REVIEW OF SALIENT TRENDS IN PROCEEDINGS’ CHARACTERISTICS: A FIFTEEN YEAR PROFILE OF ABSEL Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 16, 1989 200 A REVIEW OF SALIENT TRENDS IN PROCEEDINGS’ CHARACTERISTICS: A FIFTEEN YEAR PROFILE OF ABSEL Peter M. Markulis State University of New York at Geneseo Phillip Ricci State University of New York at Geneseo Daniel R. Strang State University of New York at Geneseo ABSTRACT This principally descriptive paper reviews the past 15 years of ABSEL Proceedings and traces the following trends: multiple authorship; reference usage; institutional representation; author turnover; and various article characteristics. One particularly important trend, according to the authors, is author turnover. This trend averages 522 for the 15 year period. Based on this finding, the authors suggest an interesting typology for categorizing ABSEL contributors: (1) the ‘one- timers;’ (2) the “regulars;” and (3) the “inspired.” The authors provide some interesting and provocative speculations as to why this and other trends are both important to study in general and for ABSEL in particular. One of the conclusions the authors make is to suggest that ABSEL compare these trends to those found in other academic disciplines. INTRODUCTION It is important for an academic organization to continually assess and evaluate itself. Obviously, there are many ways in which to do this. One could, for example, try to determine the extent to which the organization has contributed to enlightenment, refinements, or advancements in social science; or the examination could be in the form of a review of practical but anecdotal suggestions made in its particular field (e.g., an innovative teaching technique). For just about any kind of self analysis, investigator’s often start examining the organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses. Analysts begin to look at such things as original purpose, history, rigor of research, theoretical papers, award-winning papers, changes in orientation, etc., recommendations concerning the state of the organization, future directions, etc. Invariably, such analyses often lead investigators to make a ‘State of the Association’ pronouncement, i.e., that the organization is in good or bad condition and offering a host of normative recommendations of what should to be done in the future. In reviewing articles submitted to ABSEL, we have found that there have been several assessment/valuative type of articles. En an early article, that is, early in the history of ABSEL, Goosen wrote a piece analyzing ABSEL’s past accomplishments and offering suggestions for the future, one of the biggest being that ABSEL ought to develop greater exposure in order to promote the development and use of business simulations (Goosen, 1978). In 1986, Butler, Markulis and Strang rated contributions to ABSEL in terms of their research design and categorized contributions according to Bloom’s educational taxonomy (Butler, Markulis, & Strang, 1985). They concluded that there was an inordinate number of single shot case studies and hence ABSEL needed to be more rigorous if it was to receive serious attention as an academic organization. They also recommended that ABSEL ought to make some attempt at developing - or borrowing - an educational taxonomy in which to classify contributions, particularly for pedagogical purposes. In 1987, Gosenpud and Sanders used an organizational life cycle model to locate ABSEL’s present status and the various choices which an organization must make at this stage. Their analysis suggests that ABSEL is at a critical state in its organizational life-cycle and must make some important choices in the next couple of years as to orientation, growth, and scope as well as accompanying tactics for accomplishing these. Another article by Goosen in 1986 classifies ABSEL articles, first in three broad categories (simulations papers, experiential papers, and general pedagogical papers and then subdivides these general categories into more discrete categories (Goosen, 1986). Along with some general recommendations at the end of the article, Goosen suggests that further classifications (perhaps a book) would be an important contribution for ABSEL. It is the opinion of the present authors that a continuing self- appraisal is important. Hence, it is the purpose of this paper to view ABSEL from yet another perspective, i.e., contributorship. The paper is a collection of historical data from the past 15 years on ABSEL’s contributors. The paper tracks trends over time in terms of multiple authorship, number of references used, author turnover, number of articles contributed, disciplines of contributors, principal colleges represented through contributions of their faculty, as well as other salient trends. The authors make some comments about why they have looked at these trends (i.e., why they are important) and what the trends indicate, but the study is principally a descriptive one. This allows the reader to make his/her own conclusions. The authors feel that it would be helpful for interested readers to review the works cited above in order to gain a more comprehensive picture of ABSEL. INSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATION Institutionalization representation