Towards a taxonomy of research misconduct: The case of business school research

This paper examines the growing pressures and incentives encouraging research misconduct, along with the consequences, as illustrated by the case of business school research. Drawing on a review of the literature on different theoretical approaches to analysing organizational misconduct, we develop a formal taxonomy distinguishing appropriate conduct from blatantly inappropriate misconduct but with a specific focus on the ‘grey’ areas between these extremes in the form of questionable and inappropriate behaviour. We identify various sources of research misbehaviour and different categories of those affected. The aim is to provide a clearer understanding of what research behaviour is deemed appropriate or not, which stakeholders it affects, and the pressures and incentives likely to exacerbate such misconduct. We conclude with a discussion of how the taxonomy can help shape future good research practice (thereby setting a better example to students), and offer some propositions for future research.     

Design and environmental technologies: Does ‘green-matching’ actually help?

This paper investigates whether a green kind of design helps firms increase their capabilities for inventing in the environmental domain and whether it does so more than ‘standard’ design. It also investigates whether the effect of ‘green-matching’ between new design and technologies is conditional on firms’ innovative capabilities, as reflected by their R&D expenditure. We address these research questions with respect to the world's top R&D investors, looking at their intellectual property rights at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and proposing an original textual identification of green designs and trademarks. We find that green design increases environmental inventions by top R&D investors, and to a greater extent than non-environmental ones. Standard design also stimulates environmental inventions, but to a lesser extent than green design. The ‘green-matching’ actually helps, but internal innovative capabilities are required to make it effective: a green-tech ‘prize’ emerges from green design, but only once a minimum threshold of R&D expenditure has been reached.     

科研不端行为的惩罚强度研究

政府、学界和社会越来越关注科研不端行为,治理科研不端有助于科研生态系统的健康发展,健全惩罚机制是治理科研不端的主要手段。学术界已经认同科研不端的惩罚力度比较弱,然而科研不端惩罚强度设定及其影响因素的研究还相对缺乏。借助于公开数据,收集了1997-2017年213个典型科研不端案例,构建了科研不端惩罚强度的七个等级,借助于统计软件分析了惩罚强度的影响因素,研究发现：绝大多数案例的惩罚强度在一级到四级之间;社会整体的惩罚强度在增强,但是单个案例的惩罚强度并没有随时间而增强;媒体关注力度显著影响到惩罚强度;科研不端类型叠加对惩罚强度有一定影响。在此基础上,讨论了撤除措施与惩罚措施的区分,学术不端的公共围观效应能否发挥作用,分段惩罚的实施难点,学术规范的内化与过度激励论文数量的内在矛盾。     

Price space and product demography: Evidence from the workstation industry, 1980–1996

This study adds to the product innovation literature by emphasizing the important yet understudied role of price distribution in shaping product demography (i.e. new product introductions and exits). While prior research has focused on market niches in the technological and geographic spaces in order to explain product demography, price space has received very limited attention despite the important role of price in the market. We posit that product dynamics are largely shaped by the existing price distribution. More specifically, we argue that local density in price space determines both the likelihood of existing products exiting the market and the rate of new products entering it. Analyzing product exit and entry in the U.S. workstation industry from 1980 to 1996, we find that while price density increases an existing product’s exit rate, new products are also more likely to enter the niches where the price density is high. We also draw attention to internal price density within multiproduct firms, analyzing a product’s price distance from the other products launched by the same firm. We find that this type of internal price density decreases both existing products’ exit rate and new products’ entry likelihood. Our emphasis on price space contributes to the literature on product innovation and demography.     

How retaining different inside directors on the board influences R&D-intensity: An extension of agency-theory applied to the high-tech sectors

Agency theory views board independence, retaining a high fraction of outside directors, as a hallmark of effective corporate governance. Consequently, many boards have become so “independent” that over 50% of S&P 1500 firms only have one inside director, the ‘lone-CEO’. A small but quickly growing body of ‘pro-insider’ research in agency theory stresses the value of retaining a few additional inside directors to ensure that outside directors are better informed about R&D investments, and to help guide the CEO's long-term technology strategy. We extend agency theory by showing how and why different executive roles, namely the CEO, CTO, and CFO result in contradictory motivations towards R&D investments, due to each inside director's unique resource dependency with key stakeholders. Specifically, we argue that a conflict exists between the CTO's strategic control role and the CFO's financial control role and that the conflict has contrasting consequences for R&D investments. We use panel data analysis to test our theory on a sample of 390 S&P 1500 firms from the high-tech industries, over the period 2002–2015. We find that R&D-intensity increases significantly when a CEO is accompanied by a CTO inside director. Conversely, we find that R&D-intensity substantially decreases when a CEO is joined with a CFO inside director. In fact, a lone-CEO only board is associated with a higher R&D-intensity than a board with both the CEO and CFO. Therefore, whether the CTO or CFO accompanies the CEO on the board matters for preserving R&D expenditure.     

