My academic career: a story in four seasons, eight failures, and four morals

Tells the story of my eight most significant career failures and their unexpected upsides

Anne-Wil Harzing - (updated Sat 30 May 2026 11:14)

© Copyright 2026 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. First version,20 May 2026.

In my January 2020 blogpost Be proactive, resilient & realistic! I talked about the challenges that even very famous academics have faced in their academic careers. Moreover, in our recent article Every Little Action Counts (Harzing & Sathish, 2026), we include being open about our failures as one of the example micro-practices under the “resist a hero narrative” label, in itself a specific representation of the more abstract concept of humility.

Now that I am semi-retired (see Retirement), I decided to “walk the talk” by reflecting not only on my own career failures, but also on the unexpected upsides that were associated with each of them. Whilst I am not claiming that there are upsides to every failure, our failures often represent cross-roads that can help us to reflect more deeply on the best path through the maze of our academic careers.

Before we start though, let’s get one thing straight. I am privileged! I am white and was born in an affluent Western country (the Netherlands) in the 1960s, an era characterized by wide-spread optimism and belief in social and economic progress. My education was largely free; even at tertiary level there were generous grants available for students who – like me – came from families with low incomes, and only a part of these grants had to be repaid. I did two full tertiary degrees, so received these grants for 7.5 years. This seems incredibly generous now but remember that at that time only about 5-10% of 18-year-olds went to university.

This certainly gave me a much easier start in life, but it doesn’t mean that my academic career was universally smooth. That said, I do not claim the set-backs in my career were unique or even particularly dramatic, although some of them – such as my all but failed PhD and my first redundancy – definitely felt like it at the time. However, I sincerely hope my story will help ECRs to realize that things that appear like major problems at the time can also have unexpected upsides, and might even be positive turning points in your academic career.

I will tell my own career story in four seasons: education, early career, mid-career, and late career. Your own challenges, set-backs, or failures will be different or may appear at a very different stage. But I do believe that the four morals that I derive in this white paper have some general applicability. And remember, this is a story about major cross-roads in my career; it is not about the many daily set-backs that we all experience as academics. Here are three universals that you may not be fully aware of:

  • Every academic gets rejections all the time; for instance, everyone experiences paper rejections, even editors of top journals see their own papers rejected.
  • Everyone has difficult colleagues/collaborators; in fact, you may well be “that difficult colleague” for others. We all have different personalities and preferences.
  • Every academic I know feels undervalued in their own university; especially research-active academics often receive far more recognition outside their university than within.

So, with that in mind, please join me on a journey through the seasons. If you want to skip to a particular section, just use the Tables of Contents below. If you are curious about what happened before my academic journey even started see This little girl: message to my younger self.

Table of contents

Spring: Education – A slow start?

Summer: Early career – The long way around?

Autumn: Mid-career – Failed progression

Winter: Late career – Premature endings

Related blogposts and webpages

Spring: Education – A slow start?

Failure 1: I didn’t go to university

There was no “Grand Design” or strong purpose behind my academic journey. Unlike many other academics, I never had a strong passion for a particular academic subject when I was young. Foreign languages, however, had always fascinated me, possibly because we never really travelled abroad when I was a child.

At secondary school, I studied six languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Greek. I graduated in five of them, adding Geography and History to my selection, and took Business & Economics as an extra-curricular subject. It was – and apparently still is – rather pejoratively called a “pretpakket” in Dutch, literally translated as “a fun curriculum”.

It was seen as “the easy path”, taken only by pupils who had no ability in the supposedly more difficult Science subjects. In my case, a lack of ability in Science subjects was probably not the main reason for choosing languages; I was quite decent in Mathematics, did well in Biology and Chemistry, and – despite spectacularly failing one exam with a 4 out of 10 – would have managed more than a bare pass for Physics.

But I didn’t really enjoy the Science subjects and my grades for my non-Science subjects were definitely higher; I eventually graduated with 9 out of 10 for most of them. So as soon as I could, I dropped not only Biology, Chemistry and Physics, but also Maths. The latter might have been due to my grumpy Maths teacher who didn’t think Maths was for girls; yes, it was the seventies... But then again, the careers advisor never batted an eyelid either, even though he must have known that dropping Maths would close the door on most university degrees.

Without Maths, the only things I could really study were languages, Law, Classics, History, and Geography. Despite preferring them to Science subjects, none of these appealed to me for further study, the only subject I really liked was Business & Economics, but that had Maths as a prerequisite.

This was one of the reasons I opted for a vocational degree. The other reason was that none of the older generation in my family and only a few of my 35-odd cousins had even tried university, let alone finished a degree. So, university just didn’t feature on my horizon.

I therefore did a vocational degree in Business & Languages for 3½ years, learning how to hold a conversation and write business letters in French, English, and Spanish, but also learning the basics of Marketing, Finance & Accounting, and Management. This degree was offered in only three places in the Netherlands, but I could get a place in only one of them, three hours away from my home-town. So, I had to move away from home and live independently.

Upside 1: Personal joy & growth

Doing a vocational degree and not going to university might seem like an odd start to a career as a university professor. However, leaving home at 18, living independently, and doing a degree that was easy for me meant that – as a very shy girl – I gained both confidence and independence. This was made easier by finding a group of friends who were a bit like me, quiet and not into big rowdy parties with lots of drinking. We had small parties at which we talked till late at night about life.

I also had the great fortune to meet my now husband – an electrical and later computer science engineer – at a classmate’s birthday party. He has not only been the biggest source of personal joy in my life, but also the most amazing source of career support. First, he expertly tutored me in Mathematics so that I passed a “deficiency course” in Mathematics with a 10 out of 10 and was able to go to study Business & Economics after all.

He also recommended me to start my website late in the 20th century, when the internet was still in its infancy. Not only that, he maintained it for me for quite a few years and in 2016 even custom-designed a content management system for me. Finally, in 2006 – when I was turned down for promotion – he developed the Publish or Perish citation analysis software, which we have continued to provide for free to millions of academics and students for 20 years now. Most of all, he has been a listening ear and a source of advice for more than 40 years.

