Download This PaperUnintelligible Management Research and Academic Prestige
Interfaces, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 80-86, April 1980
11 Pages Posted: 8 Mar 2005 Last revised: 31 Dec 2011
Abstract
Modest support was found for the Dr. Fox Phenomenon: Management scientists gain prestige by unintelligible writing. A positive correlation (+0.7) was found between the prestige of 10 management journals and their fog indices (reading difficulty). Furthermore, 32 faculty members were asked to rate the prestige of four passages from management journals. The content of the passages was held constant while readability was varied. Those passages that were more difficult to read were rated higher in research competence.
Keywords: Management, journals, research and academic prestige
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