Omega 66 (2017) 118–139

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Omega
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/omega

Research productivity in management schools of India during

1968-2015: A directional benefit-of-doubt model analysis$
Biresh K. Sahoo a,n, Ramadhar Singh b, Bineet Mishra c, Krithiga Sankaran d
a
Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier University, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India
b
Amrut Mody School of Management, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, 380009, India
c
Department of Economics, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
d
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore 560076, India

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Given the growing emphasis on research productivity in management schools of India over the years, the
Received 1 May 2015 present authors developed a composite indicator (CI) of research productivity, using the directional-
Accepted 11 February 2016 benefit-of-doubt (directional-BOD) model. Specifically, we examined overall research productivity of the
Available online 21 February 2016
schools and their respective faculty members during the 1968-69–2014-15 and 2004-05–2014-15 peri-
Keywords: ods. There are four key findings. First, the relative weights of the journal tier, total citations, author h-
Data envelopment analysis index, number of papers, impact factor, and journal h-index varied from high to low in order for esti-
Research productivity mating the CI of a faculty member. Second, both public and private schools were seemingly similar in
Composite indicator research productivity. However, faculty members at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) out-
Business schools
performed those at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Third, faculty members who had their
doctoral degrees from foreign schools were more productive than those who had similar degrees from
Indian schools. Among those trained in India, however, alumni of IITs were more productive than those of
IIMs. Finally, IIMs at Ahmedabad and Bangalore and the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad have more
names than other schools among the list of top 5% researchers during 2004-05–2014-15. These findings
indicate a shift in the priority from mere training of managers to generating impactful knowledge by at
least two of the three established public schools, and call further attention to improving the quality of
doctoral training in India in general and IIMs in particular. Five suggestions for improving research
productivity are offered.
& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction primacy, where there is ample space for [re]creation of knowledge

The productivity research reported in this article was motivated
by the following two observations on institutions of higher
learning in India:
“Indian institutions produce best and hardworking students who
can compete anywhere in the world, but the very same institu-
tions are not able to build a culture that can provide a world-class
research environment and produce best of researchers. Why is this
so?” (Mishra [1], p. 1787)
“… our educational institutions have to explore and extend new
frontiers of knowledge domain. They have to give priority to build
a culture where the basic human instinct of 'questioning' is given
☆
This manuscript was processed by Associate Editor Huang.
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: biresh@ximb.ac.in (B.K. Sahoo), singhr@ahduni.edu.in,
profsingh1945@gmail.com (R. Singh), bineet.mishra@duke.edu (B. Mishra),
gakrith@gmail.com (K. Sankaran).
with changing time.” (Mishra [1], p. 1788)
In recent years, India has indeed been aiming at becoming a
hub of knowledge. Stressing on the importance of science, tech-
nology, and innovation in transforming the nation, India's Prime
Minister Narendra Modi also announced at the 102nd session of
the Indian Science Congress that the Government of India (GOI)
would provide the scientific communities and universities in India
with an atmosphere conducive to pursue world-class research [2].
Further, the GOI has been developing a strong culture of colla-
boration between institutions and across disciplines in India to
leverage the cross-functional advantage of expertize, develop-
ment, and innovation [3,4]. Put simply, the GOI is favorably
inclined toward encouraging institutions of higher learning incl-
uding business management schools in India to conduct world
class research. International schools have also been recently
entering into research collaboration with Indian institutions. The
All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), for example, has
now come up with guidelines on how a foreign university can

