Texas is considered a modern economic paradise. With low taxes, moderate living costs and little government regulation, the land of cattle herds and oil production towers has blossomed into a technology hub. Tesla, Oracle, Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise even moved their corporate headquarters there. As a research location and pacesetter of the global economy, the US state has so far not been a household name.
Hasan Pirkul wants to change that. The industrial engineer has headed the Naveen Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas in Dallas (UTD) since 1996 and has made the business school one of the most research-intensive in the world during this time. “Articles published by economic researchers have a direct impact on the global economy because they help companies be more efficient and effective,” says the information systems professor.
So that everyone also notices how much research effort the UTD does, Pirkul has invented the appropriate ranking list. In the self-developed research ranking, the management company, which is relatively unknown in Europe, is now in second place worldwide. It is behind the renowned Wharton School, but ahead of elite universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Oxford. Pirkul openly admits that marketing is also important to him: “Improving our reputation makes it much easier to recruit teachers, students and companies from outside the region.”
Private business schools stand for practical management training, and those who study here usually want to improve their career opportunities and earning potential. Whether the professors diligently research and publish is of secondary importance. In Germany in particular, academic research is considered the domain of state universities. But this cliché is no longer true. Research is becoming increasingly important for business schools.
“All top addresses are very research-intensive today,” says Christian Terwiesch. The German business IT specialist should know, because he knows some of the world’s best training ground from inside. After studying in Mannheim, he did his doctorate at the French INSEAD, and since 1998 he has been a professor at Wharton, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, which occupies first place in the UTD ranking and also consistently achieves top positions in other MBA rankings.
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For the scientist, research and teaching also belong together in the management area. If you want to be a good teacher, you also have to be a top researcher. Scientists from Wharton have been involved in almost 400 publications in the past five years – and only in the 24 publications recorded by the UTD ranking.
“Without excellence in research, there can be no excellence in teaching,” agrees Martin Jacob from the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar near Koblenz. According to the professor of finance, accounting and taxation, you can only align your own teaching with the latest scientific findings if you conduct your own research at the highest international level.
Among other things, the 38-year-old researches the influence of tax policy on investment decisions by companies and advises the Federal Ministry of Finance as a member of the scientific advisory board.
Bring in the latest research results
Good research conditions are increasingly also an important argument for attracting scientific talent. Young, up-and-coming professors are asking for it – also because there are still so many gaps to be filled when it comes to management knowledge. “Especially when it comes to so-called soft topics such as organizational development, it’s easy to fall for self-proclaimed experts who offer simple solutions to complex problems based on their gut feeling,” says Gianluca Carnabuci, Research Director at ESMT.
The Berlin business school has the ambition to always incorporate the latest research results from analytics, innovation and leadership into teaching. As an example, Carnabuci cites the Professional Network Report, a web-based tool based on proprietary research that helps executives optimize their personal network.
The private universities, which are much smaller, at least in Germany, are trying to set themselves apart from the publicly financed universities with practical research projects. “Our advantage lies in the fact that we are in close contact with the corporate world,” says Carnabuci. Not only because the range of courses can be tailored to the needs of companies, but also because companies are “a wonderful empirical place for cutting-edge research”.
A plus point that Hilke Plassmann, Professor of Marketing and holder of the Octapharma Chair for Decision Neuroscience at the French INSEAD, also appreciates. The German scientist conducts research at the interface of psychology, marketing and cognitive neuroscience on topics such as decision-making and consumer behavior, always with a high degree of application relevance: “I like how current research results are implemented directly in companies and how exciting research projects result from current entrepreneurial issues.”
Better researchers in the US?
According to the UTD ranking, INSEAD is the most research-intensive business school in Europe, but you won’t find any private universities from German-speaking countries on the list, although the business administration faculties of WHU, ESMT or the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management have a good reputation in scientific circles as have research sites. Only 16 universities in Europe make it into the ranking (see table), while the top ten are exclusively occupied by American business schools.
Does the US simply have the better economic researchers? It’s not that easy, because the methodology of the ranking list is designed in such a way that the US universities, which are much larger in an international comparison, have an advantage. The number of published scientific articles, which are converted into a points system, is decisive for the placement. US business schools account for 80 percent of all economics publications, which explains their dominance. If you put the number of articles in relation to the size of a university, as the “Financial Times” does, the lead melts away.
Whether the sheer volume of publications can actually be the appropriate measure of research quality is a matter of controversy in the academic world. Critics complain that the system tempts professors to devote themselves to career-promoting hard work instead of turning to labor-intensive but socially relevant issues.
A suspicion that Johannes Stroebel rejects. Born in Germany, he is a professor of finance at New York’s Stern School of Business. His research agenda includes topics such as the financial impact of climate change and the impact of social capital on economic mobility.
Although scientific publications have considerable weight in promotion decisions, this does not mean that one is restricted in the choice of topics: “My colleagues and I are encouraged to work on relevant topics that are of interest to the wider society,” says Stroebel. The university makes a lot of time and resources available for this. “Research must provide objective insights that can advance societal debate.”
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