Promotion, motivation, and faculty research productivity: Theory testing and model construction for a Taiwanese setting.

Abstract

This study explored to what degree promotion motivates and rewards faculty research productivity in a Taiwanese setting. It uses a range of statistical analyses to test three different theories in their ability to answer the following research questions: (1) To what degree does the desire for promotion motivate faculty to perform research? (2) For what kinds of faculty does promotion motivate them to perform research? (3) To what degree does the promotion system actually reward faculty research productivity? Twelve research hypotheses were generated from behavioral reinforcement theory (psychology), expectancy theory (psychology), and universalism (sociology of science). They were tested on four sources of data: faculty vitae, National Science Council data, institutional publication lists, and a mail survey. The data included 1,017 full time faculty members' career publication records. Statistical analyses of the data included a nonresponse bias analysis, binary tests of difference, multivariate analyses such as logistic regression, discriminant analysis, and event history analysis. The latter indicates a significant methodological advantage of the study because event history analysis can handle right-censored observations and time-variant variables which traditional faculty studies are unable to cope. The major findings are: (1) empirical support for behavioral reinforcement theory varies by discipline and publication type; (2) as expectancy theory predicts, instructors and associate professors who highly value promotion are more likely to publish than colleagues less concerned with promotion; (3) faculty who desire promotion also tend to be more motivated to obtain other kinds of external and internal rewards (e.g., a pay raise) than their colleagues; (4) the promotion system is effective in rewarding faculty research productivity in that faculty who publish more get promoted more quickly; and (5) promotion distribution, however, is not universalistic. Other things being equal, the promotion decision favors men over women and favors older over younger faculty. Overall, this study contributes to an as-yet poorly-developed literature on the motivating effect of promotion rewards on faculty, and to the sociology of science with regard to whether the norm of universalism works well in academic communities.