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2016.02.004
0305-0483/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
collaborate with the Indian academia in research [5]. Global higher
education brands have already opened research centers in India to
tap the research opportunities that India offers [6]. For example,
the Harvard Business School has a research center in Mumbai, and
the University of Chicago and Deakin University have such
research centers in New Delhi. To us, these developments high-
light the growing national realization of research including busi-
ness research as a priority in India and global recognition of India
as an exciting avenue for undertaking such business research
endeavors.
Despite the foregoing increased foci on developing research
and research climate in India, management schools in India, just
like other premier educational institutions in India, have not yet
met world standards in research [1]. For instance, the Indian
Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Indian Institutes of Tech-
nology (IITs), and the Central Universities (CUs) – the premier
institutions established by GOI – did not make to the list of top 100
productive schools across three successive rankings [7–9]. Such
poor research performance of premier Indian institutions at an
international level is a matter of vexing concern for academics [1]
and policy-makers in India [10]. The Ministry of the Human
Resource Development (MHRD) of GOI thus sponsored the PanIIM
Conferences at Goa in 2013 and at Kozhikode in 2014 to discuss
how to improve research productivity in India [11].
Given the recent interest in improving research productivity of
management scholars in India, we undertook the current task of
developing a composite index of research productivity based on
data available in the public domain. Such an objective measure
seemed promising from at least five vantage points. First, it would
be the first of its kind to objectively measure quality of research of
faculty members of management schools in India. Second, it can
facilitate credible comparisons within and across institutions in
India. Third, it can guide the Indian and international management
scholars in choosing a suitable research collaborator as well as the
doctoral students in choosing a suitable dissertation supervisor. No
less important, the research funding bodies in India (see, e.g.,
Indian Council of Social Science Research, Indian Council of Agri-
cultural Research, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research,
etc.) may benefit in identifying subject matter experts for eva-
luations of the research grant applications submitted and/or for
supporting research projects of those who are established
researchers. Fourth, it can serve as a benchmark for setting higher
productivity goals in research by faculty members. Finally, it can
facilitate formulations and/or revisions of research policies by
institutions and by the GOI as Mishra [1] noted.
1.1. Research in business management schools in India: current
debates
In 2011, the then Environment Minister of India kicked up a
controversy by commenting that faculty members at the premier
universities, including the IIMs and IITs, were neither world-class
nor worthwhile with respects to creativity and research [10].
Countering this comment, however, the then Human Resource
Development Minister attributed the poor research productivity in
IITs and IIMs more to limited resources, low priority to research,
and limited research support than to poor quality of faculty
members themselves [12].
Using the ISI Web of Science database, Kumar [13] found only
132 author counts (108 unique articles) by scholars affiliated with
Indian management schools during 1990–2009. To provide a per-
spective on how low this Indian productivity might be, he con-
trasted the productivity of around 5 articles per year for the entire
India with the productivity of the business school at the Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), China, whose
100 plus faculty members had produced over 30 articles annually
119
and of the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, USA, whose 200 plus faculty members had produced
about twice as many number of articles annually as HKUST. A
follow up editorial on ‘Publish or Perish’ in the Economic Times [14]
also reiterated such a need for producing high quality research
from business schools (B-Schools) in India.
One response to the foregoing suggestions has been seemingly
defensive: Indian scholars should study Indian problems, using
indigenous methods, and publish in Indian journals. Pressure to
publish in world class journals can unfortunately result in imita-
tion instead of generation of original thoughts and methods. As
Khatri et al. [15] argued, publishing in international journals
would require writing for their audiences and contexts using their
theories and methods, which may not augur well the Indian
management research. Another equally defensive response is that
international journals are disinterested in publishing Indian data.
However, Singh [16] refuted this possibility, arguing that sloppy
research (i.e., issues selected, techniques employed, unclear writ-
ing) by Indian faculty might be a key factor in the low record of
international publications at B-Schools in India.
Of the suggestions offered to improve quality of management
research in India, two are notable. One is shift in emphasis from
teaching to research. That is, B-Schools should make research man-
datory, enhance research capabilities, hire more research-trained
faculty, and provide those faculty members who publish in interna-
tional journals with financial incentives [17]. Another is a culture of
collaboration in research wherein management schools in India should
initiate research collaboration with foreign schools of repute and
allocate adequate funds for bringing in research faculty from abroad
along the lines of Scandinavian B-Schools [17]. Consistent with these
suggestions, B-Schools in India have already made several interven-
tions to improve their current research productivity. For example, the
premier B-Schools in India have started emphasizing quality research
to improve their respective rankings among their global counterparts
[18]. Importantly, the tenure and promotion of faculty members
nowadays depend on research productivity as well [19,20].
1.2. Measuring research productivity of a business school
A well-known indicator of one's research productivity is the
number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. In fact, academic
institutions are also adjudged by the number of publications in
reputed journals, and there has recently been an increasing pro-
liferation of the rankings, listings, and productivity indicators of
schools and universities based on such publications in journals.
These rankings have drawn attention of not only the associations
such as the Association of Business Schools (ABS) and the Asso-
ciation to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), for
example, but also the dominant industry players such as Thomson
Reuters’ Web of Science, Elsevier's Scopus, and Google's Scholar.
Most areas of management1 analyze research productivity in
terms of either the reputation of an author or the quality of the
journal in which the article was published. The former is indicated
by an author's total number of published papers [21–23], h-index2
[21,23–25], and the number of citations of that author's publica-
tions [21]. The latter is indicated by the journal's h-index3 [25],
1
Such discipline-based studies have been conducted in the past in areas such
accounting, business, finance, management, marketing, management information
systems, operations research /management science [21].
2
A scholar has index h if h of his/her n papers have at least h citations each and
the remaining (n–h) papers have at most h citations each. This index measures the
scientific productivity and impact of a scholar’s research.
3
The h-index of a journal expresses the number of its articles (h) that have
received at least h citations. It quantifies the journal’s scientific productivity and
scientific impact.
120 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
tiering4, and impact factor (IF)5 [26–30]. Each such indicator taken
in isolation has its own strengths and weaknesses in gauging the
overall scholarly contribution of a researcher [31]. Nevertheless,
some academic researchers have objected to such mismeasure-
ment of science [32].
Research productivity has previously been judged along
multiple criteria as well. We found two obvious shortcomings
with those studies. First, there is a growing trend of Indian
scholars publishing an article with multiple international co-
authors. Such publications make estimation of “real” contribu-
tions of Indian researchers rather difficult. A top-tier journal
publication with one or more international authors may well
reflect the genuine scholarship that required international col-
laboration by the Indian counterparts. Unfortunately, however,
such co-authorships in many cases lend credence to Indian
faculty gossip that scholarship could have been confined to only
collecting the Indian data for the research of well-known scho-
lars. If so, assigning an equal importance or weight to the con-
tribution of each individual author of an article and just counting
the number of papers published might erroneously overestimate
the productivity of those co-authors from India. Second, multiple
authorship could alternatively reflect the contributions of the
number of students mentored. For example, the present second
author, who published single-authored articles in 1970s [33,34],
1980s [35,36] and 1990s [37–39], has recently been publishing
articles co-authored with 8–10 colleagues and/or students to
train and inspire them in research [40,41]. Thus, assigning an
equal importance or weight to the contribution of each individual
author might again underestimate the productivity of first author
and overestimate the contributions of his co-authors. Given the
foregoing two concerns, we decided to aggregate multiple non-
commensurate indicators and weight one's contribution to a
published article by the order of authorships. We agree that this
system might not be a perfect solution particularly when
authorships were determined by alphabets of the last names
instead of contributions to the article. Nonetheless, our system is
still better than non-weighting of the order of authorships in
adjudging one's research productivity.
1.3. Overall productivity
A comprehensive measure of the overall research productivity
required us to integrate multiple non-commensurate indicators
into a single composite index (CI)6. While developing such CI, we
4
The journals are classified into four tiers (Tiers: 1–4), with Tier 1 being most
important and Tier 4 the least important. This tier classification is based on the lists
by the National University of Singapore and the Association of Business Schools
(ABS), UK.
5
IF measures the scientific impact of an average article published in a journal.
It is computed considering the number of citations received in the given year by an
average article published in the given journal within a pre-defined number of
preceding years.
6 graphs, chapters in the edited volumes, open-access online jour-
An anonymous reviewer suggested that the overall research productivity of a
faculty member should be studied from the perspective of input–output production
model by considering some appropriate sets of inputs and outputs in data envel-
opment analysis. Whereas the inputs could include the number of full-time aca-
demic staffs and the number of doctoral students and capital; the outputs could
include the number of (peer-reviewed) publications, number of tiered publications,
number of domestic/international publications, total citations, research grants
secured, etc. Our decision to exclude research grants received as outputs but the
number of doctoral students and unpublished reports as inputs was guided by
unavailability of accurate data in these respects. As we ruefully state in our method
section, most of the faculty members listed on the website were opaque vis-à-vis
their research grants, doctoral students, and unpublished research reports. We
relied on the six criteria of a published piece because its accuracy could be checked
from another source. Hopefully, our findings from the present composite indicator
approach will not only serve as a benchmark for the current level of productivity
among faculty members of B-Schools India but also motivate them to regularly
were as aware as other recent scholars (cf. [42,43]) that all the
indicators might not be equally diagnostic of research productivity.
To be meaningful, the CI requires setting of unknown weights for
the indicators used, depending upon their relative importance. To
us, the weight of an indicator should reflect on the priority given
to it by the individual researcher contingent upon his or her career
and aspiration (i.e., age, education, experience, and positions
sought, etc.). If weights fail to capture the priorities given to one's
career strategy, the resulting CI of research productivity might
become questionable in terms of its unintended consequence
of a skewed scholarship for younger more than senior faculty
members.
We considered the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the
econometric approach as two ways of endogenously generating
unknown weights (cf. [44–46]). Because of the identification of an
efficient frontier, the DEA seemed to have an advantage over the
traditional econometric approach in generating the impartial
benefit-of-the-doubt (BOD) weighting [47].7 That is, if a researcher
has high productivity according to one indicator of h-index, then
the relative weight of his h-index should be correspondingly high.
Since the CI estimate from the DEA measures the maximum pro-
ductivity performance of a researcher, high research productivity
in the BOD weighting implies high priority to the career strategy.
To overcome the aforementioned two problems, we employed
the directional-BOD model to comprehensively gauge the research
productivity of every scholar. We used six indicators. The first
three pertained to the author: (1) h-index scores ðI 1 Þ, (2) total
citations ðI 2 Þ, and (3) number of publications ðI 3 Þ; the last three, in
contrast, pertained to the journal: (4) h-index scores ðI 4 Þ, (5) tier
scores ðI 5 Þ, and (6) Impact Factor (IF) scores ðI 6 Þ. We took the
h-index and the IF scores of the various journals from the Scopus,
which has a much broader coverage of journals than the alter-
native Journal Citations Reports of the Thompson Reuter.
We also realized that the sole reliance on citations in journal
rankings by the Scopus may not always be so accurate. For
example, an otherwise important work that is casually dismissed
as common knowledge may not get cited at all. Authors working
on niche areas get cited less [33]. Worse, citation counts may at
times be more a fashion within the academic community than a
true indicator of the impact of the journal [50–53]. Citation-based
analyses can also be biased due to selective citations or self- and
mutual citations which render the association between the quality
of a journal and that of an individual article in it rather unin-
formative [53–55]. Despite these reservations, these citation-based
indicators continue to be viewed as the valid representatives of the
quality of journals in the contemporary literature. Thus, we
included citations as one of the six indicators of research pro-
ductivity in the DEA model.
Scholars around world in general and India in particular have
been skeptical of the coverage by the Scopus. In particular, the
Scopus has been accused of excluding the citations from books and
non-traditional sources, such as web sites, dissertations, mono-
nals, and/or the proceedings of important conferences [56]. To deal
with such concerns, we selected publications included in the
(footnote continued)
update their respective websites with full and accurate information about inputs
and outputs of research for the future such assessment.
7
DEA appears to embed a feature of ‘appreciative democratic voice’ in evalu-
ating decision making units. That is, each and every decision making unit is given
an opportunity to evaluate himself/herself in a manner that will be most favorable
to him/her. It resonates and accentuates a philosophy of favoring each and every
decision making unit [48]. However, interested readers may refer to Dyson et al.
[49] on an excellent discussion of some of the pitfalls usually faced by researchers
in several application areas and the possible protocols to be followed to avoid those
pitfalls.
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
ranking list of the National University of Singapore (NUS). For the
sake of fairness and comprehensiveness, we further considered
publications in all journals listed in the Scopus, ABS, and NUS
databases. To ensure accuracy, we also relied on the author's h-
index8 and the total citations reported in the Google Scholar9 that
covers all sorts of citation from published and unpublished
documents. We believe that consideration of Indicators 1–3 miti-
gates some of the concerns of Indian scholars, and that of Indi-
cators 4–6 gives them due credit for publishing in prime inter-
national journals.
Given our directional-BOD model analysis of the relative
weights of six non-commensurate indicators in developing the CI
of research productivity of a faculty member, we felt confident
that our indices might be psychometrically much better and
practically more useful than the alternative estimates. Relying on
the relative weights of individual indicators in estimating the CI is
not only a methodological novelty in productivity assessment
[62,63] but also an objective check on whether the earlier cited
Western rankings had “fairly” portrayed research productivity in
B-Schools of India. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first
attempt toward assessing the state-of-the-art in research pro-
ductivity in B-Schools of India. We are also the first to come up
with CI that seems to be more valid and practical than any of the
previously used indices of research productivity.
The remainder of this paper unfolds as follows. Section 2 deals
first with issues and problems in our data collection, and then with
the presentation of relevant data on B-schools in India used to
arrive at the six indicators. Section 3 first presents the general
input–output based production model in DEA setting to measure
overall research productivity. Since the use of this model required
some data that were currently unavailable, we first present the
description of BOD models used to estimate CI, then point out their
limitations, and finally suggest a generalized version of the
directional BOD model. Sections 4, 5, and 6 present results, dis-
cussion and suggestions for accelerating research productivity in
India, respectively.
2. Data collection
Collecting the accurate data on publications by the faculty
members of different B-Schools in India was a mammoth task for
us. In general, faculty members did not provide the full informa-
tion on their respective websites (e.g., “a large number of pub-
lications in reputed journals”). Of those who reported the titles of
the articles and the names of the journals, most of them did not
report the orders of authorships (e.g., “coauthored with other
professors”) either. Although websites had option for uploading
one's vita, it was rare to find an updated vita. We faced difficulties
in accessing information about even the year in which a degree or
diploma was conferred as well as tenure of one employment (e.g.,
years spent in academia, industries, government, etc.) and sabba-
ticals which might be the possible moderators of the link between
their quality of doctoral training and subsequent research pro-
ductivity. Consequently, we searched the individual B-School's
webpages, the NUS/ABS/Scopus databases, and the Google Scholar
8
The author’s h-index score from the Google Scholar will be no less than that
from the Scopus since the latter includes citations only from a list of selected
journals and a few conference proceedings. See the link http://www.scimagojr.
com/journalrank.php for the detailed list of journals covered under the Scopus.
9
Even Google Scholar is not free from criticisms such as inclusion of some non-
scholarly citations [57], exclusion of some scholarly journals [58], uneven coverage
across different fields of study [59,60], and not performing well for older publica-
tions [58]. However, on comparison, the Google Scholar may be perceived as pro-
viding a relatively more complete picture of an academics impact than the Web of
Science and the Scopus [61].
121
for the top 32 B-Schools in India. We selected these 32 schools as
they have been appearing in the ranking lists of top performers by
various ranking surveys (Outlook, the Business World, and the
Careers360) over the last five years. The other schools were not
selected because their research contributions were hardly notice-
able. As of February 28, 2015, we found 5543 publications by 783
faculty members during 1968–69 to 2014–15 listed in the NUS,
ABS, and Scopus ranking lists. Given that the first management
publication from India was in 1968–69, we made 1968 as the
starting year for our directional-BOD model analysis reported in
this article.
We browsed through the webpages of 783 individual faculty
members to collect the data needed for analyses. In particular, we
recorded the number of papers, the names of journals in which
papers had appeared along with the volume, issue, and page
numbers, and the number of authors of each paper. We then took
h-index scores along with total citations from the Google Scholar.
Some faculty members had reported these scores on their web-
pages. For those who did not have pages in the Google Scholar,
we searched for citations of their articles one by one to compute
their authors’ h-index scores. To find out both h-index and IF
scores of the journals in which an article had appeared, we visited
the SCImago webpage http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.
php. We considered the two-year IF scores of each journal
in 2013.
Finally, we browsed through the ranking lists by the NUS and
ABS to identify the tier of the journals. When the two lists differed
in the tier of a particular journal, we took the higher of the two.
For example, if a journal was in Tier 2 in the NUS list but in Tier
3 in the ABS list, we placed that journal in Tier 2. In calculating the
journal tier score, we assigned 20, 10, 5, and 2.5 points to the
journals classified as Tiers 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Twenty-two
journals which are recognized worldwide as exemplars of excel-
lence within the broader field of business and management
including economics had 40 points.
For articles with multiple authors, we came up with an esti-
mate that considered both the number of authors and the orders
of authorship. For example, consider a paper by an author o in the
journal k in which there are n authors, and the order of the author
o under evaluation is i. The weight of the ith order author o was
thus wi ¼ 2n  i =ð2n  1Þ. The tier score assigned to the author o was
wi UTP k , where TP k represented the tier points assigned to the
Pn
journal k. Here i ¼ 1 wi ¼ 1. For example, consider a paper in
International Journal of Production Research (IJPR) where there
are three authors. Here, k ¼ IJPR, n ¼ 3, and TP k ¼ 20 (as IJPR
belongs to Tier 1 and Tier 2 categories in the NUS and the ABS
respectively, and we considered the better of the two). If the
author o under evaluation is the second author (i.e., i ¼ 2), then
w2 ¼ 23  2 =ð23  1Þ ¼ 0:2857, and the tier score assigned the
author o is 5.714 (as w2 U TP k ¼0.2857  20¼ 5.714). Similarly, the
author o's scores with respect to the journal k's h-index and IF
were computed in the same manner. Finally, the author's scores on
each of these indicators over all of his or her papers were summed
to yield the total score.
It is undoubtedly unfair to compare the research productivity of
a younger faculty member with that of a senior faculty member
given their huge differences in research experience. The younger
colleague may have 2 publications in Tier 1 journals but the older
colleague may have publications in journals of Tiers 1 to 4. To
eliminate such age or experience bias, we corrected each of these
six indicators with the number of years ðxÞ spent in research by
every faculty member considered. The best possible way to mea-
sure x could have been to subtract from the current year (i.e.,
2014–15) the enrollment year in one's doctoral program. Given the
difficulty in accessing such data as pointed out earlier, we
122 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139

