HSG is the university with the best research when it comes to business administration

22 January 2019. According to the "WirtschaftsWoche" ranking, the University of St.Gallen (HSG) provides the most scientific output in relation to business administration. This is the result of a study carried out by the KOF research institute at ETH Zurich in collaboration with the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics at the University of Düsseldorf for the magazine "WirtschaftsWoche". The University of St.Gallen is followed by the Technical University of Munich and the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Top position thanks to cooperation with businesses

Some of the reasons identified by "WirtschaftsWoche" for the success of the University of St.Gallen are the close collaboration with businesses, the incentive for scientific output and the increasing interdisciplinarity in research. "We cannot afford to sit in an ivory tower and must therefore constantly prove ourselves in the market," Dietmar Grichnik, Dean of the School of Management (SoM-HSG), as quoted in "WirtschaftsWoche". "And if business administration is to remain internationally competitive in German-speaking countries, it must increasingly work in an interdisciplinary manner."

Five HSG scientists under the top 100

In addition to interdisciplinarity, Big Data is one of the trends in business administration. The fact that the importance of Big Data has increased can also be seen in the ranking: Helmut Krcmar (1st place) and Martin Bichler (3rd place), who conduct research in business informatics, belong to the Department of Informatics at the TU Munich. Nils Boysen (2nd place) at the University Jena also works with data-driven research. Five HSG scientists are among the top 100 in the ranking of the strongest research-oriented business economists:

•    Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister, full professor for information management (4th place)

•    Prof. Dr. Ivo Blohm, assistant professor for data science and management (40th place)

•    Prof. Dr. Robert Winter, full professor for information management (65th place)

•    Prof. Dr. Matthias Söllner, assistant professor for business administration with special focus on information management (68th place)

•    Prof. Dr. Martin Eling, full professor for insurance economics (82nd place)

Study of ETH Zurich and University of Düsseldorf

The KOF research institute of ETH Zurich together with the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics analysed around 860 professional journals in relation to business management topics. A joint team from both institutes weighted the number of articles according to the reputation of the journals. The analysis includes the articles from around 200 universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland over the past ten years, for the individual authors over the past five years.

Many other professors at the School of Management would also have achieved top rankings in the individual rankings if they had not expressly objected. However, these publications are included in the overall ranking and therefore make a significant contribution towards HSG's first place in German-speaking business administration.