what makes a paper influential and frequently cited?

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William H. StarbuckUniversity of Oregon

Social trends that raised the value of esoteric expertise, stimulated the creation of

knowledge-intensive firms and so created an opportunity to study some organizations that

academics had overlooked. A lack of presuppositions, a useful research method, and thoughtful

experts in these firms helped to uncover some surprising behaviours. The resulting paper

attracted citations and may have stimulated research about knowledge as a business resource

and a managerial challenge. However, the topic continues to pose questions for further research.

INTRODUCTION

I did not set out to write an influential and frequently cited paper . . . or even a paper.However, the success of ‘Learning by knowledge-intensive firms’ was not mere chance.

Success resulted in part from my propensity to visit diverse countries, from some beliefs

about what makes for good research, and from some methodological practices that arise

from these beliefs. This article explains how these factors contributed to the study’s

development and recognition.

Bo Hedberg invited me to make the keynote speech at a conference in Northern

Sweden devoted to ‘knowledge-intensive firms’ (KIFs). He said the conference budget

would pay the keynote speaker’s airfare. The idea of seeing a close collaborator and other

Swedish friends was very attractive, so I agreed to make the speech.

That agreement created a problem, however. Although Swedish scholars had beentalking about ‘knowledge firms’ for several years, I had never heard this term and had no

clear ideas about how KIFs might differ from each other or from other kinds of

organizations (Sveiby and Risling, 1986). I asked many colleagues in New York if they

had heard of ‘knowledge-intensive firms’. None had. Our collective unawareness might

have been a sign that the topic was either promising or not worth pursuing aggressively.

The forthcoming conference created a deadline that compelled action. Thus, despite

my uncertainties about what KIFs might be, I went searching for some. The KIF

category would surely include the Rand Corporation and Arthur D. Little, two compa-

Address for reprints : William H. Starbuck, 1234 E. 21st Avenue, Eugene, OR97403, USA ([email protected])

© 2010 The Author Journal of Management Studies © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and Society for the Advancement of ManagementStudies. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA.

JMS

Journal of Management Studies 47:7 November 2010doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00903.x



nies with very high prestige for their expertise, so I started by visiting them. People in

each visited firm suggested additional firms to visit. A few months later, with the

conference looming, I created a slideshow that described what KIF personnel had told

me. I did not intend to write a paper, just to make a relevant and interesting speech

(Starbuck, 1990).

Nevertheless, this unplanned start eventually led to ‘Learning by KIFs’. Although I

found my probes into the topic very interesting, I did not anticipate that many other

people would agree with this perception. However, in retrospect, I can see environmen-

tal and methodological factors that helped to make this paper influential and frequently

cited.

The next three sections of this article point out some of these factors. The paper was

a response to environmental stimuli that placed the paper at the beginning of a rising

trend in research. The paper drew citations from this trend and it may have contributed

to its own success by accelerating the trend. The following section suggests methodologi-

cal approaches that help researchers to take advantage of new trends. One requisite isthat such research should be more likely to discover useful new insights rather than

merely to echo researchers’ prior beliefs and to confirm their expectations. New insights

make papers more interesting and therefore more likely to attract citations; they also

surprise the researchers who have them, so they invite omissions and errors. The third

section illustrates such surprises by reviewing a few observations reported in ‘Learning by

KIFs’ that surprised me. The final section of this article points out some issues that I wish

I had foreseen or had not overlooked. Perhaps other researchers will think these omis-

sions deserve investigation.

SOME CONTEXTUAL FACTORS THAT ATTRACT ATTENTION

AND CITATIONS

Although three years elapsed between the conference and the paper’s publication,

‘Learning by KIFs’ appeared soon enough to be an early paper on a new research topic.

The newness of the topic meant that the paper faced little competition from alternative

formulations and that readers expected to find new ideas in the paper. Subsequent

papers were likely to acknowledge it.

