Business research is as out of focus as Economics

There is quite a bit of soul searching in Economics, as the current crisis has highlighted that some research areas had been covered less than optimally. Political science also has its crisis, following severe cutbacks in US federal research grants. It turns out business research is also in introspection mode.

Maggie Geuens claims that business research is not useful anymore. Specifically, the author tries to make five points:

1. The focus of research is other academicians, and not businesses.
   
2. Publication is all about impact (within academics) and citations.
   
3. Negative results never make it out.
   
4. Having to craft a well polished paper is a crass misuse of a researcher's time.
   
5. There is too much reliance on impact factors and citations.
   

This could also have been written for Economics. I really struggle with this obsession about getting prestige within the profession over making useful contributions, especially among the younger generation. And unfortunately, this is more pronounced in the top departments, and these are the ones that will give us the next generations. We really need a wake-up call in the profession that economic research should primarily be about improving global welfare, not a pissing contest among academicians.