What Crisis? Management Researchers' Experiences with and Views of Scholarly Misconduct

Abstract

This research presents the results of a survey regarding scientific misconduct and questionable research practices elicited from a sample of 1215 management researchers. We find that misconduct (research that was either fabricated or falsified) is not encountered often by reviewers nor editors. Yet, there is a strong prevalence of misrepresentations (method inadequacy, omission or withholding of contradictory results, dropping of unsupported hypotheses). When it comes to potential methodological improvements, those that are skeptical about the empirical body of work being published see merit in replication studies. Yet, a sizeable majority of editors and authors eschew open data policies, which points to hidden costs and limited incentives for data sharing in management research.

Keywords: Data fabrication; Data misrepresentation; Ethics; Scientific misconduct.