In 2009, the German economic newspaper Handelsblatt published for the first time a research ranking of scholars in
business administration. The ranking listed the ‘top 200’ researchers in business administration in German-speaking
countries as well as the ‘top 100’ researchers under 40 years of age.5 The calculation of the individual ranks was based
exclusively on publications in peer-reviewed academic journals. Publications were ranked according to the rank of the
journal in which they appeared, using a journal ranking that had been established by synthesizing a set of existing journal
rankings from different sources. Already in 2009, some academics apparently reacted in an ‘extremely sensitive’ way to the
ranking (Mu¨ ller and Storbeck, 2009), because they either did not agree with its methodology or with the very idea of
establishing such a ranking. In 2012, when the ranking was published for the second time, the reaction was even stronger. A
group of around 300 academics signed a protest letter and requested the Handelsblatt not to list them in the ranking. The
protest letter was published by Handelsblatt and generated a debate on the Handelsblatt website about the usefulness of
rankings and similar instruments as governance mechanisms in academia6. At the heart of this debate was a concern with
the notion of ‘research orientation’ and with the way in which it should be operationalized. On the one hand, there were
many scholars who in their comments pointed out that initiatives such as the Handelsblatt ranking would help promote
research orientation among German-speaking scholars and would instill accountability and transparency into a system
where decisions regarding promotion or hiring tended to be taken in a less than transparent way. On the other hand, there
were those who warned against the dangers of relying on such research rankings as governance mechanisms, emphasizing
the narrow understanding of ‘good research’ that such rankings would promote.
I believe that this debate exemplifies the dilemma that institutions and policy-makers in Continental Europe are confronted
with these days. In their efforts to put more focus on the quality and quantity of research, they run the danger of
institutionalizing a particular understanding of what is ‘good research’ – at the expense of a rich variety of forms in which
research can potentially appear. Having discussed one side of this dilemma (i.e. the opportunities) above, I will now look at the
opposite side, i.e. the threats that such a quest for research orientation may involve. My focus will be on two issues that, I believe,
underlie several of the more ‘technical’ concerns that are often voiced against rankings and similar monitoring and control
systems. The first one is with the diversity of research, the second with the way in which researchers relate to the outside world.
Research in accounting may focus on a variety of accounting-related phenomena, events or activities. It can be carried out
by employing a range of different methodologies and methods. It may draw upon different data sets from different parts of