Doing a professional degree ultimately gave me the courage to go to university after all. I soon realised the professional degree was a bit too easy for me and didn’t challenge me. The school-like teaching, with 30 hours of class-time a week also didn’t suit me as I love independent study. Moreover, interacting with my husband and his fellow students at the university campus – where I spent a lot of my free time (see pictures on the left below) – made me realise that I really did want to go to university too.

But I hedged my bets and did finish my professional degree, including a practical training period at Texas Instruments in the UK (in Bedford, a place that – ironically – we are now only a short train ride away from). My husband joined me for the last couple of (Winter) months, and we experienced the joy of living in an English bed-sit in the mid-1980s (see pictures on the right below), living with half a dozen other people in a big - and not very well-maintained - Victorian home.

Paying a bit more for our room than the others, we were fortunate enough to have our own kitchen, rather than a one-pit stove on a table with a wash-basin as a sink. But the décor so garish that we put up posters to cover up part of it, and the toilet and shower were in an outbuilding outside. As our rent was inclusive of energy costs, the landlady only provided heating for a few hours a day on a time-clock. So, the reason I was wrapped up in all my clothes and a duvet was simple: a power cut over Christmas meant that the heating was only on during the night :-(.

After 3.5 years in a vocational degree that didn't really excite me, I now had the motivation and confidence to go to university. But I still wasn’t keen on being one of 500 students in big lecture theatres, which was the norm for Business & Economics in the Netherlands. So, when I discovered that a new degree – based on problem-based small group learning – had just started, I was immediately attracted to it.

And when it turned out that one of the specialisations was International Business, allowing me to continue to combine my interests in Business and Languages, I was sold. So, after finishing my professional degree and working at the ITC (International Training Centre, see also Technology in the decade before my PhD) I started my university degree at Maastricht University (then called Rijksuniversiteit Limburg).

Failure 2: I didn’t get any exemptions

Normally, students who did the type of vocational degree I had done (HEAO: Higher Economic and Administrative Education) would get a 1.5-2-year exemption when embarking on a 4-year university degree in Business & Economics. Even those who had done a hospitality degree qualified for this. But as my HEAO degree was so new, and it had a strong focus on languages, I didn’t qualify for any exemptions despite having studied Economics, Finance & Accounting, Marketing, and Management. This policy changed a few years later, when the degree became more established, but obviously that was too late for me. Hence, I had to start my university degree from scratch.

I felt this unfairness even more keenly after I had started my degree. In the first 1.5 years of the degree there were no exams; Maastricht University operated with what they called a “progression test”. It covered all the knowledge that was taught in these first 1.5 years and passing it was a hurdle requirement for the final 2.5 years of your degree. Students would take it four times a year. Obviously, you were expected to improve gradually and pass in the middle of the second year.

The initial benchmark test - at which you were expected to fail miserably - was conducted in the first month of the first year of the degree. I passed it! That was not entirely surprising given that my professional degree had included most of what we would be taught in those 1.5 years. But rules were rules, so I was told I had to formally complete the 1.5 years I had just passed.

Upside 2: Time to grow more confident

Starting in the first year meant that I was four years older than most of my fellow students, which made it quite hard to connect with them. However, the age difference had unexpected advantages too. Being older and much more knowledgeable than my classmates, and a hard worker, I was a natural choice for student jobs at the university. Even before I started my degree, I worked at the secretariat for 6 weeks. At that time, it was the hub of the academic community, everyone would drop by several times a day for mail and coffee. So, I got to know my future lecturers and learned a lot about how universities worked.

The problem-based learning approach involved groups of 12-15 students engaging in self-directed discussions based on specific business problems as described in the course manuals. These groups were facilitated by a tutor who would help students when they got stuck. In the second year of my degree, I became such a tutor for 1st-year students. It was a role I really enjoyed and as I was five years older than them, I felt quite comfortable in it.

In my 3rd and 4th years, I worked as a student research assistant in the department of Management & Organization, helping academics with literature reviews, interview transcriptions, and creation of course manuals. At that time, I also worked with Geert Hofstede (yes, the cultural dimensions guy), first finding articles citing his work and then creating systematic summaries of them. This may seem like a mundane job, but as I have described in Doing research in an analog time, finding literature was by no means easy in the mid-1990s, and this was even earlier, the late 1980s.

Somehow, I also ended up as a student member of the Faculty’s governing board, sitting through the many manifestations of organizational politics with a poker face. This was not – as my PhD supervisor assumed – because I was sensible enough to keep quiet, I just didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. But I did learn the value of having a poker face, people attribute their own feelings to you. This can obviously be positive or negative, but in a professional context it has usually worked out positively for me.

All of this meant that even during my studies I had already experienced a taster of teaching, research, and service/leadership. I was thus able to find out – in a very low-pressure setting – what academic life was like. I am not sure that without these experiences the thought of becoming an academic would ever have crossed my mind. So, in the end, I am incredibly grateful that I was denied the extensions. It is very unlikely I would have felt comfortable taking on all these extra duties if my studies had required more time.

[Obviously, I am aware that these days most students hold a significant job next to their studies. But honestly, this wouldn’t have been possible in the Netherlands in the 1980s. Teaching stretched out over 40 weeks – not 24 as is common in many undergraduate degrees these days – and we were expected to read and digest a huge amount of literature every week, much of which consisted of academic articles, not textbooks. Moreover, in groups of 12-15 it was impossible to stay quiet, let alone be absent, and we were graded on participation].

Moral 1: Professional failures can lead to personal joy & growth

All in all, I think my experiences in the first 8 years after leaving secondary education were crucial in my journey to becoming an academic. The slower journey was not intentional, but it allowed me to gain confidence. Sometimes, it may just take a little longer for the egg to mature into a little chick.

I suspect the same is likely to be true for many other academics who are “first in the family” to go to university. Or even for anyone who felt they “didn’t fit the mold”, whether it was because of their ethnicity, gender, social class, or neurodiversity. So, ask yourself: what are/were your challenges at this stage, and can you see upsides to them as well as downsides?

Summer: Early career – The long way around?