considered the year of award of the PhD degree as the proxy. In by setting up the following two-stage network DEA model12:
cases where even such information was missing, we considered Ps Pp
ur yro  d ¼ 1 wd zdj
the year of the first journal publication as a proxy.10 In this way, RP o ¼ max Prm¼ 1  Pm v x r 1 ð 8 jÞ;
i ¼ 1 vi xio i ¼ 1 i ij
we ended up by computing the number of years a researcher o had Ps )
invested ðxo Þ ¼ 2015-min {year of PhD degree, year of the first u y
r ¼ 1 r rj
Pp r 1 ð 8 jÞ; ur ; wd ; vi Z0 ð 8 r; d; iÞ ð2Þ
published research paper}. d¼1
wd zdj

where ur represents the weight of rth output, vi represents the

weight of ith input, and wd represents the weight of dth inter-
3. Methodology – directional-BOD model mediate output. Here the RP o can beseenas a composite measure

of research productivities at Stage I RP Io and Stage II RP IIo , i.e.,
3.1. The input–output based DEA model Pp Ps
Ps wd zdo u y
Pm
ur yro Pd ¼ 1
 P r ¼ 1 r ro
r ¼ 1
¼ m
vx
p
wd zdo
In a DEA setting, research productivity can be studied either in i ¼ 1
vi xio  i ¼ 1 i io
 d ¼ 1
 ð3Þ
the form of an input–output production model or a composite ðRP o Þ RP Io RP IIo
indicator. The former is a production model in which research
productivity is assessed by considering some set of inputs leading Although Models (1) and (2) have strong theoretical support,
to generation of some set of outputs.11 To arrive at the research the data available from 32 B-Schools of India could not allow their
productivity ðRPÞ for any researcher o (o ¼1, 2, …, n), therefore, applications. As noted, the unavailability of data on the number of
one can easily set up the following black-box DEA model: doctoral students supervised and the number of research grants
obtained prevented us from taking this approach. Given that any
initial research in a rather unexplored area always has to make a
Ps Ps 
ur yro  r ¼ 1 ur yrj compromise between the ideal and the practical, we followed the
RP o ¼ max Prm¼ 1  Pm r 1 ðj ¼ 1; 2; :::; nÞ; ur ; vi Z 0 ð 8 r; iÞ
i ¼ 1 vi xio i ¼ 1 vi xij second approach because the six criteria were readily cross-
ð1Þ verifiable by anyone interested.
This second approach also seemed sensible because the pro-
where yr and xi represent the rth output and the ith input, duction of performance rankings resulted in aggregating several
respectively; ur and vi represent the weights of rth output and ith performance dimensions as represented by their respective indi-
input, respectively; and n is the number of researchers. Here the vidual indicators.13 Moreover, there was an underlying ‘research
outputs represent the number of publications in journals of var- production function'14 whose technology set15 in DEA setting, PðxÞ
ious tiers and the value of research grants secured, and the inputs jx ¼ 1 is
represent the number of full-time academic staffs and the number 8 9
< Xn =
of doctoral students. The objective function measures the minimal PðxÞjx ¼ 1 ¼ ðI 1 ; I 2 ; :::; I s Þ : I rj λj Z I r ð 8 rÞ; λj Z 0 ð 8 jÞ ð4Þ
: ;
amount of inputs required to produce a given level of outputs by j¼1

