Tenure Consequences of Submit-to-Accept Delays in Accounting

We use hand-collected data to examine the impact of lengthening submission-to-acceptance (STA) times in accounting journals on tenure outcomes for accounting faculty in their first post-doctoral academic appointment. We find that longer STA times for articles published in the latter portion of the probationary period are associated with a significant decrease in the likelihood of the academic being tenured at their first institution. In supplemental analysis, we find that the negative association between STA times and tenure outcomes is only descriptive of candidates not working at higher-ranked schools. There is no association between longer STA times and tenure outcomes for faculty working at institutions ranked in the top 15 of the Glover et al (2012) ranking. Finally, we find that female tenure candidates with longer STA times are less likely to be tenured than male candidates with longer STA times. Our results should be of interest to journal editors, reviewers, provosts, deans, tenure and promotion committees, and tenure-track academics.