Europe is becoming a great place to do management research. More and more schools are investing in research and hiring top research faculty. As it often happens, however, perceptions lag reality and I thought that perhaps, as the current graduates look for jobs in research-based business schools around the world, I may share some of my analysis to aid their job search efforts.

Methodology

I used The UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings to identify which schools in Europe made it to the top 100. I am interested in management research; thus I selected seven top academic journals in this field, namely: Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Management Science, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. I took the research score that captures the research output of the faculty from each school in these seven journals. I also smoothed out the variance by taking a moving average of three years publication score and I tracked how it evolved over time thus, whenever I say year 2017, I mean 2015-2017.

What have I learned?

First thing that emerges very quickly from this exercise is that Europe (and Asia, although to a lesser extend) has been growing its share in the Top 100 of research institutions in management field. 25 years ago, only four European Schools were among the top hundred: INSEAD, LBS, University of Warwick, and University of Manchester. Asia and Australia had only three: Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and UNSW Australia. Since then the number of European schools present in the top 100 grew to 22 and those from Asia and Australia to 12.

Figure 1. Evolution of the number of schools from Europe and Asia & Australia in the Research Top 100

Figure 2. Comparison of the number of schools from each region in the Top 100 in 1997 and 2017

One thing worth mentioning is that the top management research institutions in Europe are relatively close to each other and well connected with a high-speed rail network (see Figure 3). For example, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Geneva can be reached in less than four hours by train from Paris. Only North-East coast of United States has a higher concentration of top research management schools. I also added an outline of the state of Texas for size comparison with Western Europe for those less familiar with the old continent.

Figure 3. Location of Europe’s Top 22 Management Research Institutions (2015-2017 average)

In Asia the picture is somewhat different. In 1992 there were only four schools in Asia. Then the numbers rose until 2007 to reach 11 but somewhat stagnated since then. However, these numbers are hiding a trend. In 1995-1997 period there were three Israeli schools in the ranking: Technion (#40), Tel-Aviv University (#60), and Hebrew University of Jerusalem (#76) and only two schools from China and Singapore each. Since then, there are no more Israeli schools in the top 100 list, while the number of schools from Singapore grew to three and from China to six. In 2015-2017 the first school from India (Indian School of Business) appeared on the list in the 92nd place.

An interesting picture is also present in Singapore, which must have the highest concentration of schools in such a small place. Five schools from the list are located on the island. There are the three Singaporean schools (Singapore Management University, National University of Singapore, and Nanyang Technological University) and two European business schools, which have their campuses on the island with permanent faculty and either undergraduate or graduate programs (INSEAD and ESSEC Business School).

Figure 4. Top Management Research Schools in Singapore (2017)

I presented these numbers during a doctoral workshop in Houston, TX in 2017, but used these numbers in many conversations since then. I think they show a very promising trend in management research in Europe. I hope this trend will continue.