WHU Ranks #8 in Research Ranking

WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management has made it into the top ten of universities strongest in research in the field of business administration in the German-speaking world (D-A-CH). The ranking is the result of a survey which was conducted over the past ten years by the KOF Research Institute of the ETH Zurich together with the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE). For their analysis, the institutes considered the number of publications by researchers in the best international journals. The papers were weighted between one whole point per publication in one of the most renowned journals and with gradations down to 0.025 points in less well-known journals. With 828 top publications and 74.57 points, WHU achieved the excellent eighth place in the D-A-CH region. The top position was claimed by the University of St. Gallen with 2557 publications and 184.29 points in total. Still, the differences in the size of the faculties, which is sometimes considerable, must also be taken into consideration.

The universities that have been strongest in research when it comes to business administration in the German-speaking world between 2011 and 2020 are:

1. University of St. Gallen
2. Technical University of Munich
3. Vienna University of Economics and Business
4. University of Cologne
5. University of Zurich
6. University of Hamburg
7. University of Mannheim
8. WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management
9. University of Frankfurt
10. Technical University of Darmstadt

Over the past few years, research in the field of business administration has benefited from certain developments and suffered from others. On the one hand, Big Data and digitization open up new possibilities for research in the theory-focused part of business administration. As a result, significantly more data has become available and methodology has also become more diverse. On the other hand, the economists and virologists were given much more attention during the COVID-19 crisis in the public debate. For the years to come, the analysis in the article predicts that studies in the field of business administration will be less focused on management issues and an interdisciplinary approach to research will become more popular.