2019 was a very good year for the Department of Management at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business.

The college’s management faculty was ranked No. 1 for research productivity in its field out of 150 U.S. business schools, tied at the top with Michigan State University.

“The Terry College is incredibly proud of the relevance and impact of the research conducted by our management faculty,” said Dean Benjamin C. Ayers. “Having one of the premier management departments in the country bodes very well for the opportunities afforded Terry undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the state of Georgia and beyond.”

The TAMUGA Rankings – named that because the research rankings are compiled every year by scholars at Texas A&M University and the University of Georgia – provide a survey of the articles published in eight top-tier management research journals.

The annual tabulation provides a valuable insight into academic research written by management faculty from U.S. business schools, said Tim Quigley, an associate professor of management at the Terry College and point person at UGA for the TAMUGA Rankings.

“From a practical standpoint, management research asks how do we make businesses work better,” Quigley said. “When you think about a department like ours, we’re talking about researching strategic changes and the top managers of the firm, as well as job satisfaction. Feeling good about the work you do, feeling productive in the work you do, designing work processes that help everyone realize their full potential and how to create work environments where people feel like they’re treated fairly.”

“All of those are critical to the work we’re doing and to improving the bottom line for employers and the lives of employees,” he said.

Faculty members at UGA’s Department of Management have been ranked among the top 10 most productive schools for four of the past five years, but this is the first year the department has been ranked No. 1.

The ranking reflects an academic culture that supports and values the research of its faculty members and graduate students and the impact that research has on the world.

“We work to sustain a culture that supports research by removing or reducing any barriers that get in the way of our faculty achieving their research goals,” said Robert Vandenberg, the Robert O. Arnold Professor of Business and head of the Department of Management. “This includes helping them to navigate hurdles they encounter, but also making sure that they have the funds to conduct their research and have opportunities to present their research findings. The ability to exchange ideas with peer researchers plays an important role here.”

“The TAMUGA Rankings also provide metrics for the total number of papers published over the past five years. In that ranking, Terry College’s Department of Management ranked No. 5 in the nation.”

In addition to generating new insights and best practices for the evolving business landscape, the Management Department’s focus on research discoveries also provides undergraduate and master’s students with a direct connection to the trends they will encounter when they enter industry.

“Yes, when we go into a classroom, we’re going to teach the fundamentals, the building blocks that have been well established in this field,” Quigley said. “But we’re going to augment that with the latest thinking and the latest research on these foundational ideas.” 

The TAMUGA Rankings include the 150 most productive management departments in the country, though the number of schools included can vary due to ties in the rankings. The eight top-tier journals included in the ranking are: Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Personnel Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

The team compiling the rankings ensured that the authors were management faculty based on university affiliation provided in the article or online directories. Publications from faculty in industrial/organizational psychology were not included, nor were publications from faculty in labor and industrial relations. Similarly, publications from other business school faculty – such as marketing, accounting or information systems – were not included. 

The universities that have housed these research productivity rankings have changed over the years, but the methodology used has not changed, Quigley said.

“Most important, the process is transparent with full details of the methodology included on the website,” he added.