Carol. My condolences. It sounds as though your dean is determined to make a bad situation 
worse. I have been through most of the merit and ranking struggles either at the system level 
(where we have collective bargaining on pay) and at the school level (where we have some 
rankings and restricted travel funds). There is definitely a parade of horribles that you seem 
to be suffering. Many AACSB deans who have a law background know you cannot rank law 
articles the way many business disciplines choose to rank their publishing outlets. The 
impetus for ranking comes from those not knowledgeable of scholarly law work, often with 
the intent to homogenize the process of evaluation so as to exclude respected outside peers 
and the actual evaluation of the work published. The impact of scholarly publication is often 
limited to a highly specialized professors who do not influence greatly the major work of 
teaching at comprehensive and regional universities. AACSB's supposed emphasis on mission 
of the school ought to more highly prize teaching and learning scholarship, as well as applied 
scholarship, and deemphasize theoretical publication common at doctoral institutions. This 
has not been the case in the past. Educating visitation-team deans on properly applying new 
AACSB standards appears to be as much an impediment to improving our primary mission of 
teaching as is the local dean's perception of what a visiting team will demand. Also, outlet's 
for teaching/learning scholarship are often dismissed as not furthering knowledge. 

This is a national systemic problem, not one unique to your institution or dean. 

My recommendations derived from well over 20 years representing faculty in academic 
governance and politics.
1. Understand the latest accreditation standards and their application. Educate your 
administrators about how these standards support the work of the law faculty in your 
institution (given your mission statement).
2. Educate your administrators concerning legal scholarship, publication outlets, and the 
respect accorded these outlets in the legal profession, by business legal counsel, and by 
corporate leaders with an understanding of the legal environment. (It is reported that CEOs 
today often come from the fields of law or finance.)
3. Participate in governance to assure that there will not be unreasonable approaches to 
merit, budget allocations, and faculty advancement decisions. If the faculty participating in 
shared governance understand the issues, they should resist resource allocation and 
personnel decisions that have criteria marginally related or unrelated to your primary school 
mission. We cannot all be Harvard or Princeton or Cal, focusing on research and the 
education of graduate students who may later teach.


James 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miller, Carol J" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, May 4, 2009 2:17 pm
Subject: Ranking system for articles--A Rant continued
To: [log in to unmask]

> Some reinvention of the wheel is inevitable with a new administrator.
> However, why do administers in general think that the path to 
> greatnessand increasing stature of one's university is paved with 
> journalrankings?  Are there any positive ways of convincing a new 
> Dean that
> going down the ranking path is a bad idea? 
> 
> Three years ago we got a merit system crammed down our throats and
> applied retroactively the first year.  Things have leveled out with 
> thatfor the moment on the merit front, especially since there is no 
> meritmoney (and salaries are frozen this year) - but we still have the
> mandatory evaluations and rankings.   For that merit effort we 
> created a
> very generalized categorization of journals.  Now apparently a much 
> moredetailed list is imminent.   It is not the existing Faculty 
> EvaluationCommittee or a merit committee or research committee that 
> is developing
> the initial list.  It is an ad hoc committee that the Dean has 
> appointedto set "travel budget" criteria.   It will have a major 
> backdoor impact
> on merit, tenure ....  We do have a really good finance professor 
> as our
> department's representative who is open to input from the law faculty.
> But the process is apt to be so unnecessarily divisive and 
> uncollegial -
> and the fight is over a very restricted amount of funds in the current
> economy.  Why is this pseudo measure of quality deemed to be a "good"
> idea when even most of the best authors at a university think it is 
> notand it is so harmful to the collegial working environment?
> 
> Carol Miller
> 
> From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Salbu
> Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 1:01 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Ranking system for articles--A Rant, apologies in advance
> 
> 	Having an official list/ranking of journals is one of the worst
> trends in business schools.  Among the negative effects are (1)
> bifurcation of articles into "okay" and "not okay" based on a crude
> proxy; (2) gaming on the part of departments that seek to load their
> lists with journals that benefit themselves; (3) application of
> standardized journal ranking processes across very disparate
> disciplines, and (4) acceptance/encouragement of career decisions made
> by people who haven't even read the work, but use the publication
> vehicle as a crude, often inaccurate proxy for research quality.
> 	We got rid of "The List" two years ago and the sky DIDN'T fall
> in.  Tenure Committees and Deans need to do their jobs--actually read
> the work and select the right outside
>         reviewers--and stop looking for facile, easy, poor measures.
> 	I know this doesn't help anyone who is required to come up with
> a List.  But it has become one of my bugbears and so I rant 
> whenever the
> subject comes up.
> 	Steve Salbu
> Dean and Stephen P. Zelnak,
> Jr. Chair
> College of Management
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> 800 W. Peachtree St., NW
> Atlanta, GA  30308-0520
> 
> 
> 
>