Innovative papers are much more likely to originate reactively than proactively. A

researcher who focuses on and adheres to a long-range plan may make important

contributions, but these contributions are not going to respond to newly arising issues

in the researcher’s environment. By contrast, a researcher who has a flexible research

agenda can pick up new topics spontaneously, at the risk of flitting capriciously from

one trivial and ephemeral topic to another. Thus, researchers need to balance enthu-

siasm for new topics by also maintaining medium-range commitments to topics of

importance.

Research topics can be too new rather than too stale. New social systems such as KIFs

develop differently, and with experimental adventures over time, so their characteristics

are disorderly. Efforts to understand very new social systems have to confront both theheterogeneity of the systems themselves and the researchers’ lack of effective filters for

distinguishing important stimuli. Time brings more homogeneity across social systems as

What Makes a Paper Influential and Frequently Cited? 1395

© 2010 The Author Journal of Management Studies © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and

Society for the Advancement of Management Studies



Did ‘Learning by KIFs’ draw attention to previously neglected topics? The citations

did not become substantial until the year 2000, eight years after the paper’s publication,

and total citations peaked in 2002 and 2006.

Figure 2 compares three-year moving averages of citations to ‘Learning by KIFs’ with

citations to Sidney Winter’s (1987) chapter, ‘Knowledge and competence as strategic

assets’. Percentages on the vertical axis are relative to total citations during the first 17 years following publication. Citations to Winter’s chapter began somewhat more slowly,

which might indicate that his chapter, which appeared five years earlier, faced an even

more indifferent audience. Citations to Winter’s chapter peaked in 2000, whereas cita-

tions to ‘Learning by KIFs’ have remained rather steady since 2000.

SOME METHODS THAT NOURISH INSIGHT AND DISCOVERY

Courses about how to do research usually teach methods and procedures that do not

foster new discoveries. The courses place great importance on previous research and

researchers’ prior beliefs about typical instances, and the taught methods draw inferences

about averages whereas averages usually provide poor descriptions of individual

instances. The taught methods also assume random sampling although truly random

samples are very hard to obtain and researchers rarely have them. Courses about

statistical methods give centrality to null hypothesis significance tests, which may label

practically important effects as ‘not significant’ and may characterize effects too small to

be practically relevant as ‘significant’ (Schwab and Starbuck, 2009).

Researchers can learn things that are more useful by investigating carefully selected

instances and noticing peculiar or distinctive properties of these instances (Starbuck,

1993). Because people and organizations conceal many activities and thoughts behindfaçades, readily available data are usually very misleading (Nystrom and Starbuck, 1984a).

And, because facades have to deceive most people, they take advantage of causal clichés

Figure 2. Moving-average citations: ‘Learning by KIFs’ compared with Winter (1987)






and accepted recipes. Thus, the easy research that relies on surveys and public databases

is very likely to discover empty clichés and superficial rationalizations. Researchers can

learn things that are more realistic by using methods that penetrate façades.

Of course, deviating from widespread research practices may make it very difficult to

publish findings. Journal reviewers are likely to react with incomprehension, derision, or

even hostility. When Gans and Shepherd (1994) asked prominent economists their

opinions of journal reviews, many told about articles that journals had rejected but that

later became very influential. Fortunately, journal editors sometimes ignore reviewers’

negative opinions about unusual manuscripts (Starbuck, 2003, 2006a).

Venturing into a new topic initializes and activates researchers’ noticing processes.

The researcher perceives many factors, issues, and activities, but has insufficient expe-

rience to filter the important from the unimportant. A consequence can be that the

researcher fails to perceive elements that should be significant while focusing on elements

of little importance. However, KIFs were especially fortuitous objects of study because

many of their personnel were highly educated people who engaged in research them-selves. These people had been observing their environments and reflecting on events

around them, and they were very eager to discuss their perceptions and thoughts. As

well, their personal recommendations facilitated access to other KIFs.