is an important component for any academic organization. Table 1 lists the top 20 institutions which have contributed to ABSEL through the efforts of their Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 16, 1989 201 faculty. The entire Table was not included because of its length (however, copies are available for those who would like one), but it should be reported that there were a total of 265 discrete institutions including a few non-teaching institutions. Of these, 97 were represented only once, that is, only one article (irrespective of the number of authors for that article). Also interesting is that out of the total of 265 institutions 37 were represented by 10 or more occurrences, while all institutions were represented by 20 contributions. While it is not the purpose of this paper to evaluate the Quality of these institutions or why these particular institutions are the ones represented we feel we can say that the spectrum of institutions is quite broad, in terms of small and medium sized colleges, with few so-called “big” name business schools represented. TABLE 1 INSTITUTIONS REPRESENTED Rank Institution Occurrences 1 SUNY* 39 2 Oklahoma 33 3 Texas Tech 32 4 Indiana State 28 5 Arizona State 26 6 Wisconsin* 26 7 Indiana 23 8 Arkansas 22 9 Hawaii 21 10 Rochester Institute of Technology 21 11 Southern Illinois 20 12 Tulsa 17 13 Louisiana State 16 14 Oklahoma State 16 15 San Diego 16 16 Kansas State 15 17 West Florida 15 18 Wayne State 15 19 Clarkson 14 20 Georgia State 14 21 Illinois State 14 22 North Dakota 14 23 Northern Arizona 14 24 Southern Methodist 14 25 Southern Missouri 13 *includes university systems ARTICLE PROFILES Table 2 illustrates the trends in articles and pages contributed by ABSEL authors over the past 15 years. TABLE 2 ARTICLE PROFILES Total Total Pages Per Articles Pages Article 1974 52 304 5.8 1975 40 328 8.2 1976 42 476 11.3 1977 48 361 7.5 1978 48 306 6.4 1979 70 265 3.8 1980 69 218 3.2 1981 84 267 3.2 1982 78 294 3.8 1983 43 166 3.9 1984 66 267 4.0 1985 49 197 4.0 1986 67 274 4.1 1987 64 255 4.0 1988 75 279 3.7 Total 895 4257 4.8 Yearly Average 60 284 As can be seen, the number of articles accepted per year has varied considerably, from a low of 40 in 1975, to a high of 84 in 1981. Obviously, the average of 46 articles in the first three years is understandable for a fledgling organization. What is more difficult to explain are the large fluctuations in the remaining 10 years. For example, 1983 and 1985 saw 43 and 49 articles, while the average for the 1979 to 1988 period was 67 articles. It is difficult to believe that interest in broad interest in simulations/experiential exercises changed radically during these years. On the other hand, it may not be important to understand why. Some have hypothesized that variables like where the conference is located may be the influencing factor. Total pages and pages per article provide an interesting dimension by which to view the data on articles. However, one must be careful regarding data on total pages and pages per year. It must be remembered that in 1977 ABSEL changed its publication format and this greatly decreased the total number of pages, and hence total pages before 1977 is not a good way to gauge ABSEL’s total quantity output. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that 1976 had the highest number of pages, but had one of the lowest number of articles per year rates. This was probably due to the fact that most of these articles came in the third year of ABSEL and coincides with the dawn of interest in writing and using games. Hence, many of the articles were long, descriptive explanations of simulations. On the other hand, 1982 showed the highest number of pages (i.e., 294 pages with 78 articles) with 1988 a close second with 279 pages and 75 articles. Page size per article seems to have risen slightly over the past three years, but has generally remained steady at about 4 pages per article - which seems to be the “informal” but mandated size of an ABSEL article. THE CONTRIBUTIONS - A PROFILE Certainly, one of the more Interesting aspects of any organization are its contributors. Several Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 16, 1989 202 questions are important here: What is the periodicity or regularly of contributorship by authors over time? What is the “turnover’ rate, that is, writers who write once or twice and then never again? What is the percent of new contributors each year? And, finally, what is the number of contributors per article and has that changed over time? Tables 3 and 4 contain data which address many of the above questions. Before discussing some of the findings, however, some clarifications might be in order. Note the TOTAL AUTHORS column in Table 3. This refers to the total number of contributors to ABSEL each year. The reason why the number is frequently higher than the number of articles contributed is due to the fact that many Conference submissions were co-authored. This fact is expressed in the AUTHORS/PER ARTICLE column. Furthermore, turnover is expressed in the column entitled NEW CONTRIBUTORS. For example, in 1980, there were 69 articles submitted, by a total of 97 authors (includes multiple authors), and out of those 97 contributors, 48 had never