fourteen years of research in the asia pacific journal of management

ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, VOL. 14, 89-97 (1997)

RESEARCH NOTE

Fourteen years of research in the Asia Pacific Journal of Management*

SIAH HWEE ANG**

Department of BusineJJ PoIicy, Faculty of BuJineJJ Administration, National University of Singapore,

10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore I1 9260

The Asia Pacify Jozlmal of Management (APJM) has been an outlet for the publication of research on the Asia Pacific for 14 years. This paper seeks to track the range of papers that have been published in this time to identify research trends and issues. This is done to provide a broad overview of research done in the region, serve as a reference for APJM’s editors and potential contributors for future research, and also traces the evolution of managment scholarship in the region.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Asia Pacijic Journal of Management (APJM) is an internationally refereed journal

which commenced publication in 1983. It mainly focuses on papers that analyze general and strategic management issues of concern to scholars and practitioners in the Asia

Pacific region, with special emphasis on empirical studies (Khin 1988). As the Asia Pacific region becomes the centre of attraction to both the academic

and business worlds, APJM seeks to report, review and guide economic, business and management research on the Asia Pacific. It also aims to be the major vehicle for

exchange of ideas and research among academics within or interested in the broadly

defined Asia Pacific region. As more international research journals focus on this region, APJM faces competi-

tion in maintaining itself as a credible research outlet. In the face of such challenges, how

has the APJM responded to affirm its position? Does the journal really reflect the trends and patterns of the economic and business environments evolving in this region? This

*This paper was not put through the journal’s usual review process because of its content. Editorial com-

ments and suggestions were provided by the Editors. **The author is a graduate student in the Department of Business Policy at the Faculty of Business

Administration, National University of Singapore.

CCC 0217~4561/97/0100089-9

0 1997 BY JOHN WILEY & SONS (ASIA) LTD

90 S. H. ANG

paper will seek to answer these and other questions through an analysis of the articles

published in the APJM during the 14-year period.

2. METHODOLOGY

The initial sample consisted of all research papers, research notes and short papers

published in the APJM during the 14-year period from its inception in September 1983 to October 1996. Editorials, review articles and book reviews were excluded from the

sample. This process resulted in the selection of 22 1 articles for analysis. A database was

then created containing information on the articles and authors.

OPERATlONALIZATION OF VARIABLES

Author’s Affiliation. As the origin of the article and not the nationality of the

author, is of interest in this study, the institutional or organizational affiliation of the author at the time of publication was recorded. The country where the institution was located was

taken as the point of origin. Affiliations of co-authors of articles were also recorded. Countries of Study. The countries and/or regions studied were recorded to the

greatest degree of specificity possible. While the data were readily observable in most

cases, some studies merely indicated the regions explored or the nature of the economies considered. For example, a study that compares businesses in Asian countries with Euro-

pean countries had to be coded as two regions. An ‘Others’ category was created to include cases that did not specify a region or country, but instead included a sample of

businesses in, for example, less developed countries or OECD countries. Articles in this category were excluded in all analyses that examined the distribution of countries and/or

regions studied, but were included when patterns of author affiliations were investigated. In our data, there was only one such case.

There were altogether 110 countries involved, resulting in a country code range of

0 to 109. To avoid the complexity in analyzing articles with a high number of countries, the process was simplified by discarding five articles. Finally, three articles that studied

foreign exchange currencies were excluded because of uncertainty about the countries analyzed. As a result, 166 empirical articles were included in the final sample for the

analysis of countries studied. Article Discipline. The focus of each article was classified using the Academy of

hernational Bzuiness (AZB) classification system (see Wright and Ricks 1994). Though there is always an issue of cross-classification due to the increasing number of cross-

disciplinary studies, this study has attempted to avoid this complication by classifying the

articles based on their primary discipline areas. Each article was thus assigned to one main discipline only.

FOURTEEN YEARS OF RESEARCH IN THE ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT 91

3. ANALYSIS

The 221 articles that appeared in the APJM over the 14-year period were written

by a total of 40 1 authors, averaging 1.8 authors per article. Of the 22 1 articles, 175 of them were empirical studies while the rest were theoretical papers, A summary of the

descriptive statistics is depicted in Table 1.