Workers’ replacements and firms’ innovation dynamics: New evidence from Italian matched longitudinal data

In this paper, we explore the impact of a firm's workers’ replacements on innovation performance by using rich matched employer–employee panel data for the Veneto region of Italy. We take the well-known resource-based theory of the firm as our departure point, and develop a set of hypotheses which we test empirically with negative binomial regressions. We find that workers’ replacements significantly dampen innovation performance, coherently with the idea that they generate losses in the tacit knowledge base of the firm. We also find that workers’ replacements are especially detrimental to large and young firms, possibly because large companies benefit comparatively less from ‘diaspora’ effects and because innovative capabilities in young firms are mostly dependent on specific human capital. Finally, our results show that firms’ location in industrial districts significantly mitigates the negative impact of workers’ replacements, and that a similar picture emerges when firms are more exposed to knowledge spillovers, particularly of related knowledge.     

For whom the bell tolls: The firm-level effects of automation on wage and gender inequality

This paper investigates the impact of investment in automation- and AI-related goods on within-firm wage inequality in the French economy during the 2002–2017 period. We document that most wage inequality in France is accounted for by differences among workers belonging to the same firm rather than by differences between sectors, firms, and occupations. Using an event-study approach on a sample of firms importing automation- and AI-related goods, we find that spike events related to the adoption of automation- and AI-related capital goods are not followed by an increase in within-firm wage inequality or in gender wage inequality. Instead, wages increase by 1% three years after the events at different percentiles of the distribution. Our findings are not linked to the rent-sharing behavior of firms obtaining productivity gains from automation and AI adoption. Instead, if wage gains do not differ across workers along the wage distribution, worker heterogeneity will still be present. Indeed, in agreement with the framework in Abowd et al. (1999b), most of the overall wage increase is due to the hiring of new employees. This adds to previous findings presenting a picture of a ‘labor friendly’ effect of the latest wave of new technologies within adopting firms.     

The extent and causes of academic text recycling or ‘self-plagiarism’

Among the various forms of academic misconduct, text recycling or ‘self-plagiarism’ holds a particularly contentious position as a new way to game the reward system of science. A recent case of alleged ‘self-plagiarism’ by the prominent Dutch economist Peter Nijkamp has attracted much public and regulatory attention in the Netherlands. During the Nijkamp controversy, it became evident that many questions around text recycling have only partly been answered and that much uncertainty still exists. While the conditions of fair text reuse have been specified more clearly in the wake of this case, the extent and causes of problematic text recycling remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the extent of problematic text recycling in order to obtain understanding of its occurrence in four research areas: biochemistry & molecular biology, economics, history and psychology. We also investigated some potential reasons and motives for authors to recycle their text, by testing current hypotheses in scholarly literature regarding the causes of text recycling. To this end, an analysis was performed on 922 journal articles, using the Turnitin plagiarism detection software, followed by close manual interpretation of the results. We observed considerable levels of problematic text recycling, particularly in economics and psychology, while it became clear that the extent of text recycling varies substantially between research fields. In addition, we found evidence that more productive authors are more likely to recycle their papers. In addition, the analysis provides insight into the influence of the number of authors and the existence of editorial policies on the occurrence of problematic text recycling.     

The relation between research priorities and societal demands: The case of rice

To what extent is scientific research related to societal needs? To answer this crucial question systematically we need to contrast indicators of research priorities with indicators of societal needs. We focus on rice research and technology between 1983 and 2012. We combine quantitative methods that allow investigation of the relation between ‘revealed’ research priorities and ‘revealed’ societal demands, measured respectively by research output (publications) and national accounts of rice use and farmers’ and consumers’ rice-related needs. We employ new bibliometric data, methods and indicators to identify countries’ main rice research topics (priorities) from publications. For a panel of countries, we estimate the relation between revealed research priorities and revealed demands. We find that, across countries and time, societal demands explain a country's research trajectory to a limited extent. Some research priorities are nicely aligned to societal demands, confirming that science is partly related to societal needs. However, we find a relevant number of misalignments between the focus of rice research and revealed demands, crucially related to human consumption and nutrition. We discuss some implications for research policy.     