the researcher o. The definition of research production function in

this model is very much coherent with the underlying economic
theory. That is, the underlying weights for the inputs and outputs
are explicitly defined by the properties of the production frontier
that could naturally be interpreted as elasticities.
The foregoing black-box DEA framework has been employed in
several studies of research productivity in higher education
[65–71]. However, Lee and Worthington [64] cautioned that the
inputs used to produce outputs might not be rational particularly
when their sequence is incorrect. To them, an appropriate model
exhibiting the correct research production correspondence is the
two-stage network DEA model where Stage I (research) requires
inputs such as academic staffs and number of PhD students to
produce intermediate outputs (z) such as research papers in tiered
journals, which can effectively be inputs for research grant appli-
cations in Stage II to generate additional research income (y). The
overall research productivity of researcher o can thus be computed
10
It is likely that a faculty member has received his/her PhD degree much
earlier than the year in which his/her first research paper appeared, in which case
the year-adjusted indicators are unduly overestimated. However, since no other
alternative was available, we continued with the first paper appearing year as the
proxy for the starting year of research activity.
11
The measurement of research output in higher education is admittedly
problematic because it is difficult to capture both quantity and quality of output
that seemingly vary and take on different weights. The output variables typically
include the number of (peer-reviewed) publications, number of domestic pub-
lications, number of international publications, total citations, research grants
received (grants income), etc., but there is hardly any consensus on how to select
from those outputs. Worse still, there is no agreement about whether the number
of grants received and the number of research papers published be treated as
inputs or outputs [64]. Given such state of affairs, we selected the six criteria that
were accessible through public domains.
As it can be seen, we treat each researcher in this scheme as a
distinct DMU producing various indicators, without incurring any
resource, with unit resources, or resources put equal for all the
researchers. By aggregating various individual indicators, we
obtain the joint combination of various indicators as opposed to
standard measures of research productivity. Thus, ours was an
attempt to gauge productivity even without knowing the inputs
that might have gone into them.
Given our primary interest in constructing a composite indi-
cator (CI) of research productivity by combining all the six indi-
cators available in the public domain, we used a constant input
(or zero input) to compute DEA-based CI. As in any empirical
research, we assumed that the chosen indicators are imperfect
12
The network DEA model (2) is based on the assumption that the underlying
technology exhibits constant returns to scale (CRS). However, if the CRS assumption
is found restrictive, following Sahoo et al. [72,73], one can alternatively set up this
model under variable returns to scale specification.
13
The general interest in the production of performance rankings has been
manifested in several application areas such as capital construction program
choice, European labor market analysis, social inclusion policies at EU level, internal
market policies, human development index, evaluation of performance of national
R&D programs, monetary aggregations, macroeconomic performance of state/
national economies, evaluation of local police effectiveness, sports, rankings of
economists and economics departments, banks, etc. For detailed references of these
studies, please cf., among others, [42,45,46,74–94] and the references therein.
14
Strictly speaking, there is no formal production function as such depicting
the conventional input–output relationship as defined in the production economics
literature. DEA is innovatively used here as a method of aggregation in the absence
of inputs.
15
Liu et al. [95] have shown that PðxÞjx ¼ 1 is the smallest closed convex and
free-disposal attainable set. Motivated by its use in different application areas, they
considered an axiomatic approach to examine, based on this technology set, var-
ious DEA models so as to cover a wide range of applications.
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
representatives of various individual indicators of productivity,
and that aggregating them might approximate the ideal level of
productivity, an issue of primary interest in this article.
Our set-up of the DEA technology without any input (or with
unit input for all the units) was further encouraged by a number of
other similar studies in which ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ were equated
with indicators of costs (or whatever indicators for which lower
values are preferred) and those of benefits (or whatever indicators
for which higher values are preferred), respectively. Following the
method of aggregating the various output performance indicators
into a single summary measure without considering any input
resources [42,45,46,74–94], therefore, we decided to combine the
six indicators into a composite index.
While doing so, we did encounter a problem in the economic
interpretation of weights of the indicators in constructing a CI.
Could the weights be equated with concepts like output elasti-
cities? The alternative econometric method had its own problems
such as the choice of specific functional forms and the choice of
the stochastic structure. Consequently, we viewed the problem in
the economic interpretation of weights to be not so serious. When
the calculated weights from the DEA technology reflect on the
priorities given to them by the individual researcher contingent
upon his or her career and aspiration (i.e., age, education, experi-
ence, and positions sought, etc.), the economic interpretation of
weights hardly seems so problematic.
In computing the CI, the DEA had previously been found to be
superior to the alternative econometric method in many ways.
First, the DEA deals with various indicators without any input
resources in constructing the CI. This virtue makes DEA ideal
when the inputs for producing the indicators remain largely
unknown as in our case. Second, the DEA is considered to be
superior to econometric method in putting aside the limitations
such as the choice of specific functional forms and choice of the
stochastic structure. Third, the DEA is now no longer considered a
mere deterministic methodology. In fact, the DEA estimators of
the production frontier have been found to have nice desirable
properties for providing a base for constructing a wide range of
formal statistical tests [96,97]. Fourth, the DEA is more realistic.
While the DEA optimizes on each DMU involved in a study, the
econometric method uses mixtures formed from averages or
other measures of central tendency. In addition, the DEA reflects
on individual DMU inefficiencies as well as efficient performers
along with the sources of their individual output and input
inefficiencies. This aspect of the DEA is in sharp contrast with
that of the econometric method, which routinely assumes that all
DMUs perform efficiently, an assumption at odds with the results
of a number of DEA studies under the conditions of dis-
equilibrium [98–100]. Finally, though both the econometric
method and the DEA use only the short-run data, the former,
however, bases its analysis on long-run performance as opposed
to short-run performance by the latter.
3.2. The directional-BOD model
Before constructing the CI of research productivity, we nor-
malized the individual indicators such that they varied between
zero (i.e., 0¼ worst performance) and one (i.e., 1¼ best perfor-
mance) in the sample.16 Let us define J as the set of N researchers /
faculty members, i.e., J ¼ f1; 2; :::; Ng. The normalized counterpart
16
The use of directional distance function-based DEA models does not require
data normalization because the resulting CI from the raw individual indicators that
are measured in different units, meet an important property of ‘units invariance’. In
the directional-BOD model, however, the individual raw individual indicators are
normalized. In PCA, the normalization of indicators is necessary to deal effectively
with a raw individual indicator that has the highest variance. Therefore, one should
123
of rth indicator ðr A R ¼ f1; 2; :::; 6gÞ for a faculty member j, j A J was
computed as
I rj  I r
I nrj ¼ ; ð5Þ
Ir  I r
  n o
where I r ¼ max I rj and I r ¼ min yrj for all r A R.
jAJ jAJ
In order to construct the CI of research productivity, we used a
linear weighted sum of the six normalized indicators. Using I nrj to
denote the rth normalized indicator by the jth faculty member, the
CI of research productivity for a faculty member j ðCIj Þ thus became
X
CIj ¼ wr I nrj ; 0 r wr r 1 for all r; ð6Þ
rAR
P
where wr is the weight of an indicator r, and r A R wr ¼ 1. The
linear aggregation principle used in the construction of CI in (6)
permitted us to estimate the marginal contribution of each indi-
cator as measured by its relative importance (i.e., weight) in the CI
separately. Given the weights, the higher the score of a particular
indicator, the higher is its contribution to the CI score. Given the
indicators, the higher the weight of an indicator, the higher is its
contribution to the CI value. Therefore, the higher the CI value, the
more productive is the faculty member, and vice versa. Note that
this linear aggregation rule holds under the condition that the
individual indicators are independent (i.e., the preference relation
between indicators is non-compensatory).
In treating aggregation as a nice and meaningful index, we
considered two issues. First, should the weights be determined in
a subjective or objective manner? Second, should preference
relation for different indicators be guided by compensatory or
non-compensatory principles? We opted for the objective weights
to avoid arbitrariness associated with the subjective opinion-based
methods. The linear aggregation principle employed in (6) impli-
citly assumed a constant trade-off between different indicators.
This assumption is questionable if the law of diminishing marginal
rate of substitution (MRS)17 is applied to the indicators. Under
such circumstance, the linearity assumption may produce biased
estimates when non-linear trade-off is going on between the
indicators [101,102]. In most practical applications where the
compensatory relation was not appropriate, we needed a method
that could accommodate the non-compensatory preference
structure among individual indicators.
The BOD model has been extensively applied to objectively
generate weights of the individual indicators in the construction of
CI in several areas, as indicated in [42,45,46,74–94]. The classical
BOD [47], a special case of the CCR-DEA model by Charnes et al.
[103] without any input, can be one way of constructing the BOD
estimator of CI of a faculty member o ðCIBOD Þ as measured by
o
output efficiency parameter β of the following LP:
n o
CIBOD
o ¼ max βjðβ I n1o ; βI n2o ; :::; βI n6o Þ A PðxÞ : ð7Þ
β;λ
Here, CIBOD
o lies between 0 (worst performance) and 1 (best
performance), i.e., 0 o CIBOD
o r 1. We noted three problems in
using this classical BOD-based CI measure. First, the weights
generated on six individual indicators were faculty-member spe-
cific that made area-wise comparisons rather hard. Second,
weights were not uniquely determined (i.e., multiple weights were
generated) when there were no constraints on weights. Finally, the
BOD model sometimes generated unacceptable zero weights.
(footnote continued)
normalize the raw individual indicators before constructing the CI using the
directional-BOD model.
17
The law of diminishing MRS states that for an individual j, the relative
importance of I 1j as compared to I 2j , increases when the value of I 1j decreases
relative to I 2j .
124 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
The solutions proposed in the literature for dealing with the
foregoing problems of multiple and/or zero weights (cf. Fusco [74]
on the detailed references on these) include value judgments by
either imposing bounds on the weights or setting a priori weights.
Since such value judgments vary across analysts/experts, the
weights suffer from obvious arbitrariness. Therefore, we adjudged
the ratings based on the arbitrary weight restrictions principle as
unacceptable. Moreover, as Podinovski [104] also pointed out, the
BOD model imposes the compensatory preference relation among
individual indicators without actually verifying whether this
relation actually exists in the data.
We saw merit in following the advice of Fusco [74] who
recommended including directional penalties in the BOD model.
More specifically, the directional distance function (DDF) of
Chamber et al. [105] accommodates the non-compensatory pre-
ference relations among indicators rather well. To compute the
varð^I pc2 Þ varð^I pc6 Þ
directional-BOD estimator of the CI of research productivity for a
faculty member o ðo A JÞ, therefore, we set up the following linear
program under the variable returns to scale (VRS) specification of
Banker et al. [106] as
 1 X g 
CID
o
 BOD
 1 ¼ max r
βr ð8Þ
β;λ r A R G
Xn
subject to I rj λj Z I nro þ β r g r ; r A R; ð8:1Þ
jAJ
X
λj ¼ 1; ð8:2Þ
jAJ
λj Z0 8 j A J; βr Z 0 8 r A R; ð8:3Þ
P key ways. First, unlike in [74], the rates of improvements in individual
where G ¼ r A R g r . Here g r 's are the endogenous directional
indicators representing as directional penalties,18 and β r repre-
sents the rate of maximum improvement in the rth indicator of
faculty member o. Thus, the higher the value of β, the more
inefficient is the faculty member, and vice versa. If β r ¼ 0 for all
r A R, then the faculty member o ðo A JÞ is most productive, in
which case CID  BOD
¼1. Technically, 0 o CID  BOD
r 1.
o o
The technology structure employed in the directional-BOD
model (8) uses λ as weights to make linear combinations of
Nobserved faculty members. Here the variable λ (or corre-
spondingly, the dual multiplier w of the constraint (8.1) of model
(8)) can be interpreted as intensities (or importance) coefficients
depending on whether the preference relation among indicators
is compensatory (or non-compensatory). The assumption of VRS
is maintained by the restriction (8.2) that the sum of these λ
variables is 1. The indicators are assumed to be strongly dis-
posable, and this assumption is secured by the use of inequality
ð Z Þ constraints in (8.1).
The objective function of our model (8) aimed at measuring
 BOD
CID
o by looking at the maximum possible improvements in each
and every individual indicator represented by β r ðr A RÞ. Each
improvement parameter β r carried a weight in term of its relative
P
BOD model
importance, i.e., g r =G . The weighted sum, i.e., r A R g r =G β r could
then be interpreted as the maximum overall percentage impro-
vement along all the six indicators. The directional-BOD estim-
ator CI in terms of output efficiency was then computed as
P
Finance (A&F), Decision Sciences (DS), Economics (Econ), Operations
1= 1 þ r A R g r =G βr . Our CI construct is both theoretically and
empirically appealing: It first involves differential expansions in
individual indicators due to their differing opportunity costs and
thus satisfies one important ‘indication’ property of an ideal effi-
ciency measure and then entails aggregation of improvements in
18
Most of the earlier studies employing the directional distance function used
several exogenous direction vectors (cf. [107,108] for the details).
indicators with unequal weights depending upon their relative
importance.
The directional penalty vector g used in (8) revealed the
endogenous preference structure among indicators. Using the
principal component analysis (PCA), this preference structure was
determined from the principle of variability of each indicator (as
measured by robust kernel variance) projected on to principal
components (PCs). This principle implied that an indicator with a
high variability was more important than the indicator with low
variability in discriminating decision making units. The PCA
allowed us to create an order of PCs in which the first PC had the
highest kernel variance and each succeeding component had the
highest variance possible under the condition that it be orthogonal
to the preceding components. Following this, we calculated the
direction vector g as
!
g ¼ g 1 ; g 2 ; :::; g 6 ¼ I pc1 ; I pc2 U ; :::; I pc6 U : ð9Þ
varð^I pc1 Þ varð^I pc1 Þ
In Eq. (9), I pc1 is the original individual indicator that is most
correlated with the first PC; I pc2 is the original individual indicator
most correlated with the second PC2 and so on; and varð^I pc1 Þ
represents the kernel variance of the projected value of I 1 onto the
PC, ^I pc1 ; varð^I pc2 Þ represents the kernel variance of the projected
value of I 2 onto the principal component, ^I pc2 ; and so on. While the
slope of the first PC (i.e., I pc1 ) represents the direction g, the ratio of
any two kernel variances of indicators projected onto the PCs (i.e.,
varð^I pc2 Þ=varð^I pc1 Þ) represents the intensity of the rates of sub-
stitution between I 1 and I 2 .
Note that the directional-BOD model presented in (8) is more
general, and is different from the one suggested by Fusco [74] in two
indicators represented by βs are different due to their differing
opportunity costs, and the resulting efficiency involves the aggrega-
tion of improvements in indicators with unequal weights depending
on their relative importance. Our measure of CI was well behaved
under less restrictive assumptions, and hence is theoretically more
appealing than that of [74]. Second, the VRS specification represe-
P
nted by j A J λj ¼ 1 was always maintained. Essentially, then, the
directional-BOD model of Fusco [74] was a special case of our
directional-BOD model (8) when βr ¼ β for all r, and the VRS-
P
specification constraint j A J λj ¼ 1 in (8.2) was removed.
Given the objectivity in the directional-BOD model (8), we
saw three more merits in our analyses. First, we determined
weights endogenously. Second, we included the directional dis-
tance function to avoid the use of arbitrary weight restrictions/
bounds by the policy analysts. Finally, the directional-BOD esti-
mator of efficiency satisfied one important ‘indication’ property
(i.e., an ideal efficiency measure be an aggregation of differential
improvements in indicators with unequal weights depending
upon their relative importance.)
3.3. Meta-frontier and group-frontier approaches in the directional
In the meta-frontier approach to CI, it is assumed that the faculty
members across different academic areas/groups of Accounting and
Management (OM), Marketing, Management Information System
(MIS), Organization Behavior and Human Resources Management
(OB&HRM), and Strategic Management (SM) operate under the same
research environment and employ the same technology in research
production [49]. We saw great merit in such an approach to CI
because academic institutions across the globe typically use scho-
larship as the key criterion in recruitment, salary adjustments, and
promotions of faculty members. A simultaneous consideration of
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
different indicators of research productivity - 3 indicators of the
journal and 3 indicators of the author—was thus expected to mini-
mize the differences stemming from technology heterogeneity, if
any, across academic fields.
Nevertheless, one may object to our meta-frontier approach on
the grounds that scholarship also varies across disciplines or areas.
For example, scholarship in economics may differ from that in
marketing or operation research. Even when both the American
Economic Review and the Management Science might be 4* journals
as per ABS ranking, an author with a publication in the former
journal will be adjudged as more productive than another author
with a publication in the latter journal in terms of IF, citations,
and h-index. Likewise, institutions themselves may differ in their
seeming infrastructure facilities. Thus, a more appropriate CI
should be based on group-frontier approach in which CIs are cal-
culated for faculty members of each group separately.
When members across different academic groups do differ in
technology of their research production, the meta- and group-
frontier CIs can be extremely useful in unpacking of their research
productivity into factors attributable to technology heterogeneity,
failure of his or her leader, or both [109–113] as illustrated in Fig. 1.
Note that the directional DEA model (8) that computes the meta-
frontier CI scores ðCIMF Þ of all faculty members regardless of their
academic groups, can also estimate their group-frontier CI scores
ðCIGF Þ for members of each of the eight separate academic groups.
To distinguish the CIMF from the CIGF , consider the three distinct
academic Group I (OM), Group II (Econ.), and Group III (OB&HRM), for
example, of Fig. 1. The normalized productivity indicator of tier appears
on the abscissa (i.e., x-axis); that of impact appears on the ordinate (i.e.,
y-axis). Further, the number of faculty members in Group I (F1, F2, F3,
and F4), Group II (H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5), and Group III (G1, G2, G3
and G4) are 4, 5, and 4, respectively. The CIs were computed based on
the direction vector g that had the endogenous preference structure
between tier scores and impact scores of all 13 faculty members.
Further, the direction vector g was obtained by applying PCA on the
example data of these 13 faculty members. According to CIMF , there are
only three most productive members (F1, F2, and G4; see, e.g., line
segment F1-F2-G4) among the 13 faculty members considered as a
whole. This is because each of these three members has CIMF of 1.
Given that the CIMF scores of the remaining 10 faculty members were
lower than 1, they could be adjudged as less productive possibly due to
technology heterogeneity, leadership failure, or both.
If technology heterogeneity across groups is acknowledged,
then all the four faculty members in Groups I and III form the
research frontier (they are getting CI of 1) but only 4 of 5 faculty
members (H1, H2, H3, and H4) in Group II do so. When the CIGF
Fig. 1. Meta-frontier research productivity and its decomposition.
125
falls below 1, leadership failure may be the more plausible factor
because the technology of research production is the same.
In order to ascertain the locus of the lower CIMF than CIGF of a
faculty member, we calculated the meta-technology ratio ðMTRÞ
(i.e., CIMF =CIGF ) for each faculty member. For example, the meta-
and group-frontier CIs of faculty member H5 of Group II were
CIMF GF
H5 ¼ OA1 =OC1 and CIH5 ¼ OA1 =OB1 , respectively. Here MTR H5 ,
which was computed as the ratio of CIMF GF
H5 to CIH5 (i.e.,
MF GF
CIH5 =CIH5 ¼OB1 =OC1 ), reflects the degree of technology hetero-
geneity. Note that 0 o MTRH5 r1. The MTRH5 of 1 represents
a perfect correspondence between the meta- and group frontier
CIs and thus rules out technology heterogeneity. In contrast, the
MTR of zero points toward complete divergence raising the
possibilities of both technology heterogeneity and leadership
failure. Thus,
CIMF GF
H5 ¼ MTR H5  CIH5 ð10Þ
Based on the meta-frontier CI decomposition (10), five points
are in order.
1) A faculty member of the total sample is most productive only
when his or her MTR is 1. That is, his or her CIMF ¼ CIGF ¼ 1.
Considered from this vantage point, faculty members F1, F2, and
G4 qualify to be most research productive among the three
groups considered.
2) If a faculty member is less productive according to CIMF (i.e.,
CIMF o 1), then the decomposition (10) is useful in inferring
whether his or her failure is due to technology heterogeneity
ðMTRÞ, leadership failure ðCIGF Þ, or both.
3) If a faculty member has CIGF ¼ 1 but MTR o 1, then (s)he faced
only technology heterogeneity. In Fig. 1, for example, the less
productivity of F3 and F4 of Group I, H1, H2, H3, and H4 of
Group II, and G1, G2, and G3 of Group III might have been due to
technology heterogeneity.
4) If the CIGF for a faculty member is less than 1, then his or her group
leader has not been effective in getting out the best from him or
her. Faculty member H5 of Group II illustrates such case in Fig. 1.
5) The decomposition (10) is meaningful as long as CIM r CIG . To
hold this relation, the direction vectors used in computing CIM
and CIG have to be the same. Note that the resulting CIMF based
on the direction vector g, which was obtained by applying PCA
to our example data set of 13 faculty members, preserved the
best non-compensatory preference relation between tier score
and impact factor of the whole sample so as to make it an ideal
measure of research productivity. However, the CIGF based on
the same g that was most suited for meta-frontier does not
reveal the same preference relations between indicators that
exist across groups. As a result, the CIGF based rankings of faculty
members are biased. If group-specific direction vectors (gs) are
computed by applying PCA to the respective group-specific data,
then the group-frontier approach will yield a realistic set of CIGF
scores preserving the preference relation between indicators,
but then the decomposition (10) based on this group specific
direction vector is not possible (i.e., CIMF can be more than CIGF
for a less productive faculty member). This anomaly made us
skeptical about the very idea of meaningfully decomposing CIMF
into MTR and CIGF using the directional BOD model (8). How-
ever, the decomposition (10) is of use if one measures both CIMF
and CIGF using the output-oriented radial DEA model (7) with its
usual limitations as we pointed out earlier.
4. Results
Of the 1416 faculty members in the 32 B-Schools of India, only
783 (i.e., 55.37%) had at least one publication captured in one of
126 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139