Table 1 Summary of article characteristics

No. of No. of No. of No. of Average No. of No. of Total no. articles articles articles articles Total no. “0. of

Year empirical theoretical of written written written written of authors articles articles articles by 1 by 2 by 3 by 4 or authors per

author authors authors more authors article

1983 3 1984 14

1985 11 1986 13 1987 14

1988 15

1989 6

1990 17

1991 11

1992 14

1993 13 1994 20

1995 12

1996 12

5

5

3 2

5

5

3 8 4

3

0

2 0

8 5 2 1 0 12 1.50

19 10 7 2 0 30 1.58

14 9 5 0 0 19 1.36

15 3 9 2 1 31 2.07

19 10 6 3 0 31 1.63 20 7 12 1 0 34 1.70

9 1 5 3 0 20 2.22

25 15 5 4 1 41 1.64

15 7 6 1 1 26 1.73

17 7 6 2 2 33 1.94 14 5 5 2 2 31 2.21

20 5 11 4 0 39 1.95

14 5 5 2 2 31 2.21 12 3 7 2 0 23 1.92

Total 175 46 221 92 91 29 9 401 1.81

Table 1 also shows the breakdown of the number of authors per article. The trend is clearly away from single-authored articles and increasingly towards collaborative

research, with the maximum number of authors in an article being six.

Table 2 presents the country affiliations of the 401 authors who published their research papers in the APJM. These 401 authors came from 24 different countries. To

simplify the analysis, we classified these 24 countries into 7 distinct groups. As seen from Table 2, the proportion of US-affiliated authors has shown a steady

decline from 41.2% (73/177) in the first period from 1983 to 1989 to 23.7% (53/224) in the second period from 1990 to 1996, suggesting the increased participa-

tion of non-US-based scholars in research published in the APJM. Table 3 provides information on countries studied in research in the APJM. The high

number of United States (9.4%) and Japan (9.4%) articles is probably due to the better

availability of data as well as the fact that these countries are always taken as representative

92 S. H. ANG

Table 2 Author’s affiliation

Year United States Singapore

Asean excluding NIEs excluding Singapore Singapore Japan

Rest of Rest of Total Asia World

1983 7 1 0 0 1 3 0 12

1984 14 6 2 1 0 3 4 30

1985 11 4 0 3 0 0 1 19

1986 14 7 2 4 0 3 1 31 1987 8 7 5 8 0 3 0 31

1988 12 11 0 1 0 8 2 34

1989 7 6 2 0 0 2 3 20

1980s Total 73 42 11 17 1 22 11 177

1990 10 9 3 7 0 9 3 41

1991 13 2 0 2 0 7 2 26

1992 6 8 0 5 0 9 5 33

1993 13 7 0 6 1 3 1 31

1994 1 6 1 6 1 21 3 39

1995 10 6 0 10 3 2 0 31

1996 0 4 4 2 0 9 4 23

1990s Total 53 42 8 38 5 60 18 224

Overall Total 126 84 19 55 6 82 29 401

Table 3 Countries of study

Year United States Singapore

Asean excluding NIEs excluding Singapore Singapore Japan

Rest of Rest of Total Asia World

1983 1 2 4 0 1 0 0 8

1984 3 7 17 9 3 1 2 42

1985 3 5 2 4 3 2 0 19 1986 1 6 1 5 3 2 1 19

1987 2 6 7 6 1 2 0 24

1988 1 6 2 4 1 5 0 19

1989 0 3 1 0 0 1 0 5

1980s Total 11 35 34 28 12 13 3 136

1990 2 5 6 10 4 5 2 34

1991 3 1 0 5 1 6 1 17

1992 3 5 3 7 4 6 1 29

1993 4 4 0 9 2 3 0 22

1994 2 2 3 7 3 9 1 27

1995 4 2 0 7 3 3 0 19

1996 0 5 5 1 0 9 4 24

1990s Total 18 24 17 46 17 41 9 172

Overall Total 29 59 51 74 29 54 12 308


of Western and Eastern countries respectively when researchers try to do comparative

studies.