Failure 3: Didn’t get a “real” job

After I completed my second degree at tertiary level, I still had no clue what I wanted to do in terms of work. Remember: I still had no role models or mentors. This was a pattern that would continue throughout my academic career, and it was a key reason for becoming a dedicated research mentor myself in the later stage of my career, i.e. to give others the support I never had myself (see Upside 7: A great job I might not have found otherwise).

Another problem was that I didn’t graduate into a particularly clement job market. I sent out many dozens of applications for specific jobs but didn’t get shortlisted for any. And all the “cold applications” I sent out either went unanswered or resulted in a polite “we are not recruiting” answer. The fact that I didn’t a clear idea of what I wanted, or what my strengths were, will not have helped either. So, when my supervisor for my Masters’ thesis informed me of a freelancing opportunity at the Open University, I grabbed it with both hands.

The job involved writing a study guide and several chapters in a course book in industrial relations. This was an area that I was familiar with from my studies, and was at least somewhat interested in. Even better, I was asked to write a new course plan for a topic I was definitely interested in: international human resource management. But at a reunion with my former HEAO classmates, who had now all been in “proper” jobs for 5 years, the question: “so are you happy having a freelance job” did rather hurt, as it was clearly implied I shouldn’t be.

Upside 3: A textbook and finding my passion for academia

Even so, I really enjoyed my work for the Open University, specially creating the course on International HRM with an accompanying English language textbook that I co-edited with my OU colleague. I found authors for fourteen of the sixteen chapters I had proposed and authored two chapters myself. Retrospectively, I am quite proud that – armed with only a Masters’ degree – I was “cajoling” much more senior academics and even famous professors into providing good chapters. Now more than thirty years after first being published, the textbook is in its seventh edition.

Whilst working at the Open University, I also realized I needed to do a PhD to stay in academia – a world I had come to feel very much at home in. However, I didn’t want to enroll in a formal PhD program in the Netherlands, where topics were often driven by the student’s supervisor. I was far too independent for that. Moreover, after having completed two full degrees and spending a total of 7.5 years in Higher Education, I didn’t relish attending more courses either.

So, I decided to do what many Dutch academics had done for decades: complete my PhD part-time while holding a lecturing job. My only problem was that, at the time, the Open University didn’t have a research tradition, and I didn’t have colleagues who could guide me in my research. However, as I was interacting regularly with a team of professors for the International HRM textbook I was editing, I asked two of them to be my informal supervisors.

In fact, my PhD resulted from this same International HRM textbook. I had planned a chapter on HQ-subsidiary relationships in it but couldn’t find an author for it. So, I decided to write it myself, and fully immersed myself in the literature in the field. Ultimately though, the topic wasn’t a good fit for the textbook. But as I had already done so much work on it, I decided I might as well do a PhD on it. And that’s how I kind of rolled into doing a PhD in International Business. Yes, I have always been the ultimate pragmatist :-).

Finally, there was also a personal upside to the freelance work: I was paid “gross”, i.e. tax wasn’t withheld before paying my salary. It was up to me to declare my income in the next tax return. Obviously, I did, but the delay between payment and the deadline for completion of a tax return meant that we had nearly a year to use the money before having to pay tax on it. So, we were able to use it as a deposit on our first house, thus reducing our mortgage considerably. As mortgage interest rates were around 9% at the time this was very welcome indeed!

Failure 4: My PhD was all but failed

I worked on my PhD manuscript for about four years in conjunction with part-time teaching-only jobs at three different universities in the Netherlands. As is true for many academics, much of my PhD work was therefore done in the evening and weekend hours. But hey, I was young and ambitious. So, it was just something you got on with. Moreover, despite the inevitable hick-ups and set-backs, my PhD progressed quite smoothly overall; I even enjoyed many aspects of my PhD journey. You can read more about it here: The process – a four-year journey.

However, I already knew that academic jobs were quite scarce in the Netherlands at that time. So, in order to be internationally competitive, I participated in conferences to create connections – I even won the award for the best thesis proposal at EIBA 1994 in Warsaw. I also published quite a bit during my PhD, including the two articles below based on my “detective work” around academic referencing practices and an analysis of the response rates I achieved in my survey.

The result of all this hard work was a PhD manuscript that weighed in at well over 100,000 words, tested 90 hypotheses, and had more than 650 references, including quite a few to my own published work. My thesis definitely had a lot of content. It provided a very rigorous review of the literature, and the methods chapter, and both of the two results chapters ran to about 60 pages each.

But the one thing my thesis didn’t have was a strong theorical framework. It was a rigorous application of contingency theory, with strong sensitivity to the cross-cultural research context, but this theoretical grounding was discussed rather briefly. I am an ultimate empiricist, give me data and I’ll do forensic research to get to the bottom of something. It is the kind of research that gives me joy (see also the necessity, meaning and joy framework in You finally made it to full professor, now what?).

So, in my PhD I simply did what I had seen done in most journal articles in International Business journals at the time: review the literature and then formulate and test a set of hypotheses based on that. But what my two internal examiners wanted was theory-driven research. So, despite a stellar report from the external examiner, the internal examiners believed the dissertation should not be approved. I have documented this story extensively elsewhere, so here I will just record my whirlwind of questions.

  • I had just secured my first permanent job in the UK. Would that job offer even stand without a PhD?
  • Without a PhD would my academic career be over before it had begun?
  • We were due to move countries for my new job a month later. We had already bought a house and the removalist was booked. Would we need to cancel all of that?

All these and more questions were swirling around in my head and led to many sleepless nights. My distress was compounded by the way the news had been communicated, a letter in my departmental mail tray which could have been seen by anyone. This was further complicated by the complete lack of clarity about what the examiners’ decision meant in practical terms; the only options in the regulations were rejection or (conditional) approval. My outcome was neither. About five months of uncertainty followed…

If you are interested in the full story, you can read it here: On failures in academia: My PhD journey.

