The development of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) list in 2007 and its rapid adoption by UK business schools has had a profound effect on the nature of business and management academics' ways of working. Using a large-scale survey of UK business academics, we assess the extent to which individuals use the Academic Journal Guide (AJG/ABS) list in their day-to-day professional activities. In particular, we explore how their perceptions of the list, the academic influence of their research, academic rank and organizational context drive the varied use. Building on prior research on the importance of univalent attitudes in predicting behaviour, we find those who have either strong positive or negative views of the list are more extensive users than those who are ambivalent. We also find that the extent of use of the AJG/ABS list is greatest among those academics who have lower academic influence, in the middle or junior ranks within business schools and in middle and low-status universities. We explore the implications of these findings for the value of journal rankings and for the management of business schools.

-Academics are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the impact of their research with external actors. Some national research assessment systems have mandated academics to document their impact on non-academic actors, and linked research funding to assessments of these impacts. Although there has been considerable debate around the design of these systems, little is known about how academics perceive the value of impact against more conventional academic outputs, such as publications. Using multisource data, including a large-scale survey of UK business and management academics, this paper explores the individual and institutional factors that explain an individual's preference for impact versus publication. The results show that academics display a preference for impact over publications, even when that impact is not associated with requirements of the assessment system in terms of rigour of the underpinning research. The preference for impact over publications is heightened by organization tenure, non-academic work experience, intrinsic career motivations and research-intensive contexts, while it is weakened by academic influence, extrinsic career motives and academic rank. We explore the implications of these findings for the design of research assessment systems and academics' reactions to them.

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The quantity of finance research has grown enormously over the past two decades, yet questions remain over its breadth and ability to benefit the economy and society beyond academia. Using multisource data, we argue that individual and institutional incentives have fostered insularity and a consequent homogeneity in the discipline. We examine the characteristics of research that is published and cited in the leading field journals in finance, arguing that the work has become abstract and unrelated to real world issues. The work published in the 'top' journals makes increasing use of US data, even where the researchers are drawn from different countries. Using information from impact assessment, publication patterns, and grant capture, we illustrate that this narrow agenda lacks relevance to the financial services sector, the economy or wider society compared to other areas of business and management research. In particular, we highlight the relative absence of research on ethics in academic finance and discuss the likely consequences for the discipline including its relevance to society. P a g e | 1 citation database of peer-reviewed academic studies, 4 and funding data from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, the main UK government funding body for social science research).The two UK research evaluation exercises both provided a panel-based assessment of the 'quality' of research undertaken by UK higher education institutions separately for each subject (referred to as a panel, or more accurately in RAE / REF parlance as a sub-panel). Data from the RAE2008 and REF2014 provide snapshots at those specific points in time of the panels' assessments of the 'quality' of work being undertaken in UK universities over the previous six years in each case (2002-2007 and 2008-2013 respectively). The RAE / REF only take place periodically and thus data are only available for these specific intervals. While the work being assessed comprises publications in (peer-reviewed) journals, monographs, book chapters and working papers, our analysis concentrates on those outputs submitted to the RAE/REF that represent publications in peer-reviewed journals. The nature and purpose of the RAE and REF are summarised nicely in Brooks et al. (2014, p. 991): 'The RAE [and REF are] evaluation[s] of the 'quality'