From the table, it seems that the NIEs (24.0%), Singapore (19.2%) and the Asean countries (16.6%) were the most studied. This would suggest that research published in

the APJM reflects, to a certain extent, the current economic performance of the countries. In Table 4, it is evident that APJM has received a substantial number of articles

(34.4%) on Finance. Over the two periods, only articles involving the areas of Human Resources and Economics have shown slight increases while Finance publications have

increased three-fold. Other areas seem to be in the decline.

Table 5 shows the result of the cross-tabulation of the article discipline with the countries of study. The purpose of this cross-classification is to identify the nature of

studies conducted on the different countries.

From the table, we can see that in the 1980s there is a good spread of research, with financial research in Singapore (8.8%) receiving slightly more attention. In the 199Os, it is evident that research in Finance has spread to other Asian countries such as

the NIEs (11.0%) and the Asean countries (7.0%), with Singapore remaining as attrac-

tive (8.1%). In addition, the result also shows that comparative management, cross- cultural management and organizational research are directed more towards the NIEs,

and away from Singapore and the other Asean countries. Summing up, it indicates that Asian financial markets have drawn much attention from researchers and that contribu-

tions from other areas are lagging.

4. DISCUSSION

From the results above, we can identify four issues pertaining to research papers

published in the APJM. These include the increasing amount of collaborative research,

increased participation of non-US-based researchers, availability of data and attention paid to Asian financial markets.

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

As seen from Table 1, there is a trend of collaborative research seen in the articles published in the APJM, with 58.4% of all the articles published resulting from collab-

orative efforts. This trend can also be seen in other journals. For example, the proportion of single-authored articles in the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Man-

agement Review, and Administrative Science Qzlarterly decreased from 82% in the 1960s

to 40% in the 1980s (Floyd, Schroeder and Finn 1994). The remaining 4 1.6% of the articles that were written by single authors could be explained by the fact that the

perceived contribution by the individual to research is affected by whether it is a group or individual paper.

Table

4

Artic

le

disc

iplin

e

Year

Ec

onom

ics

Fina

nce

Orga

nizat

ion

Com

para

tive

Man

agem

ent

Cros

s-Cu

ltura

l M

anag

emen

t Ot

her

Man

agem

ent

Busin

ess

Polic

y M

arke

ting

Hum

an

Reso

urce

s Ot

hers

Tota

l

1983

0

0 3

2 0

1 0

1 0

1 8

1984

0

3 2

3 2

1 1

2 0

5 19

19

85

2 3

2 1

1 1

1 1

1 1

14

1986

0

3 3

2 0

1 1

1 2

2 15

19

87

1 1

2 4

8 0

0 0

1 2

19

1988

0

7 0

1 3

3 3

0 2

1 20

1989

1

2 1

0 1

0 0

1 2

1 9

15

7 6

1990

1

14

3 1

2 1

1 1

0 1

25

1991

1

4 1

7 0

0 0

0 1

1 15

1992

0

13

0 0

0 0

2 0

1 1

17

1993

0

4 2

1 0

0 1

0 6

0 14

1994

1

14

0 0

0 0

2 1

2 0

20

1995

2

4 4

1 1

1 0

1 0

0 14

1996

0

4 2

2 0

2 0

1 1

0 12

1990

s To

tal

12

25

25

18

11

12

10

19

16

221


Table 5 Article discipline and the countries of study

United Asean NIEs

States Singapore excluding excluding Japan

Rest of Rest of Tota,

Singapore Singapore Asia World

Economics

Finance Organization studies Comparative management Cross-cultural management Other management

Business policy

Marketing Human resources

Others

1 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 2 12 4 8 2 3 0 31 4 3 5 1 2 2 1 18

1 6 5 2 2 0 23

1 1 1 0 0 0 6

1 3 0 6

0 1 0 7

0 0 0 8

3 2 0 9 2 0 2 26

1980s total 11 35 34 28 12 13 3 136

Economics 1 1 0 1 2 1 1 7 Finance 6 14 12 19 8 21 1 81 Organization 3 1 0 6 1 2 0 13 studies Comparative 5 0 2 9 2 4 2 24 management Cross-cultural 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 5 management Other management 0 3 1 0 0 5 4 13 Business policy 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 8 Marketing 1 2 1 0 1 0 0 5 Human resources 1 2 0 6 1 5 0 15 Others 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

1990s total 18 24 17 46 17 41 9 172

Collaborative research may be seen as a necessary way to overcome data availability.