Upside 4: A highly cited monograph and journal articles

Fortunately, my new employer didn’t withdraw my job offer. They even worked hard to find a loophole in their regulations, allowing me to submit my thesis there as a member of staff within a year of joining them. In complete contrast to my earlier experience, it was approved without any changes by two external examiners, both well-known academics in International Business and Comparative Management. They praised my manuscript for the rigorous research training it reflected, which was rather ironic as I was completely self-taught.

My PhD manuscript was a finalist for two dissertation awards that year, the Gunnar Hedlund Best Dissertation Award at the European International Business Academy and the Barry M. Richard Best Dissertation Award at the Academy of Management. Stripped of its statistical appendices and lightly edited, the same manuscript was also published as research monograph called Managing the Multinationals in Peter Buckley’s Horizons in International Business series, published by Edward Elgar (see image below).

As I was so junior and unknown, Edward Elgar didn't grant me any royalties unless I sold over 750 copies. They also made me do all the page formatting myself. After three weeks of wrestling with their formatting guidelines, the book was delivered "camera-ready”, having been printed on my own laser-printer at home :-). Ironically, with 649 Google Scholar citations my PhD is now the most cited book in the Horizons in International Business series. Only two other books garnered more than 200 citations, and they were written by famous academics. Most only got 40-50 citations, if that.

The book ultimately sold around 650 copies, not bad for a research monograph costing £ 110 pounds (in 1999, it is £151 now). In addition to individual sales, the book was also acquired by nearly 200 university libraries. Most of these were in the Anglosphere (United States: 82, United Kingdom: 26, Canada: 10, Australia: 6, Ireland: 4), but copies were bought by a substantial number of libraries in Germany (16) and the Netherlands (8) too, and there were holdings in several Southern European and Northern European countries, as well as in Turkey and Israel. What surprised me most was the book's popularity in libraries in Asia: Malaysia (5), China (3), Taiwan (3), Japan (2), Singapore (2) and the Philippines.

Beyond the book, published in 1999, my PhD was the source for six more articles in highly ranked journals between 2000 and 2003. Obviously, they were not a straight reworking of my PhD manuscript, that would not have been allowed. They required new framing and additional analyses, and several required additional data collection. But they were all based on the work I did during my PhD. The last article – on country-of-origin effects in MNCs – won the Roland Calori Prize for the best paper published in Organization Studies 2003-2004.

Moral 2: The long way around may lead to better outcomes

Not getting a “proper” academic job, and all but failing my PhD were certainly not an auspicious start to an academic career. But ultimately, I think that – for me at least – it ultimately led to better outcomes. If I had got a FT academic job after finishing my Masters’ degree, still quite common at Dutch universities at the time, I would probably have been pushed into a teaching-only career and might not have had the courage to protest.

I certainly felt a bit like the little duckling venturing outside the straight and narrow line of what was expected. I had done things differently by not getting a regular job and by not doing a PhD in a formal PhD programme. It clearly had both negative and positive effects. But for me it set the tone for the rest of my career: I continued charting my own course.

Autumn: Mid-career – Failed progression

Failure 5: Lack of career prospects in the UK

After years of part-time and casual jobs, I was very happy to get my first permanent full-time job in the UK. Initially I even had a very reasonable teaching load of three courses, but this increased quite a bit when my “teaching twin” left academia and wasn’t replaced. So, it was not all roses. But I was young and still had lots of energy.

So, I managed to leverage my PhD research and built up a good research profile in three distinct research programs: International HRM & Staffing Policies, HQ-Subsidiary Relationships in MNCs, and Process issues in International Research. As one of the most research-active junior academics I also became the ECR member of the research committee.

I even job-crafted a role as coordinator for international students, combining my research in cross-cultural management with practical sessions on cross-cultural communication skills, as well as advocacy for international students. I supplemented this role with more informal efforts to make (international) students feel at home in their new environment.

So together with my husband I organised monthly international dinners at our home for groups of 20-35 students (see pictures below) as well as a range of trips in the area. We maintained a very extensive website (still online) with information about Bradford and surrounding areas, recipes, pictures etc.

Unfortunately, as it was still a relatively new field, International Business was not very well represented in the journal ranking the university used to evaluate our research performance. Ironically, this was an outdated ranking from the Netherlands in which Economics and Marketing journals ruled the roost. Journal of International Business Studies – now part of a small group of elite journals – was ranked C, the lowest rank for academic journals. Management International Review – now widely ranked just below the elite journals – was ranked D, similar to professional journals. I still remember one of them: Baksteenberichten (i.e. brick news), presumably a magazine for the building trade. Other International Business journals weren’t even on the list, partly because many of them had only been established quite recently. It was clear this would complicate my career progression at the university.

Then, in 1999, I was asked to be part of recruitment panel for a new professor in Marketing. The male academic we ended up appointing had a rather modest publication record for a prospective professor. It also wasn’t too far off my own publication record at the time (remember I was still a lecturer, three rungs below full professor). But his research was in an area that was seen as “sexy” at the time, and the applicant was considered to have “great potential”. At the same time, nobody had even talked to me about promotion to Senior Lecturer or appeared concerned with my career progression at all. So, I didn’t rate my chances of promotion at that institution very highly. Retrospectively, it might have been another case of a male academic being evaluated for their research potential and a female academic having to demonstrate significant actual research output before being promoted.

Upside 5: Journal Quality List and move to Australia

As an ECR member of the research committee, I reasoned that even though it would be hard to address my lack of career progression, at least I could try to do something about the outdated journal ranking. So, I volunteered to collect journal rankings from other universities to substantiate my argument that we really needed to adjust our ranking. I spent an awful lot of time on this, creating a full spreadsheet with all the rankings. Fortunately, the effort wasn’t in vain: I managed to convince the committee to change the list. Then I thought, well… if this helps me, why not see whether it can help others too. So early 2000, I uploaded the list, which I called the Journal Quality List, on my own website that I had just established in 1999.

Now, 26 years later, the list is in its 72nd edition, with 10 different rankings included. Over the years it has attracted an average of 30,000-40,000 page visits a year. It was also regularly cited in journal articles, either as example of journal rankings or as a sampling frame, with a total of more than 300 citations over the years. Most importantly, it has helped many ECRs across the world to make their case for journal quality, going beyond the narrow focus of their own university’s ranking. But it also gave me name recognition beyond my own research field.