the three databases (i.e., NUS, ABS, or Scopus). Across 32 B-schools,
56.40% of the faculty members had published at least one journal
article. While 92.31% management faculty members of the IIT,
Madras were research active, only 16.28% of those at the S P Jain
Management School, Mumbai were so.
We present the distribution of 5539 papers by those faculty
members over 1968-69–2014-15 in Fig. 2. As it can be seen, the
publications of the chosen years suggest three developmental stages
or career priorities among them. Those of 1968-69–1986-87 were
research inactive; those of 1987-88-1997-98 started putting priority
on research and publications; and those of 1998-99–2014-15 accepted
research as one of their career priorities. Apparently, then, the
B-Schools in India have been steadily progressing in putting research
as one of their key performance areas.
4.1. Descriptive statistics
To examine research productivity at the organizational level,
we first considered all of our six indicators along with the number
of research years spent by the faculty members in the public and
private B-Schools. Recall that IITs, IIMs, and CUs are run by the GOI
but other schools by private individuals and/or groups. Further,
while IIMs are exclusively B-Schools, IITs and CUs have a faculty or
school of management. In Table 1, we present the means (Ms),
Standard Deviations (SDs), and range of research productivity as
revealed by each of the six indicators.
As Table 1a shows, the public B-Schools outperformed the
private ones along all indicators, excepting on tier score. Among
the public B-Schools, however, the non-IIM schools outperformed

Fig. 2. Distribution of published papers over years.

