Self-reflection is an integral part of the research process as its aim is to understand a field’s trends, current challenges and future developments in order to identify vulnerabilities to the research process (e.g., Bennett, Wolford, & Miller, 2009; Gardner, Lowe, Moss, Mahoney, & Cogliser, 2010; Kahnemann, 2012; Shen et al., 2011; Tourish, 2011). Therefore, many researchers agree that self-reflection processes should also be an integral part of research education, as they help students to question their preconceptions of methods, theories and approaches as well as the influence of researchers’ identity on the way they think and argue (Wang, 2014). At the same time, facing criticism from inside and outside the research communities can ensure the validity of findings and therefore self-reflection processes can be seen as a part of the research process that ultimately increases the validity of findings (e.g., Open Science Collaboration, 2015).
For a long time now, one of the important self-reflection processes that has been going on surrounds the debate regarding the dominance of US researchers and therefore US-centric theories and data in the most relevant management journals (e.g., Boyacigiller & Adler, 1991; George, 2012; Holtbrügge, 2013; Kirkman & Law, 2005; Martinko, Campbell, & Douglas, 2000; Üsdiken, 2014). Especially the increasing drive of research institutions to encourage their researchers to communicate research findings on international platforms and the establishment of the once US-based journals as international outlets for leading management research is making editors and reviewers realize that they have to increase their efforts to include more international perspectives on management (Adler & Harzing, 2009; Kraut & Mondo, 2009). This is an especially difficult task, as researchers across the world have experienced differing research socializations and hence might not fulfill explicit and implicit expectations of mostly US-based editors and reviewers of high impact journals (Martinko et al., 2000; Tourish, 2011).
Therefore, editors and reviewers of high impact journals have to more explicitly communicate their expectations in order to further the internationalization of their journals (e.g., Eden & Rynes, 2003). However, academic writing advice from editors and reviewers of high impact journals has been mostly focused on best-practice examples from very successful researchers and lacks systematic evidence that could be easier to comprehend and implement (e.g., Grant & Pollock, 2011). At the same time, most analyses of the reasons why non-US researchers lack visibility in high impact journals have been focused on quality, financial, or language issues (e.g., Boshoff, 2010; Gantman, 2009; White, 2002). Yet, these explanations might not hold up for many countries that have heavily invested in research in the past decades and have a high level of English language proficiency (e.g., Lau, 2002; Wagner & Wong, 2012).
Therefore, in this thesis, I explore reasons for the lacking visibility of non-US researchers in high impact journals from multiple perspectives. First, I explore situational differences in topics of interest across countries that might highlight challenges for non-US researchers to position their research in high impact journals. Second, I explore how psychological identification processes might influence non-US researchers’ selection of an international publication strategy. Third, incorporating a model for the analysis of introductions from the field of applied linguistics, I analyze one of the most important parts of a research article that is relevant in the peer-review process, i.e., the introduction, and extrapolate expectations of editors and reviewers of high impact journals by analyzing the rhetorical structure of introductions in published articles. Lastly, I delve deeper into the implicit expectations of editors and reviewers, by analyzing the usage of hedges (i.e., words that reduce commitment to a proposition) in journal articles across the world, thereby highlighting significant differences that might be related to the limited visibility of non-US researchers in high impact journals.In dieser Arbeit werden mögliche Gründe für die mangelnde Sichtbarkeit nicht-amerikanischer Forschung in einflussreichen Managementzeitschriften untersucht. Erstens werden Länderunterschiede in Forschungsinteressen untersucht, die es nicht-amerikanischen Forschern/innen erschweren könnten, Forschungsergebnisse in einflussreichen Managementzeitschriften zu publizieren. Zweitens werden psychologische Identifikationsprozesse nicht-amerikanischer Forschern/innen untersucht, die bei der Entscheidung für eine internationale Publikationsstrategie relevant sein könnten. Drittens wird mittels eines sprachwissenschaftlichen Modells zur Analyse von Artikeleinleitungen versucht, Empfehlungen für die rhetorische Gestaltung von Einleitungen akademischer Managementartikel abzuleiten. Viertens werden in dieser Arbeit implizite Erwartungen von Herausgebern/innen und Gutachtern/innen einflussreicher Managementzeitschriften untersucht. Letzteres geschieht durch Analyse der Verwendung sogenannter „Hedges“ in amerikanischer, europäischer und indischer Forschungspublikation