However, my lack of career progression also led me to look around for another job in 2000, especially as we were not terribly happy in the UK at the time either. So, we considered a range of other countries, but in the end settled on Melbourne, Australia as our ideal next destination. And lo and behold, a few weeks after we made our decision, a job vacancy for a Senior Lecturer in IB was circulated on the AIB mailing list. This also meant that I was finally promoted to Senior Lecturer, although – because of salary differences between the UK and Australia at the time – I had to take a substantial pay cut. [Note: academic salaries are now substantially higher in Australia than they are in the UK].

This meant that I had a chance to build up my academic career at a research-intensive university, the top university in Australia and one of the top-30 worldwide in Economics & Business at the time. If you are at all curious about working and living in Melbourne, here is some information that I created when I was involved in recruiting new members of staff in 2004: Living and working in Melbourne. It serves as a nice time capsule in itself. My husband and I also had a wonderful time on a personal level, first enjoying apartment city living and then experiencing the traditional large single storey home on a quarter acre block. We even got ourselves an open top car and explored the various landscapes and animals of Australia (see pictures).

Failure 6: Promotions didn’t come easily in Australia either

[This section covers by far the longest and most significant stage of my career. As such, it is much longer than the others. However, if you are at all interested in research evaluation or putting in a promotion application, you may find the extended discussion of the Publish or Perish software and my bibliometric research helpful.]

So yes, I was happy with the belated promotion to Senior Lecturer, and we enjoyed living in Australia. But that doesn’t mean that everything was rosy. For one, I found it hard to adjust and felt rather alone in an International Business group consisting mostly of male Australians; our lunch hours were filled with discussions about Australian politics and sports. I also soon discovered that a big reason for why I was recruited was to fill teaching gaps. So, as a newbie I ended up teaching the courses others didn’t want to teach. In my first 2-3 years I taught new courses every year, and I had to develop all course materials from scratch. My days and weeks were a blur of teaching preparation, class time, and marking. To buy out some of my teaching, I applied for university funding (a generous $AUD25,000), but my Head of Group didn’t allow me to take it as it would create teaching gaps.

As best I could, I still continued to publish in my three earlier research programs and even started two new research programs: Transfer of HRM Practices in MNCs, and Language in International Business & Management. After a year or so, I also discovered that – with well over a dozen journal publications in good journals, nearly all single-authored – I outperformed most Associate Professors in the department. But I was told I couldn’t apply for promotion to Associate Professor until I had two full years of teaching under my belt. I was disappointed, but it did make me even more determined to get prestigious external research council grant funding to “show my worth”. I managed to do so, though not in time for my promotion to Associate Professor.

Even so, when I was finally allowed to apply for Associate Professor, my Head of Department indicated it was the strongest case he had seen in the department so far and I got through very easily. Unfortunately, only achievements since the last promotion counted for promotion to full professor. So, I was really happy that, shortly after I was promoted to Associate Professor, I was awarded $185,000 in ARC Discovery Grant funding as a sole Chief Investigator for a 3-year research project. This was the largest ARC discovery grant awarded to a sole Chief Investigator in Business & Management in the previous three years. I also received funding for a 50% relief of duties, which was hardly ever awarded. This allowed me to not only complete the funded research project but also publish an additional 8-10 articles and continue to be heavily involved in service to both the university and discipline.

Moreover, I made a major contribution to leadership in my role as director of the PhD programme with some 75 students, a role I took on shortly after being promoted to Associate Professor. By tightening up the confirmation requirements, introducing two PhD coursework modules, providing significant academic support, and securing funding for conference attendance and fieldwork, I transformed a programme with low timely completions rates into one that was thriving. As one of the mature age students wrote: “the profile, content and tone of the PhD program have been lifted, and along with it, the morale, competence and confidence of the student cohort”.

So, I decided to apply for promotion to full professor after a relatively short interval of only two years. Unfortunately, my application didn’t even make it past the internal screening. In my feedback, I was told I needed one more big publication hit or a substantial increase in citations. At the time the ISI (Web of Science) and its journal impact factor ruled promotion decisions. Unfortunately, many of the – mostly European – journals in International Business were not yet ISI listed. This meant they didn’t have impact factors, and my work was not well-cited in the Web of Science as many citations were simply not counted.

That said, a colleague told me that the main reason I was not allowed to go forward was that the two other (male and older) applicants had weaker records, and that the leadership didn’t want the external panel to compare their record to mine. Was this true? I have no idea, but university politics are ever-present. On the other hand, the internal panel might well have reasoned that with my record I would be promoted the year after anyway. They may also have felt that these colleagues deserved their promotion, as they had been contributing to the university for much longer than I did. In hindsight, I would say that is fair enough. But of course, I was still hurt and did start thinking seriously about leaving the university.

Upside 6: The PoP software and bibliometric research

But I didn’t and instead decided to “fight back” and apply for promotion again the year after. As I already had half a dozen additional papers in progress, two of which in a very high impact journal, this part of the feedback was “covered”. But in order to address my perceived lack of a sufficient number citations, I also needed to find a way show that my citation impact was higher than was apparent in the Web of Science data. This quest led to what is possibly my best-known contribution to the academic commons, the free Publish or Perish citation analysis software.

The Publish or Perish software

Google Scholar had been introduced just a few years before and my citation levels in that data source were much higher. This is because Google Scholar has a far more inclusive coverage, including not only all academic journals, but also books, book chapters and other types of publications. However, its web interface didn’t allow for easy searching for individuals. So, in 2006 my wonderful husband created a little software program for me to draw data from GS and calculate a few citation metrics, including the then just introduced h-index (see also my 2007 white paper: Reflections on the h-index).

Using the software, I was able to demonstrate that far from being low, my Google Scholar citation levels were actually higher than those of all but one of the many professors in the department, as well as all professors in my field in Australia. Ironically, I discovered that this was true even for my Web of Science citations as you can read here: benchmarks for citation performance. The negative assessment of my citation levels in my unsuccessful application the year before might have simply been based on my Head of Department’s accompanying letter who characterised them as “developing”. So, I learned the hard way that you need to include hard evidence in your promotion application! A decade later, my experiences would lead me to write three multi-part blogpost series on developing effective promotion applications.

