University Park, Pa. -- Over the past four years, faculty and Ph.D. students from the Department of Management and Organization at Penn State's Smeal College of Business have published more research papers in the top management journals than any other management department in the United States and Canada, according to joint research from Texas A&M University and the University of Florida.
For several years, researchers at Florida and Texas A&M have annually measured the productivity of U.S. and Canadian management departments by tallying how many of their articles appeared throughout the year in A-level management journals. Since 2005, Smeal's Department of Management and Organization has been ranked among the top two management departments each year, including No. 1 rankings in 2006 and 2008. Cumulatively, from 2005 to 2008, no school's faculty has published more in the top journals, despite the fact that Smeal's management department has fewer faculty members than almost all of its competitors.
"Smeal is widely recognized as having on its faculty some of the true superstars of management academics," said Smeal Dean James B. Thomas, who is also a professor of management. "This ranking is just further proof that our management faculty continues to be on the leading edge of research innovations."
To rank the schools' productivity, the researchers tally articles from the following management journals: "Academy of Management Journal," "Academy of Management Review," "Administrative Science Quarterly," "Journal of Applied Psychology," "Organization Science," "Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes," "Personnel Psychology," and "Strategic Management Journal."
In the most recent ranking (2008), Smeal's management faculty produced 12 papers that were published in these leading journals, tying for first place with the University of Michigan. In 2007, Smeal's output was 11 top journal articles, tying the college for second place behind Michigan State University. In 2006, Smeal held first place outright in the ranking with 13 publications. And in 2005, Smeal tied with the University of Pennsylvania for second place behind only Harvard University.
"We have an extraordinarily talented group of researchers in the Management and Organization Department," said Denny Gioia, chair of the department. "These rankings are a welcome acknowledgment of our productivity, visibility, and impact in our field. It's a significant accomplishment, especially because we've maintained this level of excellence for quite some time now."
Smeal's Department of Management and Organization offers programs and degrees at the undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and executive education levels, and is consistently ranked highly in both education and research in national media rankings. The department also ranks in the top ten in the University of Texas at Dallas Top 100 Business School Research Rankings, which also measure faculty representation in leading academic journals.
The complete Texas A&M/University of Florida rankings from the past four years are available online at mays.tamu.edu/mgmt/productivity-rankings.