Abstract
Over the last two decades, management education and research in India have been accompanied by an intensification of performance-based evaluation systems. These systems increasingly prioritise publication counts, citation-based metrics, and journal rankings. Although these mechanisms were introduced to boost global visibility and research productivity, they have also created a persistent strain between research quantity and research quality. This paper examines this strain by positioning the evolution of management research in India within the broader context of global, metrics-driven academic governance. Drawing on institutional theory, principal–agent theory, and the literature on academic capitalism and knowledge production systems, the paper examines how regulatory mandates from regulators such as the University Grants Commission, together with the globalisation of journal rankings and citation metrics, have reshaped incentive structures for scholars and institutions. The paper argues that an excessive dependence on publication counts and journal-based proxies for quality puts undue pressure on faculty members to focus on short-termism, opportunistic publishing behaviour, and methodological conformity. This is resulting in unintended and undesirable outcomes, such as a decline in sustained, theory-building research, proliferation of lower-quality publications, and ethical misconduct. Simultaneously, the paper challenges the binary framing of quantity versus quality in research evaluation. Excellence in research is inherently multidimensional and context-dependent, particularly in the context of academic systems such as India. The paper advocates for an integrated evaluation framework that assesses research across four dimensions: inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes. It also recognises differentiated expectations across career stages and institutional types, while integrating global standards with contextual and local relevance. The paper contributes to the literature by reconceptualising research quality beyond narrow bibliometric indicators and by offering policy-relevant recommendations for regulators, institutions, and individual scholars. It concludes by outlining directions for future empirical research on research evaluation.