After including the “hard evidence” of my citation impact, my next application saw me promptly promoted to full professor. And just like with the Journal Quality List, I thought, well if it helps me, it might be able to help others too. So, I uploaded the software on my website too. Now 20 years, 8 major versions and hundreds of minor versions later, it covers nine data sources, has more than two million users and is still free.

The software is used in more than 200 countries, with heavy usage in the USA, India, UK, Philippines, Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, France, Australia and Colombia. For more information about PoP usage over the world, academic levels, and the years, see: The changing usage of Publish or Perish over the years: where, why, when, what & who?. The software has also had extensive press coverage and is mentioned on more than 2,000 library pages. Ironically, it has also become my most cited “publication”, with nearly 2500 official citations in Google Scholar. Additionally, nearly 10,000 academics have used it in their academic articles without referencing it in the list of references.

Over the years, Publish or Perish also expanded from a “h-index calculator” to a versatile bibliometric tool and I published three guidebooks helping users to make the most of the software. The latest 375-page guide shows you not only how to conduct effective author, journal, topic, and affiliation searches, but also how to use the software for a wide variety of purposes. This includes tenure or promotion applications, conducting literature reviews and meta-analyses, deciding where to submit your paper, preparing for job interviews, writing laudations or obituaries, finding reviewers, examiners, or keynote speakers, preparing for a meeting with your academic hero, uncovering “citation connections” between scholars, doing bibliometric research and much much more. If you find Publish or Perish useful, you can support it here: Support PoP.

From 2008 onwards I gave many presentations about Publish or Perish and the role of Google Scholar in a more inclusive measurement of academic impact. The first of these was at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, speaking next to Anthony van Raan and Charles Baden Fuller (see picture above). Looking at the presentation now (full hand-out available here courtesy of my host Wilfred Mijnhardt who was able to unearth it from his records) I am surprised at how relevant it remained. I could give the same presentation today and it would still be news to many in the audience. As a bonus the slides include lots of lovely pictures of Australia, making it both a professional and personal memory. What I found most interesting though is that even nearly 20 years ago I already cautioned the audience that “Our aim should be to conduct good scholarship, not to publish in good journals”.

My work with the Publish or Perish software also led me to be invited for the 2013 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. I had a discussion with the development team for Microsoft Academic, one of the data sources we would later support in Publish or Perish before Microsoft sadly decided to discontinue it late 2021. The top left picture above showed the hotel lobby in which our discussion took place. Of course, I also went to the main event of the summit at which Bill Gates was interviewed (top right). But to be honest the main attraction for me was exploring Seatle, my favourite was the Chihula Garden and Glass (bottom left), which combined peaceful gardens with stunningly beautiful glass sculptures. I also enjoyed a cruise on the waters of Elliot Bay where I snapped the bottom right-hand picture. Not bad for the limited camera I had back then.

Bibliometric research on data sources and metrics

The confluence of the creation of the Publish or Perish software and becoming Research Dean led me to combine my international management research with a full research programme in Scientometrics: the analysis of scientific metrics/indicators, which made up the bulk of my new, sixth, research program on Quality and Impact of Academic Research (other research areas within this program were editorial board diversity and referencing accuracy).

I published fifteen articles in the field’s main journals: Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Overall, my interest in bibliometrics was mainly focused on individual academics and how their professional lives are affected by it. I was strongly motivated by a desire to "emancipate" the Social Sciences and ensure bibliometrics properly reflected their specificities and to help academics who feel lost in the new world of metrification. Over the years I:

  1. Introduced and legitimised new data sources (Harzing & van der Wal 2008/2009; Harzing 2013/2014/2016/2019; Harzing & Alakangas 2016/2017a/2017b) and new metrics (Harzing, Alakangas & Adams 2014; Harzing & Mijnhardt 2015) that were more responsive to both disciplinary and career stage differences.
  2. Held the Web of Science to account on their Science-centric (Harzing 2013) and Anglophone (Harzing 2015) bias [press coverage in the Times], and Elsevier/Scopus on their poor quality control (Harzing & Kroonenberg 2017/2019) and inaccurate field normalisation, causing the disciplinary Times Higher Education rankings to become unreliable (work in progress).
  3. Promoted a critical approach to research evaluation, focusing on quality over quantity (Harzing 2005), societal impact over journal hits (Adler & Harzing 2009) [2009 best paper and decade award], and understanding predatory journals (Harzing & Adler 2016).
  4. Created ranking literacy through “investigative blogging”, such as an Australian productivity boom (or just a database expansion)? and Forever Young: the problematic measurement of age in the THE Young Universities ranking.

I am proud that, as an outsider to the field, I am on the editorial board of Scientometrics, and my 2016 article is the 8th most cited (on a cites/year basis) article in Scientometrics since its inception in 1978. This article also led to an invitation for a high-profile workshop in Spain, where I presented alongside key bibliometricians. There are no pictures of the event, but there is a still of the video above; a playlist of the entire event is here.

Moral 3: Failed progression may lead to tangible outcomes for others

My mid-career stage was a time where I felt I was doing “all the right things” and had cultivated a nice set of feathers. But no matter how prominently I displayed them, I felt they weren’t really recognized by my institutions. In hindsight though I am grateful for the failed progression, both in the UK and in Australia. They led to important tangible outcomes – such as the Journal Quality List and the Publish or Perish software – that made a significant contribution to the academic commons.

Moreover, my research and practice in research evaluation led to significant name recognition. Most academics I meet know me from my work in the quality and impact of academic research, rather than my five research programs in international management. I doubt any of this would have happened if my career progression had been smoother.

Winter: Late career – Premature endings

Despite the delayed promotions, I had a very interesting – and in career terms productive – time in Australia, both in terms of research and in terms of leadership. I took on the role of PhD director and Associate Dean Higher Degrees (see also PhD student support), and later Associate Dean Research. However, after 10 years of heavy leadership duties and 13 years in Australia, my husband and I were both looking something different, so we moved back to the UK, London this time.