Table 1
Ms, SDs, and range of research productivity indicators at different groups of B-Schools.

Research experience (in years) Author h-index Total citations No. of papers Tier score Journal h-index IF

I All (N¼ N1 þ N2 ¼783)

M 14.125 4.281 172.623 7.074 23.846 120.924 4.278
SD 9.375 4.260 454.263 10.750 46.921 230.503 7.374
Minimum 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Maximum 52 48 7115 167 661.714 3056.665 83.031
I.1 Public (N1 ¼N3 þ N4 ¼ 549)
M 14.040 4.517 196.366 7.716 25.540 135.118 4.681
SD 9.061 4.611 518.913 11.982 44.713 246.917 7.697
Minimum 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Maximum 42 48 7115 167 528.568 3056.665 83.031
I.1a IIMs (N3 ¼ 391)
M 13.568 4.118 165.729 6.650 25.732 129.667 4.353
SD 9.139 3.775 312.181 7.611 38.572 211.927 6.462
Minimum 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Maximum 42 21 2034 70 328.572 2275.075 61.790
I.1b Non-IIMs (N4 ¼ 158)
M 15.209 5.506 272.184 10.354 25.067 148.610 5.492
SD 8.787 6.116 830.460 18.639 57.291 317.776 10.104
Minimum 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Maximum 40 48 7115 167 528.568 3056.665 83.031
I.2 Private (N2 ¼234)
M 14.325 3.726 116.919 5.568 19.869 87.622 3.333
SD 10.089 3.235 234.140 6.850 51.615 182.594 6.471
Minimum 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Maximum 52 19 1820 51 661.714 1915.143 52.645
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139 127

Table 1a were changes only in the order of fourth and fifth PCs. The journal
Comparative statistics of indicators. tier became the most important indicator with a maximum var-
iance of 29.731, followed by the total citations with a maximum
Author Total No. of Journal Journal Journal IF
h-index citations papers tier h-index variance of 18.301, the author h-index with a maximum variance
score of 17.894, the journal IF with a maximum variance of 16.788, the
number of papers with a maximum variance of 15.778, and the
Public vs t 2.738*** 2.951*** 3.159*** 1.463 2.983*** 2.517***
journal h-index with a maximum variance of 1.507, respectively. We
Private p 0.003 0.002 0.001 0.072 0.001 0.006
dfa 615 779 718 389 586 519 used these variances in estimating the directional penalties for each
Non- t 2.532*** 1.567 2.418** 0.134 0.690 1.313 of the 783 researchers for the first two sets of the data, and for the
IIMs vs p 0.006 0.065 0.013 0.335 0.329 0.137 738 researchers in the third set of the data, using formulae (9). Our
IIMs dfa 206 174 178 220 217 212
directional-BOD modeling (8) used these directional penalties in
Note: computing the CI of research productivity. The shift in relative
**
po 0.05 importance of the author's h-index from the fourth position in
***
p o 0.01 2  Schemes I and II to the third position in Scheme III does point to a
a s s2
In case of unequal variance, the degree of freedom is defined as df ¼ n11 þ n22 greater involvement of individual faculty members in research in the

ðs2 =n Þ ðs2 =n Þ
2 2
= n11 11 þ n22 21 where s1 and s2 represent respectively the standard deviations of
group I and group II; and n1 and n2 represent respectively the number of obser-
vations in each group.
the IIMs only on two indicators-author h-index and number of
papers; but not on the other four indicators.
4.2. Top productive schools and researchers
We examined the CI of research productivity of an individual
faculty member in three ways. In the first, we estimated
the overall CI of research productivity over the entire period of
1968-69–2014-15 (Scheme I, N ¼783). Although this analysis
estimated one's overall contributions, it did ignore the number of
years one had spent over research. In the second analysis, there-
fore, we corrected the CI scores of individual faculty members by
the number of years they had spent on research after their
respective doctoral degrees during the same period of 1968-69–
2014-15 (Scheme II, N ¼ 783). That is, we calculated CI for a faculty
member based on the same six but deflated indicators. These
indicators are deflated with respect to the number of years that
he/she spent in research. In the final, we estimated the CI in the
same way as in Scheme I but for only the most recent ten years of
2004-05–2014-15 (Scheme III, N ¼738). Thus, the CI from Schemes
I, II, and III estimated the total productivity over one's career, the
average productivity over the number of years one had spent over
research, and the total productivity during recent years. We did
the third analysis because Fig. 1 suggested that research might
have become a career priority of faculty members in recent years
[114].
Before executing the directional-BOD model (8), we considered
the directional penalties (i.e., the direction vector). As we noted,
there were three sets of data, one based on the normalized indi-
vidual indicators at the aggregate level for 1968-69–2014-15;
another based on the normalized year-deflated indicators for the
same period; and still another based on the normalized individual
indicators at the aggregate level for 2004-05–2014-15. To deter-
mine the relative importance of the six indicators as measured by
their respective variances, we first did Principal Component Ana-
lysis (PCA) of the foregoing three data sets. Results from the first
and third sets of data converged in identifying the relative
importance of six indicators wherein the journal tier was the most
important indicator with a maximum variance of 34.421 (36.575),
followed by the total citations with a maximum variance of 22.564
(24.354), the author h-index with a maximum of variance 16.090
(16.899), the number of papers with a maximum variance of
14.460 (10.957), the journal IF with a maximum variance of 11.510
(9.831) and the journal h-index with a maximum variance 0.956
(1.383). The number in brackets represents the variances obtained
from the third set of data. In the second set of data, however, there
most recent years than the total years of 1968–2014 examined.
We first assumed technology homogeneity across academic
groups [111] and executed our directional-BOD model (8) to
compute CIMF of all the 783 faculty members. Given eight aca-
demic groups (A&F, OM, DS, Econ, Marketing, MIS, OB&HRM, and
SM) wherein they might be technology heterogeneity, we also ran
model (8) separately for the data from that group only to compute
CIGF . To assess technology heterogeneity, we computed MTR of a
faculty member o ðMTRo Þ of a particular group k ðk ¼ 1; 2; 3; ::::; 8Þ
as the ratio of CIMF to CIGF .
4.2.1. Top productive schools
In Table 2, we list the mean CI of faculty members from B-
Schools during 1968–2014 (i.e., Scheme I)19 obtained from the two
approaches. Whereas the left side lists CIMF , the right side lists the
CIGF . The schools are listed according to their ranks in the CIMF . We
have put on * those B-Schools whose Ms were significantly greater
than zero in one-tailed test. The Spearman's correlation between
ranks of 32 schools according to the two approaches was 0.903,
po 0.01, indicating that technology heterogeneity may account for
at most 19% of variance in research productivity across schools. To
find out the sources of variations in research productivity, the CIMF ,
CIGF , and MTR are also reported in Table 2 a across academic groups.
As expected, mean CIMF scores are consistently lower than
mean CIGF scores. According to CIMF scores, only three faculty
members (1 from A&F and 2 from OM) were found to be most
productive. By contrast, 21 faculty members (5 from Marketing,
4 from SM, 3 from DS, 2 each from A&F, Econ, MIS, and OM, and
1 from OB&HRM) were found most productive. This finding sug-
gests that technology heterogeneity existed among these aca-
demic groups. Specifically, the three academic groups of Market-
ing, DS, and SM, which significantly gained according to CIGF
scores were nevertheless very far from the best research practices
as uncovered by the meta-frontier approach.
From the MTR estimates, the OM group seems to have very
little technology heterogeneity (i.e., the MTR is closer to 1), fol-
lowed by the A&F, OB&HRM, and MIS groups. By contrast, the
Marketing group appears to have the largest technology hetero-
geneity followed by the DS and SM groups. Given the mean MTR of
0.1237, 0.2056 and 0.2933 for Marketing, DS, and SM groups,
respectively, we contend that these groups can improve in their
research productivity performance by 87.63%, 79.44% and 70.67%
in order. Perhaps serious considerations of how to manage
research by faculty members in these areas through proper stra-
tegies of hiring, retention, and promotion deserve attention of the
leader.
19
Similar rankings of schools based on the second and third ranking schemes
are not reported here due to lack of space, but are available upon request from the
first author.
128 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139

Table 2
B-Schools listed according to their mean CIs from meta- and group-frontier approaches.

