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Appointment Preferences of Management Professors

  • University Reforms
  • Published:
Schmalenbach Business Review Aims and scope

Abstract

Based on a survey of university management professors in German-speaking Europe, we analyze the relationship between individual and organizational characteristics and university academics’ preferences in appointment decisions. Senior faculty’s attitude towards change proves to be a particular robust predictor of differences in appointment preferences. Faculty who were satisfied with university structures before any reforms place greater value on high-quality monographs and the possession of the venia legendi. Faculty who welcome the aims of university reforms value prestigious journal publications and international experience in applicants. Our results confirm previous homophily and similarity research by showing that university professors value characteristics and qualifications that they themselves possess. Our results also show that differences in appointment preferences depend on whether universities are publicly or privately financed, and their rank in the CHE reputation ranking.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information, Organisation and Management, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, 28 Ludwig Street, 80539, Munich, Germany

    Marina Fiedler (Assistant Professor) & Isabell Welpe (Assistant Professor)

Authors
  1. Marina Fiedler
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  2. Isabell Welpe
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Correspondence to Marina Fiedler.

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Order of authors is alphabetical. Both authors contributed equally to this work and should be considered cofirst authors.

Seneca, Epistulae Morales, VIII, 71, 3.

The authors would like to thank Sabine Aschmutat, Michael Beckmann, Susanne Blaszejewski, Julia Brandl, Lars Fend, Egon Franck, Nikolaus Franke, Gunther Friedl, Dietmar Griechnik, Marc Gruber, Wolfgang Güttel, Svenja Hagenhoff, Dietmar Harhoff, Silvia Heer, Joachim Henkel, Thomas Hess, Andreas Klein, Markus Klein, Carmen Kobe, Christine Legner, Christian Lüthje, Theresa Michel, Kathrin Möslein, Rahild Neuburger, Siegfried Numberger, Burkhard Pedell, Andreas Richter, Manfred Schwaiger, Karin Stenke, Tina Syring, Daniel Veit, Birgit Verworn, Iwan von Wartburg, Wolfgang Weber, and Robert Wilken for their valuable comments and suggestions. We are also indebted to Arnold Picot for his valuable guidance and suggestions. We also thank all survey participants for their time and effort. We are grateful for the continuous support of and cooperation with the German Association of Management Professors in this project. We thank Ilse Evertse for her help in editing the manuscript.

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Fiedler, M., Welpe, I. Appointment Preferences of Management Professors. Schmalenbach Bus Rev 60, 4–31 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396757

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