科研压力对博士生学术不端行为的影响研究

基于理论分析构建了科研压力对博士生学术不端行为态度的研究模型,并通过234份数据对所提假设进行了实证检验。结果表明,科研压力与博士生学术不端行为态度显著正相关,科研自我效能感在科研压力与学术不端行为态度之间具有部分中介作用,导师指导对科研压力与科研自我效能感的关系没有调节作用,身边同学学术不端行为对科研自我效能感与学术不端行为态度的关系具有负向调节作用。最后,指出了研究结论、建议与局限性。     

Science transformed? A comparative analysis of ‘societal relevance’ rhetoric and practices in 14 Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence

One of the most hotly debated ideas in science studies is the claim that contemporary science is in the midst of a transformation. While ‘transformationalist’ arguments and concepts vary, their core principle is that the norms, values and practices that have enforced the separation of science from society are being challenged by new expectations that scientists pursue closer connections with industry, government and/or civil society, and address research questions of immediate value to non-academic partners. While many major funding agencies have embraced this idea and now pressure scientists to enhance the ‘societal relevance’ of their work, the impact of these changes on scientific practices is still unclear. This paper reports findings from a comparative meso-level analysis of 14 large Canadian research networks funded by an agency with an explicit transformationalist mandate – the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) programme. Documents and web communications from these 14 NCEs, as well as from the central programme administration office, are analysed and compared to key transformationalist concepts, such as Mode 2 science, post-normal science, the triple helix model, academic capitalism and strategic science. We find that transformationalist ideas have a strong rhetorical presence across the 14 NCE projects and the central office, but that a great deal of inconsistency and confusion exists at the level of implementation and assessment of outcomes. Easily quantifiable outputs, such as the commercialization of research findings, are favoured over softer qualitative outcomes, such as public engagement and knowledge sharing. We conclude by arguing that the NCE programme is having an observable impact on the rhetoric of science, but any resulting transformations in practice are incremental rather than radical.     

The vexing but persistent problem of authorship misconduct in research

This paper examines authorship misconduct: practices such as gift, guest, honorary and ghost authorship (excluding plagiarism) that involve inappropriate attribution of authorship credits. Drawing on the existing literature, we describe the extent of authorship misconduct and why it presents a problem. We then construct a simple matching model of guest authorship to show how researchers can form teams (of two) where one researcher free-rides off the efforts of the other; at equilibrium, the latter is content for this free-riding to occur, rather than forming a different team involving no free-riding. We discuss how this model can be generalized to incorporate honorary and gift authorship, and why capturing ghost authorship may require significant changes to the modelling. While formal (game-theoretic) modelling of other aspects of research misconduct is prevalent in the literature, to our knowledge, ours is the first attempt to isolate the strategic interaction that leads to authorship misconduct. If authorship misconduct is a rational choice by researchers, we investigate the use of a monitoring-punishment approach to eliminate the free-riding equilibria. The possibility of monitoring is not just theoretical: we outline the recent advances in distributed ledger technology and authorship forensics that make monitoring of research workflows a viable strategy for institutions to curb authorship misconduct. One of the advantages of working with our simple model is that it provides a framework to examine the relationship between efficiency and ethics in this context, an issue that has by and large been ignored in the literature.     

Demand drops and innovation investments: Evidence from the Great Recession in Spain

The Great Recession, which began in 2008, brought about large contractions in aggregate consumption in many countries. In this research, we study the impact of heterogeneous decreases in demand on innovation investments by analyzing the evolution of innovation investments in a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms during the 2004–2013 period. We proxy heterogeneous variation in demand with net exit rates in the productive stratum of each firm, defined as the group of firms in the same industry and size class. These net exit rates are computed considering all firms in the stratum, including firms that are determined to be non-innovative firms. To support the identification strategy, we show that exit rates do not capture idiosyncratic unobservable characteristics among innovative firms. In addition, we control for the effect of time-varying credit constraints. We find that a one standard deviation increase in exit rates is associated with reductions of 1.5% in the share of firms investing in innovation. The drop is larger for smaller firms, which also experience greater decreases in sales. Since smaller firms are most sensitive to demand drops, they are the natural candidates to be the target of policies devoted to increasing R&D activities during crises. As additional analysis, we study firms’ perceptions of the main obstacles to innovation to find that net exit rates capture the heterogeneous variation in demand, rather than credit constraints. Finally, when analyzing the exit patterns of firms in the sample, we confirm that the net exit rate in a firm's stratum does not drive the exit of firms in our sample.     

