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The road to earning a PhD in business has become increasingly challenging, not only because of the required intellectual rigor but also because systemic barriers can add unnecessary complexity to the process.

In their recent article, “When Does It Become Overkill and Exploitation?” published in the Journal of Management Inquiry, UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business professors Connie Pechmann and Jone L. Pearce shed light on the growing burdens placed on doctoral students and junior faculty.

Their article reveals how excessive demands are stifling innovation, discouraging domestic students from pursuing academia, and ultimately hurting the field itself. More importantly, they propose solutions to alleviate these roadblocks and ensure research remains relevant, timely, and effective.

Growing Concern About Demands to Secure Tenured Positions

Years of observation and frustration drive Pechmann and Pearce’s curiosity about these circumstances. “Curiosity isn’t quite right; anger is more accurate,” Pearce says. Their conversations began during a commencement ceremony where Pechmann shared a tragic story of a marketing PhD student who died of suicide after struggling to find a job.

Pearce, in turn, expressed similar concerns about the increasing difficulty PhD students and junior faculty face securing tenure. “The demands have increased exponentially,” Pearce explains. “PhD students are taking longer to complete their dissertations, staying in a low-wage environment for extended periods and ultimately struggling to break into academia.”

One of their main concerns is that these challenges are dissuading talented students from pursuing doctoral programs. “In business schools, students always have the option of going into the corporate world instead of academia,” Pearce points out. “We worry we are losing brilliant minds and fresh ideas because the system has become too difficult to navigate.”

The Burden of Excessive Study Requirements

One of the primary hurdles Pechmann and Pearce identify is the excessive number of studies required for publication. “It used to be that 3 or 4 studies were enough to demonstrate a finding,” Pechmann says. “Now journals expect 12 to 15 studies, some buried in appendices. This was originally meant to address concerns about replicability, but if you’re doing the same study over and over with slight modifications, of course you’ll replicate the results. That doesn’t mean the findings are truly robust.”

As Pechmann and Pearce show, the increase in required studies creates multiple problems. “First, it disproportionately affects PhD students, who often lack the funding necessary to conduct such extensive research,” Pechmann says. “Second, it makes the peer-review process more challenging. Most reviewers are working pro bono, so they don’t have time to go through 12 studies in detail. That means they either skim over them, or the editor has to dig through everything. This leads to more errors in our published papers—outright mistakes that weren’t as common before.”

Pearce adds that these high demands also lead to an inflated number of coauthors on papers. “It used to be common to see single-author publications. Now we’re seeing eight or more coauthors on a single paper,” she says. “Junior faculty and PhD students are pressured to add more collaborators because they can’t handle all the additional work alone. The problem is this makes it harder for them to establish a name for themselves. Instead of their research being recognized, the senior faculty members get most of the credit.”

A System That Benefits Senior Faculty and Journals

Pechmann and Pearce also highlight how the current system disproportionately benefits tenured faculty and journal publishers. “Senior faculty members benefit because they get to work with PhD students longer, who in turn help them with their research,” Pearce says. “At the same time, journal editors aren’t hurting because there’s no shortage of paper submissions. New business school accreditation standards require more research output, so the pipeline of papers keeps flowing.” Additionally, for-profit publishers, rather than academic institutions, now own many top journals. “These publishers are in the business of making money,” Pearce says. “In medical journals, they actually hire staff to check data quality. In business research, we rely entirely on volunteer reviewers who are already overburdened. It’s no surprise mistakes slip through.”

Proposed Solutions: A Smarter, More Efficient Review Process

Pechmann and Pearce propose several steps to address these issues:

1. Hire professional reviewers for data quality checks. Instead of solely relying on overworked volunteer reviewers, journals should employ professionals to verify data accuracy, similar to the approach taken by medical journals. This would ensure higher research integrity while reducing the burden on faculty reviewers.
   
   
2. Limit the number of required studies. Journals should impose caps on the number of studies and appendices allowed in submissions. “Some fields already do this,” Pechmann notes. “For example, addiction journals allow only one study per paper. This forces researchers to focus on quality rather than quantity.”
   
   
3. Set maximum limits on page length and appendices. Setting maximum limits on page length, appendices, and supplementary materials would prevent papers from becoming unwieldy and difficult to review. “If a study can’t be explained clearly within a reasonable limit, then maybe it’s not as strong as it seems,” Pearce says.
   
   
4. Provide oversight on reviewer requests. Editors need to step in when reviewers make excessive or contradictory demands. “Right now, editors often just pass all reviewer comments to the author, expecting them to address everything,” Pearce says. “Instead, they should exercise judgment and filter out unreasonable requests.”
   
   
5. Establish faster review timelines. Some management journals have implemented policies that limit revisions to two rounds before a final decision is made. “This prevents papers from going through four or five rounds of revisions, which can take years,” Pearce says. “Journals that adopt these policies attract more high-quality submissions because researchers know they won’t be trapped in an endless cycle of rewrites.”

Streamline the Process to Ensure Relevant Academic Findings

Beyond helping individual students, these changes would also benefit the broader academic community. “We want to encourage fresh ideas and innovative research,” Pearce emphasizes. “If we make it too hard for new scholars to publish, we risk stagnation in the field.”

Pechmann also argues that making research more accessible and timelier would improve the perception of science as a whole. “Right now, research takes so long to publish that by the time it comes out, it’s already outdated,” she says. “If we streamline the process, we can ensure academic findings remain relevant and useful to society.”

Ultimately, Pechmann and Pearce hope their article will spark a broader discussion. “We don’t expect immediate change, but we want to start the conversation,” Pearce says. “If we don’t address these issues, we risk alienating the next generation of scholars.”

Their work highlights a crucial reality: The academic system, designed to foster knowledge, may be discouraging some of the brightest minds from contributing. Addressing these issues is not just about fairness—it’s about protecting the future of research itself.