B-Schools CIMF : Meta-frontier approach CIGF : Group-frontier approach

Rank M SD Min Max Rank M SD Min Max N

**
IIT Delhi 1 0.0988 0.251 0.005 1 8 0.1395 0.248 0.010 1 15
Great Lakes 2 0.0938 0.286 0.002 1 4 0.1478 0.288 0.005 1 12
IIT Madras 3 0.0797** 0.203 0.004 1 10 0.1157*** 0.211 0.008 1 24
IISc Bangalore 4 0.0534*** 0.052 0.009 0.169 1 0.2046** 0.310 0.009 1 10
IIT Bombay 5 0.0495*** 0.049 0.003 0.172 6 0.1450** 0.243 0.008 1 16
ISB Hyderabad 6 0.0393*** 0.028 0.007 0.116 2 0.1606*** 0.259 0.010 1 31
IIM Bangalore 7 0.0365*** 0.047 0.002 0.314 9 0.1260*** 0.205 0.004 1 80
IIM Ahmedabad 8 0.0320*** 0.029 0.002 0.154 5 0.1458*** 0.207 0.004 1 78
MDI Gurgaon 9 0.0316*** 0.041 0.002 0.146 12 0.1143*** 0.240 0.004 1 31
IIM Calcutta 10 0.0280*** 0.039 0.002 0.257 11 0.1145*** 0.242 0.003 1 63
IIT Kanpur 11 0.0253*** 0.027 0.003 0.107 14 0.0576*** 0.050 0.003 0.177 17
IIM Kashipur 12 0.0205*** 0.016 0.003 0.044 13 0.0651*** 0.055 0.003 0.148 13
IIM Rohtak 13 0.0197*** 0.021 0.002 0.063 7 0.1397 0.285 0.005 1 12
IIM Lucknow 14 0.0184*** 0.017 0.003 0.080 15 0.0568*** 0.060 0.003 0.237 27
IIM Raipur 15 0.0181** 0.033 0.002 0.102 24 0.0425** 0.071 0.003 0.278 16
IIT Kharagpur 16 0.0178*** 0.014 0.002 0.046 3 0.1555** 0.281 0.008 1 12
XIM Bhubaneswar 17 0.0159*** 0.022 0.001 0.104 20 0.0485*** 0.090 0.003 0.434 22
MICA Ahmedabad 18 0.0143*** 0.013 0.001 0.045 18 0.0501*** 0.037 0.003 0.112 11
IIM Kozhikode 19 0.0141*** 0.015 0.002 0.070 22 0.0446*** 0.064 0.004 0.268 35
FMS Delhi 20 0.0140*** 0.010 0.008 0.033 16 0.0522** 0.053 0.017 0.154 6
IMT Ghaziabad 21 0.0137*** 0.015 0.002 0.072 17 0.0509*** 0.053 0.004 0.181 31
XLRI Jamshedpur 22 0.0131*** 0.012 0.003 0.051 21 0.0452*** 0.053 0.004 0.218 26
IIFT Delhi 23 0.0126*** 0.012 0.002 0.048 19 0.0486*** 0.061 0.003 0.214 20
IMI Delhi 24 0.0125*** 0.014 0.001 0.058 25 0.0332*** 0.044 0.002 0.189 38
IIM Trichy 25 0.0122*** 0.010 0.003 0.040 23 0.0440*** 0.039 0.008 0.156 14
NITIE Mumbai 26 0.0116*** 0.008 0.002 0.036 27 0.0286*** 0.028 0.004 0.111 38
IIM Udaipur 27 0.0111** 0.015 0.002 0.054 29 0.0232** 0.027 0.006 0.079 10
IIM Ranchi 28 0.0109*** 0.008 0.002 0.023 26 0.0318** 0.041 0.004 0.130 8
IIM Indore 29 0.0096*** 0.012 0.001 0.056 30 0.0201*** 0.028 0.003 0.136 35
NMIMS Mumbai 30 0.0091*** 0.007 0.001 0.025 28 0.0265*** 0.031 0.003 0.117 12
TAPMI Manipal 31 0.0057*** 0.006 0.002 0.026 31 0.0168*** 0.013 0.003 0.048 13
SP Jain Mumbai 32 0.0043*** 0.003 0.002 0.009 32 0.0106*** 0.005 0.006 0.017 7

Non-weighted arithmetic average CI 0.0269 0.0865

Industry CI with price independent weightsa 0.0263 Not Applicable

Note:
**
po 0.05
***
p o 0.01 P 1
a 783
P Following
 P Färe and Zelenyuk [115,116], the B-school industry CI is computed by the following formula: j ¼ 1 ð1=CIj Þ U wj where the price independent weight wj ¼
n n
r A R I rj =
1
6 j A J I rj .

Table 2a
The meta- and group-frontier CIs and their MTRs across academic groups.

Academic groups CIMF : Meta-frontier CIGF : Group-frontier Meta-technology ratio (MTR)

M SD Min Max M SD Min Max M SD Min Max N

A&F 0.0301*** 0.108 0.001 1 0.0574*** 0.156 0.003 1 0.5427*** 0.075 0.116 1 88
OM 0.0460*** 0.127 0.002 1 0.0460*** 0.127 0.002 1 0.9965*** 0.009 0.957 1 125
DS 0.0351*** 0.027 0.002 0.129 0.2134*** 0.259 0.007 1 0.2056*** 0.036 0.080 0.245 38
Economics 0.0242*** 0.030 0.001 0.172 0.0956*** 0.158 0.005 1 0.3417*** 0.200 0.047 0.972 99
Marketing 0.0136*** 0.014 0.001 0.072 0.1392*** 0.214 0.011 1 0.1237*** 0.018 0.046 0.139 114
MIS 0.0317*** 0.041 0.002 0.257 0.0919*** 0.170 0.004 1 0.4241*** 0.047 0.160 0.460 75
OB&HRM 0.0194*** 0.033 0.001 0.314 0.0415*** 0.094 0.003 1 0.5091*** 0.032 0.314 0.543 126
SM 0.0220*** 0.030 0.001 0.169 0.0966*** 0.191 0.005 1 0.2933*** 0.035 0.096 0.320 118

Note:
***
p o 0.01.

When faculty members of a group (see., e.g., Group II in Fig. 1)
have relatively lower scores on all the six indicators of research
productivity, the CIMF would always lie much below the CIGF .
Under such a circumstance, attributing failure to technology het-
erogeneity would be rather difficult to justify. It should also be
recognized that size of an academic group is always counfounded
with technology heterogeneity in estimating the CIGF scores. Had
there been only one member in an academic group, for example,
the CIGF score of 1 would have erroneously led to the conclusion
that (s)he is the most productive researcher!
Keeping the direction vector constant across the meta- and
group-frontier approaches, there is always a danger of distorting
the CIGF -based ranking of faculty members. For example, some of
the less productive faculty members in the Econ group whose rank
in the CIMF were 15, 21, 27, and 29, moved up to the top 10 in the
CIGF -based ranking. Apparently, the CIGF scores based on direction
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139 129

Table 3
Ms, SDs, and range of CIMF of the different groups of schools from Scheme I.

Minimum Maximum M SD Ns

All 0.0014 1 0.0269*** 0.0679 783

Public 0.0014 1 0.0288*** 0.0676 549
IIMs 0.0014 0.3142 0.0247*** 0.0328 391
Non-IIMs 0.0017 1 0.0389*** 0.1146 158
IITs 0.0020 1 0.0575*** 0.1535 84
Non-IITs 0.0017 0.1691 0.0177*** 0.0249 74
Private 0.0014 1 0.0226*** 0.0684 234

Note:
***
p o 0.01.

vector that was best suited for meta-frontier did not preserve the Table 4
non-compensatory preference relation between indicators, a Training differences in research productivity.
necessary condition for a meaningful productivity aggregation.
Thus, we are afraid that that CIGF might not be as ideal indicator of Doctoral trainings from N M SD t Df

research productivity as it has been suggested to be [74]. Given Non-IIMs 457 0.024 0.0701 1.792 **
581
that the promotion and tenure committees of B-Schools in India IIMs 127 0.017 0.0204
evaluate research productivity essentially according to the meta- IITs 131 0.039 0.1247 1.954** 137
frontier approach, our subsequent discussions of research pro- IIMs 127 0.017 0.0204
Abroad 199 0.047 0.0828 3.241*** 285
ductivity are based on CIMF alone. In Table 3, we report the mean India 584 0.026 0.0647
CIMF results from Scheme I by ownerships of the schools.
Taken together, results reported in Tables 2 and 3 lead to four Note:
**
observations. First, the Ms of 30 of the 32 B-Schools are sig- p o 0.05
***
nificantly greater than zero.14 s, productivity at public and private p o0.01.

