ASQ Research Listserver Volume 2, Number 2, August, 1996

Current subscribers: 488

General listserver guidelines: 
1. Postings and subscription requests:   asq@umich.edu 
2. Web archive:   http://www.umich.edu/~asq 
3. Please reply to the moderators, rather than to all subscribers. 


In this issue: 
Moderator comments: "This is the end" (Morrison,  c. 1969).

The editors and editorial board of Administrative Science Quarterly 
have decided to end the ASQ Research Listserver experiment. The 
board discussed the listserver at its August 11 annual meeting, held 
at the Academy of Management meetings in Cincinnati. We 
concluded that the listserver is not meeting its goal of stimulating 
important scholarly discussions and useful interactions among those 
in the field of organization studies and related disciplines. We 
believe that electronic media have the potential to create new forms 
of intensive research discussions, but we recognise that our 
experiment has achieved limited success. Although the ASQ 
Research Listserver has several hundred subscribers and continues 
to attract new members, the research questions and comments have 
generated only light discussion during its year of life. 

We have considered at least six possible reasons for the lack of 
discussion: uninteresting research questions, lack of critical mass of 
subscribers, lack of proprietary intellectual rights, embarrassment 
with introducing partially developed ideas, need for time and effort 
for intensive discussion, and listserver discussion format. We do not 
believe that the first two reasons apply, but do believe that the latter 
four factors have contributed to the lack of discussion.

First, the questions that people have posed might have not 
generated sufficient research interest. Although  the list of questions 
is short, however, the issues posed include questions central to 
ASQ's research community. We do not believe that the questions 
explain the lack of discussion.

Second, perhaps the listserver has too few subscribers to generate 
discussion. The subscriber list has included about 500 
organizational researchers, however, which should be sufficient to 
generate at least initial discussion. We do not believe that the 
subscriptions explain the lack of discussion.

Third, people might be reluctant to carry out intensive discussion of 
concepts that they hope to publish, for fear that someone else might 
publish first. Although we would argue that extensive discussion of 
new ideas leads to better publications, both for the field as a whole 
and for the individual researchers involved in the discussion, we 
recognise that lack of proprietary rights might play a role in the lack 
of discussion. 

Fourth, some people might be embarrassed to introduce partially 
developed ideas, for fear of appearing casual or naive. As in the 
previous point, we would argue that extensive discussion of 
partially developed ideas leads to stronger concepts, both for the 
field as a whole and for the individual researchers involved in the 
discussion. Nonetheless, we recognise that potential embarrassment 
might play a role in the lack of discussion.

Fifth, the need for substantial time and effort to carry out intensive 
discussion might contribute to the lack of discussion. Developing 
careful research positions takes substantial work. Many researchers 
prefer to focus on writing papers rather than talk about writing 
papers. One could argue that talking about research in a thoughtful 
community of researchers will help one write better papers, but the 
shorter term focus on writing may dominate longer term intensive 
discussions in a distributed community. People may prefer to carry 
out intensive discussions in more local contexts and use electronic 
media for more focused questions and answers concerning 
references, conferences, and other shorter-term issues. Clearly, this 
point relates to the proprietary rights and embarrassment issues in 
points four and five. We believe that the time and effort factor plays 
a role in the lack of discussion.

Sixth, the sequential format of the listserver may inhibit discussion. 
A more interactive format, such as the interactive opportunities of 
some web sites, might encourage more extensive discussion. An 
alternative to ending the ASQ listserver, therefore, would be to 
sponsor an interactive web site for research discussion. However, 
many existing web-based interactive discussions tend to generate 
more short comments than intensive ongoing discussions. We 
believe that the distributed electronic media will eventually provide 
a means for intensive discussion of thoughtful ideas that push 
forward our research community. Indeed, several of the existing 
listservers in the academic community are providing valuable 
experiments and are generating thoughtful discussions. At this 
point, ASQ does not plant to initiate a web-based effort. 
Nonetheless, as individual researchers and as the research 
institution that is Administrative Science Quarterly,  we look 
forward to participating in experiments with interactive distributed 
forms of research discussion.

We have enjoyed this experiment and have learned a great deal 
from it. Thank you for participating in the ASQ Research 
Listserver.