The digitalisation paradox of everyday scientific labour: How mundane knowledge work is amplified and diversified in the biosciences

This paper examines how automation and digitalisation influence the way everyday scientific work practices are organised and conducted. Drawing on a practice-based study of the field of synthetic biology, the paper uses ethnographic, interview and survey data to offer a sociomaterial and relational perspective of technological change. As automation and digitalisation are deployed in research settings, our results show the emergence and persistence of what we call ‘mundane knowledge work’, including practices of checking, sharing and standardising data; and preparing, repairing and supervising laboratory robots. While these are subsidiary practices that are often invisible in comparison to scientific outputs used to measure performance, we find that mundane knowledge work constitutes a fundamental part of automated and digitalised biosciences, shaping scientists' working time and responsibilities. Contrary to expectations of the removal of such work by automation and digitalisation, we show that mundane work around data and robots persists through ‘amplification’ and ‘diversification’ processes. We argue that the persistence of mundane knowledge work suggests a digitalisation paradox in the context of everyday labour: while robotics and advanced data analytics aim at simplifying work processes, they also contribute to increasing their complexity in terms of number and diversity of tasks in creative, knowledge-intensive professions.     

科研不端行为的维度与测量

本研究开发了一个科研不端行为量表。首先,通过内容分析法收集并提炼出科研不端行为的陈述题项,形成初始量表;然后,通过因子分析对初始量表进行探索性因素分析,并进行信度检验;最后,通过SEM检验了量表的结构效度。研究结果显示,科研不端行为具有科学导向和关系导向的二阶双因素结构。     

Variety,complexity and economic development

We propose a combinatorial model of economic development. An economy develops by acquiring new capabilities allowing for the production of an ever greater variety of products with an increasing complexity. Taking into account that economies abandon the least complex products as they develop over time, we show that variety first increases and then decreases in the course of economic development. This is consistent with the empirical pattern known as ‘the hump’. Our results question the common association of variety with complexity. We further discuss the implications of our model for future research.     

The ex ante assessment of knowledge spillovers: Government R&D policy, economic incentives and private firm behavior

This paper investigates the role of government R&D subsidy programs in stimulating knowledge spillovers. R&D subsidies are an effective public policy instrument when knowledge spillovers exist yet ex ante it is difficult to identify projects that have the greatest potential to increase innovation and economic growth. This paper derives a set of project and firm attributes that the literature finds generate knowledge spillovers and uses data on project proposals to estimate the degree to which a government R&D program conforms. We find that projects that were awarded R&D subsidies were more likely to have attributes such as participation in new research joint ventures and connections to universities and other firms. Following the post-award activities of firm, we find that receipt of a government R&D subsidy increased the funding from other sources when compared to firms that were not awarded funding.     

Priorities in research policy

Against the background of former empirical and experimental studies on priorities in research and development, conducted by the Studiengruppe für Systemforschung e.V., the Standing Committee on Education and Science of the Deutsche Bundestag requested the Studiengruppe to perform a detailed survey with prominent personalities who mainly deal with research planning and management.The 100 personalities, who participated in this survey, were asked to evaluate 13 research areas sponsored by the government (education, defence, health, EDP, nuclear energy …) according to 8 objectives (raising of the technological standard of industry, improvement of international cooperation, satisfaction of elementary human needs …). In addition, the participants were asked to establish a research budget for 1976.The majority of the participants demanded a further increase of overall research expenditure. The funds allotted to defence and nuclear energy were to be reduced, while the percentages for education, the environment, housing and town planning were to be drastically increased.The differences in evaluation between the groups ‘industry’, ‘research’, and ‘others’ are shown. The limitations of such surveys are discussed and new perspectives and orientations for future research planning are outlined.     

On the use of blockchain-based mechanisms to tackle academic misconduct

Current incentives for publishing in academic journals result in a “winner-take-all” contest-like situation, with significant benefits for publishing research in quality journals. At the same time, empirically, we observe a greater incidence of research misconduct. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the nature and extent of the misconduct problem, to show why it may persist in the absence of conscious remedial action, and to discuss solutions that help lower the likelihood of spurious research escaping undetected. A simple model is constructed to emphasize that there exists the potential for a Prisoners’ Dilemma in academia, where scholars engage in misconduct at equilibrium (the Academic Dilemma). The paper then examines why conventional “centralized” regulatory solutions under the current system are not likely to succeed in resolving the problem, analyzes the properties of a decentralized solution utilizing blockchains, and argues that once incentive structures in academia are factored in, a permissioned blockchain may emerge as an effective middle-ground solution for mitigating scientific misconduct. In doing so, the paper highlights the importance of new technologies and recent advancements in Open Science for battling misconduct, and takes stock of the evolving nature of academic publishing.