Co-Authorship in Management: An Analysis Based on the Author’s Position

Abstract

This research deals with the role of the authors in the field of management in their publications and what factors may influence the ordering of the authors in their publications, we also propose a method to measure author ordering. There are three factors influencing author ordering: (1) career experience; (2) leadership in research groups; and (3) academic background. We analyzed 16 postgraduate programs in management in the state of São Paulo – Brazil, an extant of 329 scholars and more than 2,200 publications. The results show that both scholars’ experience, leadership in research group, and academic background lead them to act more as a manager (last author) than as an executor (first author) in their publications. We conclude that, currently, the scores on researchers made by CAPES every four years, and the others used by educational institutions in the area of administration, do not differentiate the author in his position in the article. This posture brings benefits and disadvantages. The main benefit is to avoid opportunistic behavior among authors in the definition of authorship order; the main disadvantage is that the distinct efforts of each author in the performance of the scientific work are not differentiated.