submitted or had an article published previously. TABLE 3 TOTAL CONTRIBUTORS AND NEW CONTRIBUTORS Total New % New Contributors Contributors Contributors 1974 61 61 100 1975 63 47 75 1976 40 20 50 1977 64 36 56 1978 73 40 55 1979 101 53 52 1980 97 48 49 1981 109 56 51 1982 117 68 57 1983 68 31 46 1984 101 55 54 1985 76 29 38 1986 103 54 52 1987 94 45 48 1988 111 44 40 Total 1278 687 52 Yearly Average 85 TABLE 4 CONTRIBUTORS PER ARTICLE Number of Contributors Authors Per Article Per 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Article 1974 38 13 1 1.2 1975 22 14 4 1.6 1976 27 15 1.0 1977 28 17 1 2 1.3 1978 26 13 8 1 1.5 1979 40 17 11 2 1.4 1980 46 13 7 2 1 1.4 1981 49 30 5 1.3 1982 40 29 9 1.5 1983 17 19 9 1 1.6 1984 25 31 7 2 1 1.5 1985 24 16 8 1 1.6 1986 35 21 9 2 1.5 1987 32 22 8 2 1.5 1988 29 34 12 1.5 Total 478 304 96 13 2 1 1 Looking horizontally across at the percent of NEW CONTRIBUTORS column in Table 3, one readily sees that ABSEL has had a rather high turnover” rate (52% being the overall average and 46% being the average for the last five years). It is NOT clear why this is the case. Table 4 contains information on the number of contributors per article over 15 years and also includes an AUTHORS PER ARTICLE AVERAGE column. It is interesting to note that the average number of authors per article has shown a slow but steady growth over the first 8 years and has remained relatively stable for the last 7 years at 1.5. What is even more fascinating is that in 1983, 1984 and 1988, co-authored articles out numbered a single authored contributions, and in fact, if one looks at Table 6, it shows a growing trend in co-authored articles, although, triples do not seem to illustrate any trend. One observation not directly found in any of the above Tables, but observed by us as we compiled the data was that contributors seemed to fall into one of three broad classifications: 1. The “one-timers” - those that contributed once and were never heard from again, (Out of a total of 687 unique contributors over ABSELs fifteen years, 375 were one-time- only contributors while 106 contributed just twice, 53 thrice and 30 four times or more); 2. The “regulars” - those that published just one article yearly and lid so on a regular basis (15 contributors fit this category covering at least 5 years or more); 3. The “inspired”--those that published two+ articles per year (88 contributors here). It should be noted that the above figures include multiple authored articles (i.e., if a contributor wrote co-authored articles in one year, that contributor would be categorized as an “inspired”). Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 16, 1989 203 CITATIONS PROFILE One standard by which to measure an article’s scholarly rigor is to count the number of references. The authors looked at this in two ways - the number of references over the years (total) and the number of references per article over the years. Table 5 Illustrates these results. TABLE 5 CITATION INDEX Total Total References Articles References Per Article 1974 52 82 1.6 1975 40 219 5.5 1976 42 222 5.3 1977 48 271 5.6 1978 48 241 5.0 1979 70 415 5.9 1980 69 338 4.9 1981 84 491 5.8 1982 78 511 6.6 1983 43 352 8.2 1984 66 586 8.9 1985 49 448 9.1 1986 67 631 9.4 1987 64 676 10.6 1988 75 669 8.9 Total 895 6152 - Yearly Average 60 410 6.9 As seen in Table 5, the total number has increased steadily over the years, except for 1981, 1983, and 1985, and for these years, if one controls for number of articles, then references also increased. Nineteen eighty-seven saw the highest total number of references with a total of 670. Nineteen eighty-seven also had the highest number of references per article with an average of 10.5. Since 1983, the average number of references rose to about 8.3 per article and rose slightly for the next few years to around 9 and has remained around that level ever since. An issue which possibly deserves attention is reference source. For example, did contributors principally cite past ABSEL works, or other sources? And why? In any event, citation growth rate seems to indicate an increasing emphasis on scholarship and research. CONCLUSION One of the most startling trends discovered in the analysis of the historical data on ABSEL’s contributors is the high turnover rate of authors. The mean percentage of new authors contributing to ABSEL each year is 52%. Two possible hypotheses to explain this phenomenon: 1. It is possible that many authors’ research interests have been channeled into areas outside of gaming and experiential learning. 