For example, a researcher who may want to conduct a comparative study of 2 countries

may face data collection difficulties. In such instances, collaboration with a foreign country researcher is necessary. In addition, it could also be an indication that the requirements for conceptual and methodological rigour for publication have risen.

Researchers may collaborate to add more perspectives and ingredients to the paper in order to increase the probability of publication. Lastly, it could also mean that the

complexity of the Asian environment necessitates collaboration in order to overcome

time and resource constraints. Thus, with these various advantages that collaborative efforts offer to researchers, this trend is likely to continue in future in the Asia Pacific

region.

96 S. H. ANG

PARTICIPATION OF NON-US-BASED RESEARCHERS

Results in Table 2 reveal that there is a decrease in papers published by scholars

based in the United States and an increase in the contributions by regional researchers. The increased participation of regional researchers is a healthy sign of rising scholarly

activity in the Asia Pacific. At the same time, this trend is somewhat surprising given the rapid economic growth of the region, and increased interest among Western researchers.

AVAILABILITY OF DATA

Table 3 has given the reader an account of the countries of research. It is evident that four NIEs of Asia have slowly emerged as the countries of interest. The United

States and Japan have largely been included in the samples for comparative purposes, partly due to the availability of their data. The low study rate of the other Asian nations may be due to their late boom, which makes past data not immediately available, and

where available, of limited use.

FINANCIAL RESEARCH IN ASIA

Khin (1988) has noted that the APJM will be a research journal for empirical

studies, with a focus on comparative management in the Asia Pacific region. However, as shown in Table 4, the APJM has published a vast number of papers in Finance. This is accompanied by a small increment in the Human Resources and Economics research.

This would suggest that the APJM has deviated slightly from its research focus.

It appears that scholarly activity in Finance has taken off earlier due to ready availability of data and activity. This point is substantiated by results in Table 5. Another

finding in Table 5 is that cross-cultural management, comparative management and organizational research are shifting away from the Asean region to the NIEs. This is

another indication that research follows economic trends.

5. CONCLUSION

The above findings suggest that manuscripts focusing on the countries currently much researched (based on economic performance) are more likely to be published. Thus, editors will have to make difficult choices such as the need to encourage research

on overlooked disciplines and countries, while being careful about the relevance and

applicability of the study. Also, articles on Asian emerging markets seem to be lagging behind economic trends. To reaffirm its position as a representative outlet for Asia Pacific


research, the APJM must continue to expand its geographical horizons and define new

frontiers for research. This study also suggests that there is a lack of research at the business and corporate

levels, which is essential for the formulation and implementation of business strategies. Such studies are rarely done in the Asian context, mainly due to the difficulty of collect-

ing proprietary data. Sensitive data is hard to come by and information on publicly listed companies is only now becoming available. The scholarly community should attempt to

scale this barrier to unlock another frontier of research in the Asia Pacific.

In conclusion, the APJM generally has published a representative amount of research on the Asia Pacific. However, to keep up that reputation will be a tough

mission. It appears that the recent moves to increase awareness of the journal to gain

more recognition through the wider distribution offered by a new publisher may help attain these goals.

REFERENCES

Floyd, SW., Schroeder D.M. and Finn, D.M. 1994. “Only if I’m first author”: conflict over credit in management scholarship. Academy of Management Journal, 37(3): 734-747.

Khin, M.K. 1988. Review article: APJM and Comparative Management in Asia. Aha Pacific

Journal of Management, 5(3): 207-224. Wright, R.W. and Ricks, D.A. 1994. Trends in International Business research: twenty-five years

later, Journal of International Business Studies, 25(4): 687-701.

fourteen years of research in the asia pacific journal of management

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