate deans ‘less likely to be top research performers’

There has long been suspicion among some rank-and-file researchers that the academics who move into departmental management are often not the best scholars.

Now, a new study by US-based researchers may add fuel to the fire by presenting data that suggest that business school academics with higher research productivity are less likely to become associate deans.

Looking at data for more than 4,000 professors in US business schools between 1990 and 2017, those with high research productivity based on their publications in the top 50 journals in the field according to the Financial Times were less likely to become associate deans. Every extra publication in the FT50 was associated with 6 per cent less likelihood of getting the role.

But salary data suggested that although becoming an associate dean usually resulted in a pay rise for all scholars, the highest performers in research terms got less of a raise.

Through a series of interviews with current and former associate deans, the researchers established that one likely cause of the salary finding was that universities sometimes had rigid salary bands for managerial posts. This meant that top scholars who were already earning more through their research performance experienced a lower jump in pay.

As a result, “universities with salary bands for ADs [associate deans] may mechanically depress the upside for high-performing researchers who become ADs while magnifying the upside for low-performing researchers”.

“From the individual perspective, our results suggest that lower-performing faculty should seek to become ADs because they will receive compensation that far exceeds what they could have achieved through their research productivity. High-performing faculty also receive inducements to become ADs but at the cost of reduced productivity,” the paper says.

Universities meanwhile faced the trade-off that although high performers “might perform better in the role”, it would lead to a cost in lost research productivity. Given these incentives, “finding lower-performing faculty who can be effective in an AD role seems to be a potentially optimal approach”, the paper, published in the Academy of Management Journal, observes.

The paper was authored by Jeff Dyer, David Kryscynski and Shad Morris of Brigham Young University, with Christopher Law of the University of North Carolina.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com