Interviews with KIFs’ personnel demonstrated the usefulness of ‘active listening’, a

method that was new to me. ‘Active listeners’ conceal their personal reactions to what

they hear and make only innocuous remarks that encourage speakers to continue talking:

‘Tell me more’. ‘What did you do then?’ ‘How did that make you feel?’ ‘Uh-huh’. ‘That

is interesting’. Made very frequently, such responses reinforce the act of talking to an

unfamiliar degree, with the result that many speakers talk more freely than they normallywould. Several of my interviewees spontaneously talked about subjects that people

normally do not discuss with anyone other than very close colleagues or friends, and

perhaps not even with them.

I adopted ‘active listening’ in the hope that it would mitigate the influence of cognitive

frameworks derived from my earlier research and reading. Too often, researchers begin

by reviewing previous studies and formulating expectations that derive from and are

consistent with previous studies. One result is that researchers learn little about the

entities they purport to be studying and their ‘findings’ restate their own prior beliefs in

new language (Starbuck, 1981, 1994, 2006b). If KIFs were different or special, I wanted

to find out how.

Pursued as a pure extreme, this ambition was futile, because everyone’s perceptions

blend prior beliefs with new observations. All KIFs have idiosyncrasies and interviewees

have different jobs and different histories. Payne and Pugh (1976) remarked that

members of the same organization perceive it so differently that it makes no sense to

calculate averages of what they report. Since each of my interviewees talked about a

distinctive world, the similarities I perceived were partly of my own manufacture.

WHAT SURPRISED ME

The idea that researchers ought to test hypotheses is a strange one. This idea seems to

express confidence in deductive logic, but such confidence is irrational unless the initial

W. H. Starbuck 1398

© 2010 The Author Journal of Management Studies © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd andSociety for the Advancement of Management Studies



assumptions have strong validity. Researchers who can make assumptions with great

confidence have no reason to undertake empirical studies, for data can only confirm

ritualistically what the researchers already know. Empirical studies gain value by

showing the inadequacy of researchers’ initial assumptions, and highly valuable empiri-

cal studies bring surprises that make papers interesting (Barley, 2007; Davis, 1971;

Starbuck, 2006b).

‘Learning by KIFs’ certainly surprised me. Since I began the study with weak pre-

conceptions, or so I thought, I was expecting to learn new things. However, some of the

things I learned contradicted my expectations by quite a lot.

At Aerospace Corporation, an executive explained that his company had once had

difficulty relating to its sole client, the US Air Force. Aerospace employed highly edu-

cated, highly paid engineers who had great autonomy in their jobs. Since these personnel

had similar qualifications, Aerospace operated as a very flat hierarchy with only three

levels. However, this flat hierarchy had caused problems for the Air Force officers who

represented the company’s client. Aerospace had been asking Captains, Majors, andLieutenant Colonels all to interact with engineers at the bottom of the hierarchy,

implying that Lieutenant Colonels were no different from Captains. Inconsistent role

expectations caused confusion and tension during interactions between Aerospace per-

sonnel and their clients. After a time, Aerospace personnel realized that they should

adapt to the expectations of their clients, and the company created a seven-level hier-

archy for purposes of client relations. This hierarchy was actually a façade and Aerospace

personnel ignored it during interactions within the company. Although Paul Nystrom

and Starbuck (1984a) had written about organizational façades, this façade had a

surprising degree of calculated superficiality. A senior partner at A.D. Little drifted into talking about salary structures and

explained that the senior partners made many times as much as the technical experts

who actually carry out studies and write reports for clients. He attributed this

large differential in compensation to the senior partners’ social skills and their long-

term relations with clients. This exposition exposed an implicit premise that I had

imported into the study without thought – an assumption that technical expertise was

highly valuable. At the firms I visited, social skills and social capital were both rarer

and more precious than technical expertise. Indeed, is it not interesting that schools

teach technical skills and those social skills that are necessary to perform well as a

subordinate in a large organization, and they do not teach the social skills that

empower some individuals and propel them to the tops of technical hierarchies

(Dreeben, 1968)?