2. Authors have used ABSEL as a stepping stone In developing research interests and now publish in alternative publications. One must ask the question, Does ABSEL provide researchers/authors with sufficient benefits to encourage further publication? Goosen states in his “1977” article: The ability of ABSEL to influence the future of business simulation usage will depend, in part on the size of its membership, (Goosen, 1977). At the time of this statement ABSEL had 250 individuals join, but only 140 remained active. Currently ABSEL has grown to approximately 350- 00 members, of which approximately 235 are active. Some encouraging trends indicate that the number of references per article is Increasing, together with a greater number of authors engaging in co- authorship. These trends are indicative of a possible increase in “scholarly rigor” as mentioned earlier. The increase in collaborative efforts could provide the avenue needed by ABSEL to continue to grow not only in sheer numbers, but also in retaining the current authorship base. This research adds to the both of self-analysis research conducted on ABSEL. Future research in evaluating ABSEL would be to determine if the trends found In ABSEL’s contributorship parallel that of other similar academic organizations. Certainly it would prove interesting if a researcher would compile the above research along with the other self-analysis articles conducted on ABSEL and develop a history/profile for an academic research organization. This history/profile would be interesting and instructive for other research organizations and for the social scientific community in general. REFERENCE: Butler, R. J., Markulis, P. M., & Strang, D. R. (1985). Learning theory and research design: How has ABSEL fared? Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Exercises, ABSEL Proceedings. Gosenpud, J., & Sanders, P. (987). ABSEL - At a crossroads? Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Exercises, ABSEL Proceedings. Goosen, K. R. (1985). An analysis of ABSEL conference papers (1974-1985). Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Exercises, ABSEL Proceedings. Goosen, K. R. (1977). An Analysts of ABSEL: Its past achievements and future prospects. ABSEL Proceedings. Table of Contents Volume 16, 1989 Quality Control Circles (QC™s): Towards a Computerized Simulation The Canadian Hospital Executive Simulation System (CHESS) The Impact of Using Group Performance Evaluation as an Experiential Exercise The Impact of Leader and Team Member Characteristics Upon Simulation Performance: A Start-Up Study Planning for Career Success: Is Where you are Going Where you Really Want to Be? The Production Frontier: Modeling Production in the Computerized business Simulation A Study of the Need for Valid Business Game Algorithms Modeling the Human Component of Business Simulations A Stimulating Simulation in International Business Business Ethics, Experiential Exercises and Simulation Games Collective Bargaining Simulation: Adding Reality Through Point Scoring The Use of Experiential Teaching Techniques: Creativity vs. Conformity Visualization and Guided Imagery in the Organization Behavior Class: An Experiential Exploratory Approach Arranging an Agenda: An Activity on Running Better Meetings Harried Harry: An Experiential Capstone for Students of Organizational Behavior Coping with Stress: An Experiential Exercise Fairness in the Classroom: An Empirical Extension of the Notion of Organizational Justice A Study of the Relationship Between Student Final Exam Performance and Simulation Game Participation Competency Based Development: A Management Development Exercise Simulation Performance Revisited: The Fit Between Instructor Style and Learning Style An Evaluation and Application of an Instrument for Measuring Pedagogical Effectiveness A Knowledge Based System to Support Reasoning by Analogy for Business Simulation Gaming using Forecasting Accuracy as a Measure of Success in Business Simulations The Development of Algorithmic Functional Business Games Strategy Design, Process and Implementation in an Unstable/Complex Environment: A Second Exploratory Study Simulation Integration Contrasts Between MBAs and Undergraduates in the Capstone Policy Course An Investigation of the Real World Usefulness of a Strategy and Policy Course Using a Business Simulation Framework Duel (sic) Views of Internships, as Experiential Learning The Impact of Decision Support Systems on the Effectiveness of Small Group Decisions - An Exploratory Study An Investigation of the Relationship Between Formal Planning and Simulation Team Performance Under Changing Environmental conditions Sensitivity Analysis with the Complete IFPS/Personal Student Analysis Package: A marketing Decision Support System A New Approach to Teaching Salesmanship using Persona, Microskills, and a Sales Process A Rational Case for Synthetic Experience as a Prime Ingredient in the Marketing Curriculum SalesHire: A Microcomputer-Based Salesperson Selection Exercise TRANSECON: An Interactive Program for Learning Transportation Economics Hypercard as a Construction Tool for Short Instructional Exercises A Game to Introduce Accounting Information Systems Students to Certain Internal Control Concepts "Commitments" - A Demonstration Proposal An Analysis of Popular Games as Experiential Models for Corporate and Collegiate Management Education An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Strategic Emphasis in Management Games on Attitudes, Interest, and learning in the Business Policy Course Predicting Individual Decision Making Performance in a Business Simulation: An Empirical Study Strategic Planning And Organizational Performance In A Business Simulation: An Empirical Study, PAM (Planning Action Management) Simulation of a District Sales Territory Lifelong Learning and ABSEL: An Inquiry on Definitions and Relationships A Review of Salient Trends in Proceedings: A Fifteen year (1974 - 1988) Review of ABSEL Contributorship