Failure 7: Being fired within my probation period

Before our move, I had been able to secure a very exciting – and well-paid – part-time job at the London campus of a European multi-campus Business School with its headquarters in Paris. I was appointed as a research professor and research development advisor, tasked with helping to boost the School’s research performance.

Not unimportantly, it was a job that sponsored the work visa (tier-2 visa) that I needed to live and work in the UK. Both my husband and I had become Australian citizens and, in the process, lost our Dutch citizenship that would have given us the right to live in the UK. It had never occurred to me that a progressive country like the Netherlands wouldn’t allow dual citizenship.

Unfortunately, about four months into my tenure, the Dean of the School was fired. That wasn’t so much of an issue in itself, changes in leadership are the order of the day at most universities. The problem was that it was a fairly political process. It meant that all employees that were associated with him in some way were ousted too. As the Dean had appointed me and had personally supported my position – apparently against the wishes of other senior people – I was fired within my probation period for “budgetary reasons”.

Of course, being fired is never a great experience, but being fired when you are on a sponsored work visa creates additional complications. A tier-2 work visa is tied to the job. Without the job or a new sponsor – which due to the onerous conditions I had little chance of acquiring – we might have been forced to move back to Australia. The thought of having to do so within half a year of selling up everything in Australia, and within months after having sunk all of our savings into buying a house, caused plenty of sleepless nights.

Upside 7: A great job I might not have found otherwise

Fortunately, I had started the process to regain my Dutch citizenship as soon as we had moved to the UK and – as the institution had to give me three months notice when they fired me – got it back in the nick of time. Moreover, as I had already been able to read the early warning signals - there was significant resistance to my appointment - I had secured a second part-time job at Middlesex University Business School. Now that my other part-time employment had ended, the Middlesex Dean was delighted to offer me a full-time job.

I’ll be perfectly honest: despite needing the job, I hesitated for a moment. I had never worked at a teaching intensive institution before and had made my academic career at a top research-intensive institution. Being used to generous research support, I was worried what the impact would be in terms of institutional support. Moreover, without the well-paying job at the private Business School, my full-time salary would be less than two thirds of what it had been in Australia and that in an area (London) with a higher cost of living.

However, ultimately, I was “sold” by the fact that the Dean relieved me of regular teaching and formal administrative roles, and the wonderful collegial culture in the Business School that I had already experienced in my part-time role. I was given a free hand to develop the School’s (and later the Faculty’s) research culture. Hence, it was a wonderful to opportunity to “give back” to the many academic colleagues who hadn’t had the advantages I had in my career, but without having to completely sacrifice my own research.

Stop equating an academic’s value with their university

Unfortunately, not everyone in my academic community reacted positively. One academic friend talked about Middlesex as a “shitty institution” (before learning I had accepted a job there). And whenever I attended conferences – especially in the UK – I saw academics looking at my name tag with a puzzled look. Some were even blunt enough to ask: “Why are you at Middlesex University, surely you can get a job at a better university”. My answer was always the same: because they are smart enough to let me focus on the things I am good at and really enjoy doing. But at one stage, I even got an anonymous letter (see below).

These days I mainly wonder about the mental health of the person who found it necessary to type up and mail me this letter. But I won’t deny that it did hurt me at the time, and so did the constant strange looks of colleagues at research-intensive institutions. So, please can we stop equating someone’s value as an academic with their university’s standing? There are many and varied reasons why academics choose to work at the institution they do. Not everyone is motivated by financial and reputational rewards alone.

Crafting a supportive research culture

Fortunately, I did very much enjoy working at Middlesex University. Most of my junior colleagues were really talented and cared greatly about the societal impact of their research. However, for one reason or another many of them had never received the support they needed to get past the first hurdles in their academic career.

With the Research Dean’s support, I was able to transform an ad-hoc and fragmented system of support into very successful formal staff development programme (for details see: Reflections on staff development). It included a range of formal workshops & training, informal meetings such as small peer support group meetings, research lunches/teas/coffees, internal individual support in the form of career development meetings, quick-fire email support and detailed support for paper writing, external individual support, and general culture building. One of its highlights was a yearly writing retreat at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor park (see: Our 9th Middlesex writing bootcamp), which as you can see below was family friendly.

I also contributed to the development of supportive research cultures in the wider UK higher education context by sharing my experience at the Chartered ABS course for Research Deans (see: Supportive, inclusive & collaborative research cultures) and at the EFMD course for Faculty Deans on "Rethinking faculty models for impactful schools and resilient careers" (see Supporting Early Career Researchers).

At Middlesex, I was also able to leverage my knowledge about reputation management and university rankings, becoming an advisor to senior management on the topic. Although a direct link is hard to establish, it did lead to Middlesex University – and in particular the Business School – improving its position in the international research rankings (see Middlesex University rising in the research rankings). For the 2021 REF (Research Excellence Framework) submission, I acted as UoA co-chair and we achieved a tremendous result (see: REF, rankings & reputation).

Finally, my job also allowed me time to build up a thriving blog (see: Harzing.com blog celebrates its 10-year anniversary), with currently over 500 postings, my YouTube channel Harzing Academic Resources with more than 200 videos, and five career guides (see image below and Book series: Crafting your career in academia).

Aug 2022:

Only £5.95...		 Nov 2022:

Only £5.95...		 Feb 2023:

Only £5.95...		 May 2023:

Only £5.95...		 August 2023:

Only £9.99...

Supporting female academics at CYGNA

The (female) Deans at Middlesex Business School also strongly supported the CYGNA women’s network that I had co-founded to provide a forum for learning, support, and networking for female academics. CYGNA is celebrating its 12-year anniversary this year, has hosted more than 70 plenary meetings and many more small group gatherings in Cygna Writes, and our CYGS (Cygna special interest groups) on Teaching & Scholarship Research and Career stages. For more information see also: CYGNA - 11+ years of supporting women in academia.

