Setting the Pace for Management Excellence

Lundquist College of Business management faculty are teaching at the highest levels and are out-researching some major names in academia, and doing so with smaller endowments and fewer faculty members.

During the past five years, the University of Oregon Department of Management is the eighth most productive department per capita, publishing in the field's top journals, according to Texas A&M/University of Georgia/National University of Singapore Rankings of Management Department Research Productivity. The rankings aggregate publications in the eight top-tier journals in management, by management faculty in U.S. business schools. The top 150 are ranked both by year and by five-year total.

The Lundquist College is the smallest department on the list—joining the likes of USC, Notre Dame, and the University of Pennsylvania among others.

In one illustrative example, the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School produced two publications per faculty member during the time period. For the Lundquist College, that number was 2.7.

In other words, these Ducks are busy.

When she isn't testifying before Congress Associate Professor of Management and Inman Research Scholar Lauren Lanahan is publishing in the American Economic Review and influencing conversations in the journal Nature (like this one.)

In another example of many, Assistant Professor of Management Alex Murray earned the Best Reviewer Award from the Academy of Management Review, the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Goulet Outstanding Research Award from the Lundquist College of Business, and the Consumer Protection Grant Award from the University of Oregon—and that's just in the first part of 2023.

Associate Professor of Management David Wagner, department head and Doug McKay Research Scholar, attributes part of the department’s success to the collegial, pleasant, apolitical work ethic of the group and the intellectual ecosystem.

"We've always valued having really smart, curious, non-ego-driven faculty, who are really pleasant people," Wagner said. "Even our emerit faculty are involved and care deeply about contributing. This helps to bring in quality new scholars. For many, we are a dream location: a world-class intellectual climate in an incredible natural environment—the state of Oregon. It makes for collegial, long-term collaborations."

The future of the department is looking bright, with our 11-person research faculty adding three more talented researchers in the coming year.

"In the end, we help accelerate scientific discovery by learning how to take breakthroughs to market," he said.

—AnneMarie Knepper-Sjoblom ’05, Lundquist College Communications