The prestigious Journal of Business Research recently instituted a "Highest Citation Impact Award". The prize is awarded to the article in the journal that is being cited most frequently during a decade. The first prize was awarded to Anna Dubois, professor in Industrial marketing and purchasing and Lars-Erik Gadde, professor of industrial marketing, at the Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, for their article "Systematic Combining - An abductive approach to case research".
Happy and surprised
The current number of citations in Google Scholar exceeds 600, which makes it the fourth most cited article in the history of the Journal of Business Research. Anna Dubois and Lars-Erik Gadde had not expected to get this far.
- We were very pleased and somewhat surprised since it took quite a while before it started to attract attention. A decade may be a relevant period of time to evaluate the impact of articles of this type. Not least because it has been quoted in many doctoral theses, which take some time to finish, say Anna Dubois and Lars-Erik Gadde.
The authors believe that the citation success is due to the fact there are quite few publications dealing with case studies, and therefore the article filled a gap in the literature.
Applied worldwide
The article, published in 2002, is a methodological contribution, dealing with issues related to how case studies can be motivated and conducted. The article is based on a paper presented at a conference in Dublin in 1999 which was then invited to be included in a special issue of the Journal of Business Research.
The article has been applied worldwide and in several disciplines. At Chalmers, it is not only researchers at the department of Technology Management and Economics that have referred to it, but also researchers from Product and Production Development, and Civil and Environmental Engineering.
- Issues related to the relevance of various research methods are always on the top of the academic agenda. I think you could say that the article supports the claim that case studies can be conducted in a rigorous way, says Anna.
Lars-Erik received the award at the Annual Conference of the Society for Marketing Advances, held in Memphis, 2-5 November.
Commentary in the pipeline
The success of the article has created a ripple effect since Lars-Erik and Anna have been asked to write a commentary that will be published in the Journal of Business Research in 2012.
- We have received an "order" for another article. One idea is to analyse how other researchers have used the method. Sometimes it can take several years to get into the journal, so of course it feels good that we got this opportunity, says Anna.
Anna and Lars-Erik has no direct advice on how to reach high citation scores since they did not expect that the article would be met with such success.
- When it comes to papers on research methodology it might be useful to think in terms of how they can help other researchers. A general aspect is to consider and evaluate what journals to submit to, in order to reach the "right" audience, says Anna.
A successful research group
The Division of Industrial Marketing, to which they belong, has been successful also in fulfilling the two other academic tasks. When it comes to education, both Anna and Lars-Erik have been awarded with the Chalmers’ Pedagogical Prize (1989 and 1990). Together, they received the award “Ph. D.-supervisor of the year” at Chalmers in 2002. Both have also been rewarded with the I-students' pedagogical prize. With respect to making research useful to society, the Division of Industrial Marketing has received three awards from industry for practically relevant research: the Ahlsell Prize, the STORA-Papyrus Award and the Söderbergska Handelspriset.
Text: Caroline Örmgård and Eleonore Jinesjö
Photo: Eleonore Jinesjö