Since I had found social capital to be very important although previously little

discussed, I had expected to discover many citations to ‘Learning by KIFs’ from papers

and books about social capital. Thus, one of my surprises during the writing of this

comment was finding that ‘Learning by KIFs’ has drawn few such citations by books and

papers about social capital. Perhaps, books and papers about knowledge work discuss

social skills and social capital along with other factors. Or, perhaps, organizational

researchers who are themselves technical experts do not like to consider the possibilitythat their technical skills are less important than the social skills of their deans and

university presidents.






Some surprises appeared while I was analysing my interview data. Different analyses

might have produced different insights, or no insights at all. For instance, I noticed that

experts in diverse kinds of companies – law, research, consulting – had described

themselves as storage units for their organizations’ memories. These job descriptions

seemed strange and novel. That observation induced me to look for other similarities in

job descriptions across diverse companies. I found other instances in which experts

whom I had regarded as having dissimilar jobs had actually described their work in very

similar language. My presuppositions, my commonplace stereotypes, had filtered my

perceptions of the actual data. As I dug deeper into concrete observations – precise

language, fine details – my presuppositions lost explanatory value.

Yet another surprise came after I presented my study to a faculty seminar. I had

started the KIF study with the assumption that knowledge resides in people. Lawrence

Rosenberg challenged this assumption and argued forcefully that knowledge can exist in

physical form – books, computer memories, and so forth. He was right, of course.

Indeed, knowledge stored in physical objects is probably much more importantfor human affairs than knowledge stored in human bodies, even in the bodies of

specialized experts. Yet, some scholars – including ones who publish books and journal

articles – seem to underestimate the importance of knowledge in physical objects (Von

Nordenflycht, 2010).

My greatest surprise came when I ventured into the law firm, Wachtell, Lipton,

Rosen, and Katz. None of these lawyers had studied management academically, but they

had acted in practice much as professors of management advise their students to act – in

human resources policies, in governance, in organizing, in strategizing, and in customer

relations. The firm had also been phenomenally successful, both financially and ininfluence on their social environment. I returned to the offices of my department and

went around telling colleagues, with amazement, that the notions we were teaching

actually do work!

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY

With benefit of hindsight and current observations of social trends, I see topics I wish I

had explored. Perhaps these omissions will attract the attention of other researchers.

Effects of Globalization

Two decades ago, I did not foresee the large amount of global dispersion of expert

services that has been occurring. Companies have not only placed call centres for

technical support around the world, they have located research laboratories and engi-

neering design centres around the world. Knowledge-based activities have been at least

as mobile as physical work (Malhotra and Morris, 2009).

These migrations of expertise reflect wage differentials and supplies of skilled workers.

Countries such as India have excellent educational systems that produce more highly

skilled graduates than their local economies can absorb productively, so KIFs takeadvantage of these opportunities to buy expertise cheaply. As well as reflecting differ-

ences between countries, migrations of expertise change the differences between coun-

W. H. Starbuck 1400




tries. Countries have been competing for knowledge-based activities by offering

incentives to universities and research centres because over the longer run, these activi-

ties create more jobs for educated people and raise standards of living.

In the short run, this geographic dispersion increases the relative advantage of social

skills over technical expertise. In the end, however, such dispersion undercuts KIFs’

market positions by making expertise less esoteric, and it challenges KIFs’ ability to

manipulate clients’ perceptions of the value of expertise.

What have been the consequences of countries trying to attract or create KIFs? Does

expertise spread more or less rapidly than the demand for expertise grows? Some studies

have argued that underdeveloped countries gain more by investing in primary education

than in secondary or tertiary education (Boissiere, 2004). However, such studies have

focused on very impoverished countries that lack strong primary education systems. Do

KIFs offer significant economic value for countries that already have strong primary

education systems (World Bank, 2002)?