At our 50th meeting we asked members to share a few words about what CYGNA meant to them on a Padlet. The resulting word-cloud below is a perfect summary of what CYGNA aims to be: a friendly, kind, inclusive, and supportive community, providing a safe space/place to exchange ideas, share experiences, provide advice, inspire, and learn.

All in all, my 10-year stretch at Middlesex University was definitely one of the most rewarding things I have done in my academic career, not necessarily financially, but definitely in terms of seeing the direct contribution of my own work to the careers of my colleagues, the reputation of the Business School, and the diffusion of resources for research and career support to the wider academic community.

Failure 8: Taking “voluntary” redundancy for two jobs

Unfortunately, in 2024 the UK HE system was in a dire state; well over 10,000 redundancies were expected within a year and more were still on the horizon; the current tally stands at more than 30,000. The majority of universities were suffering financially, but post-92s – as teaching oriented institutions are often called in the UK – were struggling in particular. And again, I could see the early warning signs: I expected my staff development and research mentorship work to become a “luxury” that the Faculty could no longer afford.

So, rather than being forced to spend my sixties with a high teaching and admin load – something which as a very strong introvert with declining energy levels I could not stomach – I took early retirement in one of the university’s voluntary redundancy schemes. I also preferred to end my academic career on a high, rather than battling through a few more years and experiencing the gradual decline. Last, but by no means least, I knew that if senior colleagues like me would take voluntary redundancy it might protect our junior colleagues’ jobs (which it did).

In addition to my role at Middlesex, I also had a small fractional appointment at a Dutch university where – beyond doing research – I advised on EDI and research rankings. As Dutch Higher Education was going through a similar financial crisis, my role was a luxury they could no longer afford, and I was asked to give my notice. After my two earlier experiences I was getting used to this redundancy thing. But it was still a bit of a shock to me that they would effectively fire someone who was one of their best-performing professors. Of course I could have refused, but I am not one to stay at an institution if I am no longer welcome.

So, this meant that at the tender age of 59 I was “suddenly” retired. As someone who had always claimed she loved her work so much that she would work until at least 70 this was a bit of a shock. You can read the full story here: Why did I take early retirement & farewell messages. It was by no means an easy decision, and I had to consider carefully whether I was able to live of my savings until one of my pensions kicked in. So, I wouldn’t say that my retirement was completely voluntary. If the financial situation in the sector had been different, I would probably have preferred to continue on at least a fractional basis.

Upside 8: More time for the things I really care about…

But ultimately, I am quite happy with my decision to retire from paid employment. It has allowed me to focus – for the first time in many years – on my own writing and in particular on my white papers and blogposts. After 30+ years of publishing academic articles I am more than a little tired of the convoluted and long-drawn-out publication process in my field.

However, I still love writing. I continue to add new pages to my resources website, which now approaches 1 million words. I still blog on an almost weekly basis, with more than 500 posts since March 2016. But since 2024 I have also taken to writing up white papers in earnest. These are non-peer-reviewed writings, but they are carefully crafted and all deal with academic matters.

Between 2008 and 2023, I had already written up a dozen or so short white papers, largely related to my bibliometric work such as The four C's of getting cited, Reflections on the h-index and The four P's of publishing. A few longer white papers are based on original research such as the much-loved How to address your teacher?, the provocative Running the REF on a rainy Sunday afternoon: Do metrics match peer review? and the detective story of The mystery of the phantom reference.

However, since my early retirement, I have crafted around twenty white papers and have plans for at least another dozen. They vary from extended blogposts on pet peeves of around 1,500-2,000 words to more substantive pieces with career advice of around 3,000-6,000 words, and from full blown papers based on original research between 8,000-18,000 words to personal reflections on my own academic journey, often lavishly illustrated with pictures. Combined, they make up the bulk of my seventh research program: Transforming Academia.

Extended blogposts on pet peeves

Substantive pieces based on original research

Career advice and useful resources

Personal reflections

Volunteering activities

My retirement from paid employment also gives me more time to continue the many academic volunteering activities that I continue to really care about. I have already discussed my resources website, the Journal Quality list and the Publish or Perish software above. These are long-standing commitments dating back 20-27 years. More recently, my academic volunteering work includes the CYGNA women’s network, my YouTube channel, my five career guides, and Positive Academia (spearheaded by Christa Sathish).

Healthy living

Retirement also forced me to think about what matters most to me at this stage of my life. Being confronted with a range of medical issues shortly after my early retirement, it soon became abundantly clear that taking proper care of my health is paramount. Not having formal work commitments allows me to spend more time on daily exercises and walks, but also just sit in our lovely local park watching the birds. As my husband is also semi-retired, we can venture further afield whenever inspiration strikes or when we have had a bad night’s sleep. I relish this freedom.

Moral 4: Disastrous career events may lead to new starts

In my late career stage, I was effectively made redundant three times, once by being fired, once by taking voluntary redundancy, and once by being requested to give notice. I can’t say any of these filled me with happiness. But ultimately, even though some things could have been handled better, I can’t say I blame any of the three universities involved. I certainly don’t bear any ill-will towards them. After all, I am only a small pawn in the big chess game of Higher Education, and the sector is going through a serious crisis.

Moreover, even things that may on the surface seem unambiguously disastrous (being fired) can sometimes lead to positive reflection points in our lives. Of course, I had the fortune of having a stable home life, which not everyone is blessed with. With prudent financial management, retirement was also financially possible for me, which again will not be the case for everyone. So being fired is not necessarily something I would recommend. But I do feel that many academics continue to be engaged in full-time paid work – with all the stresses it involves – for far too long.

Many of us are probably scared about what might happen to us if we lose our academic identity and therefore avoid taking the decision that might improve both our daily lives and longevity. Having been retired for two years myself, I can honestly tell you that – unless you want to – there is no need to lose that academic identity. You will always remain an academic. But stepping down from paid employment not only creates more opportunity for younger academics, it also gives you what my former PhD supervisor always called “eternal academic freedom”, the liberation to focus on what really matters to you.

Related blogposts and webpages

white papers academia behind the scenes positive academia cygna mentoring academic publishing promotion application citation metrics women in academia work-life balance

Copyright © 2026 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Sat 30 May 2026 11:14

Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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