Shaping the Marketing Discipline: An Analysis of Dissertations*

The value of academic activity and output has always been elusive in its measurement. Frequently, the general areas of expected performance are defined as teaching, research, and service, and contributions to each area are expected from faculty members who are good academic citizens. As far as an evaluation of the particular contribution is concerned, faculty committees and deans seek resort to proxy measures for guidance. In the field of teaching, the number of courses and students taught and the student evaluations of teachers are often used. For research, one often looks to the number of publications and the types of publication vehicles in which they appeared. For service evaluations, the number of committees on which an individual serves and the hours of time expended in the performance of service are often assessed.