Social Construction of Value

I also underestimated the importance of salesmanship and negotiation in the construction

of expertise. On one hand, the participants in KIFs do not merely deliver what their clients

have requested. They tell their clients what they ought to want to know, what is worthy of

investigation (Kärreman, 2010). Researchers who depend on grants from foundations and

government agencies apply for grants to carry out projects that they have already

completed. Consulting companies hire experts on temporary contracts to create ‘packs’ of

slides that discuss common problems and solutions, and consultants then incorporate these

packs into proposals or reports to clients. On the other hand, clients choose theirconsultants, and these choices depend on many factors in addition to the consultants’

expertise and reputations, including prices and previous relationships. Rhenman (1973)

asserted that consultants are always ploys in intraorganizational political contests.

To what extent are such processes of social construction superficial facades versus

genuine deceptions? Are foundations and government agencies unaware that researchers

apply for funds for projects they have already finished? Some of the administrators of

grant programmes once worked as researchers who submitted proposals to foundations

and government agencies. Do the executives who listen to polished presentations really

believe that they are hearing ideas that consultants have tailored to fit their companiesdistinctively? Some of these executives once worked as consultants themselves. Are

executives who interview several consultants before choosing one unaware that the

consultants know hiring choices reflect intraorganizational political contests?

Forgetting, Unlearning, and Relearning by KIFs

Strategic-management theories say that expertise can sell for higher prices if it is valuable

and esoteric – that is, generally unknown to the public and somewhat rare. However,

when KIFs deliver information and advice to clients, their expertise becomes explicit and

partially exoteric, so KIFs are constantly at risk of destroying their primary assets. Ourstudies of companies facing crises showed that over longer periods, social and techno-

logical changes not only obsolete companies’ learning but also turn it into handicaps that






can steer them into major reorientations, including bankruptcy (Starbuck et al., 1978).

For learning to be effective over long periods, companies must engage actively in

unlearning as well as new learning (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Nystrom and Starbuck,

1984b).

High profits depend on companies having partial monopolies, such as those based on

locations, reputations, or licenses. However, it is extremely difficult for KIFs to maintain

monopolistic positions unless they receive external support, such as governmental pro-

tection (Starbuck, 1992). Even a firm such as the Rand Corporation, which was created

to support military operations and has long maintained close relations with the US

Defence Department, can lose research contracts quickly. Experts are mobile and repu-

tations can be very impermanent, as knowledge grows obsolete with age (Argote, 1999).

New experts are constantly emerging from universities, and research programmes are

constantly defining knowledge frontiers (Markman et al., 2008).

Knowledge also leaks through organizational boundaries. ‘Learning by KIFs’ told

how one consulting company first assembled some software tools into a package that itportrayed to clients as giving the company competitive advantages, and then offered to

sell the package to its competitors. Two decades ago, I thought the consulting company

had been foolish to offer its distinctive assets to its competitors, thereby undermining

some of its competitive advantage. I have since come to realize that the originating

company would have lost the advantages conferred by its software package in a few years

in any case, as employees migrated from one company to another, taking copies of the

software tools with them.

A similar leakiness can occur with all forms of idiosyncratic or localized knowledge.

Although companies can learn from their successes, they have to deposit this knowledgesomewhere. If they deposit the knowledge within people, those people take the knowl-

edge with them when they move to other companies. If companies deposit knowledge in

procedure manuals or databases, departing employees are likely to export copies of these

storage media when they move to other companies. Indeed, competitors can often infer

what others have learned by watching their behaviour. Levin et al. (1987) and Cohen

et al. (2000) have found substantial differences between industries in managers’ percep-

tions of the usefulness of patents and in the apparent consequences of patents. Where

knowledge has stronger protection, companies have weaker incentives to create new

knowledge.

What factors, other than governmentally enacted protections, strongly affect KIFs’

abilities to create and maintain distinctive competitive advantages Are there effective

techniques for plugging leaks of idiosyncratic or localized knowledge?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article has been improved by questions and suggestions from Joep Cornelissen, Roger Dunbar, SamHolloway, and Mike Wright.

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