B-Schools is the same (t (781) ¼1.172, p ¼0.241). Third, non-IIMs

outperformed IIMs (t (547) ¼2.080, p ¼0.038). Finally, B-Schools of Table 5
IITs outperformed those of the non-IITs (t (87) ¼ 2.259, p ¼0.013) Schools’ share of faculty members in top 5% list.
and even IIMs (t (84) ¼1.926, p ¼0.028). Among the B-Schools of
Schools Scheme I Scheme II Scheme III
India, therefore, those at the IITs may be adjudged as the best
performing ones by the end of 2014-15.20 Great Lakes 1 1 —
Given the foregoing evidence for a seemingly better pro- IIM Ahmedabad 4 1 6
IIM Bangalore 10 5 5
ductivity at B-Schools of the IITs than those of the non-IITs, we
IIM Calcutta 3 4 2
examined the difference between faculty members who had their IIM Lucknow — 1 1
doctoral training (i) in India versus abroad, (ii) at IIMs versus non- IIM Raipur 2 1 1
IIMs, and (iii) at IIMs versus IITs. We present the results in Table 4. IIM Rohtak — 2 1
IISc Bangalore 2 2 3
Those trained at non-IIMs were more productive than their IIM
IIT Bombay 3 4 3
counterparts, t (581) ¼1.792, p ¼0.037. Likewise, those trained at IIT Delhi 2 2 3
IITs, compared to IIMs, were more productive t (137) ¼1.954, IIT Kanpur 1 — —
p ¼0.026. Interestingly, the productivity of those trained abroad IIT Madras 5 2 2
IMT Ghaziabad — 1 2
was nearly two times as large as that of those trained in India, t
ISB Hyderabad 3 10 7
(285) ¼3.241, p¼ 0.001. The quality of doctoral training in B- MDI Gurgaon 3 3 3
Schools of India may be a more likely debilitating factor behind XIM Bhubaneswar 1 1 1
the less number of publications in international journals [16] than
factors suggested by others [15].
for research regardless of one's career in academia.21 Thus, rela-
4.2.2. Top 5% productive researchers from the three schemes tively younger researchers, for example, Rajesh Pillania, Pulak
We made distributions of the CI estimated from Schemes I, II, Ghosh, and Sumeet Gupta, to mention a few, who did not fare so
and III, and identified those who fell in the top 5% of each dis- well on all indicators in Scheme I (i.e., their respective ranks are
tribution. We list the names and the respective research pro- 12, 17, and 35 in Table A1) easily made to top of the list according
ductivity of those faculty members from Schemes I, II, and III in to Scheme II (i.e., their respective ranks are 2, 5, and 7 in Table A2).
Appendices A1, A2 and A3, respectively. As anticipated, results Notably, the CIs from the respective Schemes I and II point to the
reported in all the three appendix tables are instructive for dif- long- and short-term priorities for research in one's career. Finally,
ferent reasons. While the indicators over the total years indicate Table A3 presents mean productivity from Scheme III. In addition
the long-term dedication to and persistence in research of a to the priority for research in their careers, these estimates reflect
faculty member, those at the year-wise level suggest the priority on the relevance of these 5% scholars in generating contemporary
management literature from India.
20
The top three Ms of Table 2 were essentially due to one superstar in each
business school. When we removed such an outlier, the Ms of CI of research pro-
21
ductivity of IIT Delhi, Great Lakes, and IIT Madras came down to 0.034, 0.011, and A difficulty with this interpretation would arise when a young researcher
0.040 with respective SDs of 0.0315, 0.0109, and 0.0539. These new Ms were sig- within three to four years of completing the PhD published a few papers in Tier
nificantly greater than zero at p o 0.01. Although these scholars seem to be outliers 1 journals could score very high on indicators such as tier, h-index, and IF and thus
in their respective schools, they did not emerge so in our slack-based super effi- remain within the top 5% productive researches. To eliminate such bias, we set the
ciency measure reported later. minimum number of the post-PhD years of research experience to 5.
130 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
We present distributions of 40 star (relatively most productive
in our sample) researchers from the three schemes across B-
Schools in Table 5. Three suggestive trends can be noted.22 First,
50% of the 32 B-Schools do have at least one star researcher
according to one of the three schemes. Second, while 25% of star
researchers are at the IIM Bangalore according to Scheme I and at
the ISB Hyderabad according to Scheme II, such stars according to
Scheme III are about equally distributed at the IIMs at Ahmedabad
and at Bangalore and the ISB Hyderabad. Finally, while the IIM
Bangalore has been attracting impactful researchers from the very
beginning, ISB Hyderabad can also be a good option for those
skilled and interested in research.
In the most recent 10 years of 2004-05–2014-15 (Scheme III),
there were 4,068 papers by 738 faculty members. Thus, we had
earlier noted from Fig. 2 that there has been a rise in publications
in recent years. Further analyses of this period indicated that those
who fell in the top 5% of CI distribution (i.e., Table A3) had con-
tributed to 24.68% of these publications. We further divided the
738 faculty members into four quartiles as per their CI values in
descending order. Those falling in Quartiles 1, 2, 3, and 4 from top
to bottom had contributed to 56.59%, 23.45% 13.30%, and 6.66% of
the total publications, respectively. Apparently, about 57% of the
publications in even most recent years were by only the 25% of the
current faculty members of B-Schools in India.
Because national and international research-funding agencies,
collaborators, and doctoral students might be interested in
knowing most accomplished scholars from different areas of
management, we also analyzed the data area-wise. We report the
number of star researchers from eight broad areas of
management23 according to Scheme I, II, and III in Table 6. There
are four trends. First, as expected, those from the OM area have
consistently been dominating in management research.24 Second,
some from economics, MIS, and strategy areas have also been
consistent contributors. Third, there seem to be improvements in
short-term stars in OB & HRM. Finally, contributors from A&F,
marketing, and DS still remain negligible.
4.2.3. Top 10 subject matter experts
We examined the distribution of CIs from Scheme I and iden-
tified 10 top scores from eight areas of management. We report
their scores on the six indicators and the overall CI in Appendix
A4.25 An examination of the names and their CIs reveals that 50%
of these subject matter experts are at the three older IIMs at
22
For the sake of completeness, we examined the research productivity of
faculty members who had earlier worked abroad and/or were on sabbatical leaves
with that of those who worked only in India or had never been on sabbatical leave.
Unfortunately, valid data were not available from the webpages of most faculty
members. Through our personal contact, however, we came to know that some of
the top 5% scores from Scheme I (e.g., Bala V Balachandran, Biresh K Sahoo, C
Rajendran, Gajendra K Adil, Indranil Bose, P Balachandra, Ramadhar Singh, Sridhar
Seshadri, etc.) in Appendices A1, A2, and A3 had in fact worked for some years or
spent sabbatical leaves abroad. Importance of this information lies in suggesting
that B-Schools in India might seriously consider sending the existing faculty
members on sabbaticals to foreign B-Schools for self-renewal periodically.
23
Some areas such as Accounting (A) and Finance (F) are clubbed together
since most of schools in India do not provide information separately in their
webpages. So is the case with areas such as Organizational Behavior (OB) and
Human Resource Management (HRM).
24
The faculty members working in the area of OM are able to produce more
number of papers as compared to those working in other areas such Psychology,
Economics, Finance, OB, HRM, Marketing, etc. This is because our basic training in
mathematics in India (particularly in IITs, ISIs, IIMs) is at par with best schools in
the world whereas in other areas, we stand nowhere near to them. In spite of this
advantage, barring a few, surprisingly, most of the faculty members from the OM
and DS areas not able to produce papers in top journals.
25
The lists of top 10 subject matter experts in different areas of management
based on the second and third schemes are available upon request from the
authors.
Table 6
Number of subject matter experts in the top 5% list.
Academic area Scheme I Scheme II Scheme III
Accounting and Finance (A&F) 5 3 1
Operations Management (OM) 13 8 8
Decision Science (DS) 3 3 4
Economics (Econ) 5 4 5
Marketing 0 3 2
Management Information System (MIS) 5 7 7
Organizational Behavior and Human 2 7 6
Resource Management (OB&HRM)
Strategic Management (SM) 7 5 7
Note:
1. Three researchers (C Rajendran, Ravi Shankar, and Gajendra K. Adil) are common
across all the three schemes in OM area.
2. Five researchers (SM Kunnumkal, Sarang Deo, SK Srivastava, Surya P. Singh, and
Haritha Saranga) are common across Scheme II and Scheme III in OM area.
3. One researcher (Pulak Ghosh) is common across three schemes in DS area.
Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and Calcutta, and remaining 50% are
scattered over remaining 13 schools. Among the private B-Scho-
lars, however, the ISB Hyderabad stands out.
5. Discussion
The CIs derived through the directional-BOD model indeed
provided us with new information about research productivity of
B-Schools in India. As we noted, the CI entailed relative weights of
the six criteria objectively generated from the data at hand, and
the weights were further corrected by including the directional
distance function to avoid any arbitrariness in imposing weight
restrictions by the policy analysts. Specifically, our use of the PCA
to objectively estimate the directional vector eliminated the arbi-
trariness problem arising out of the discretionary uses of exo-
genous directional vectors set by the analysts. Moreover, the
directional-BOD estimator of efficiency satisfied the ‘indication’
property of an ideal efficiency measure well. Accordingly, ours was
not only a novel but also an objective approach to estimating the
research productivity in B-Schools of India.
There are four key findings. First, the relative weight of the six
indicators of journal tier, total citations, author h-index, number of
papers, impact factor, and journal h-index varied from high to low
in order for estimating the CI of a faculty member. Obviously, the
most important factor in the estimated research productivity of a
faculty member was the tier of the journal in which he or she had
published. Second, although both public and private B-Schools
were statistically indistinguishable in terms of their research
productivity, the B-Schools at IITs outperformed the IIMs that have
exclusively been established for management education and
research. Third, the aggregate CI allowed us to objectively identify
star researchers in India (i.e., those who fell into the top 5% of the
distribution according to Schemes I, II, or III). Also, the CIs for 783
faculty members of Scheme I enabled us identify the 10 most
accomplished subject matter experts in each of the eight areas of
management. Finally, the CIs of the faculty members during the
most recent 10 years of 2004-05–2014-15 led us to identify con-
temporary star researchers. Interestingly, 40%, 32.5%, 20%, and 7.5%
of these stars have been working in IIMs, private B-Schools (i.e.,
ISB, IMT, MDI, and XIM), IITs, and IISc, respectively. Of them, there
were more stars in the public (n¼ 27) than the private (n ¼13)
B-Schools, χ2 (1, N ¼40) ¼4.90, po 0.05. Apparently, quality pub-
lications might have become an important criterion in recent
faculty recruitments and/or promotions at the public B-Schools.
Given that the research facilities at IITs and IIMs are nearly the
same, why were faculty members at the former seemingly more
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
productive than those at the latter? We can suggest two reasons.
One is the difference in academic culture. IITs were established as
research-intensive institutions; IIMs were training institutes by
design. This difference was also corroborated by our finding that
the alumni of IITs were more productive than those of IIMs. Sec-
ond, and no less important, the obtained difference might be a
statistical artifact. The number of faculty members at B-Schools of
IITs is much smaller than that at IIMs. Further, those at IITs might
have been recruited based exclusively on the quality of publica-
tions and for the tasks of teaching and research. In contrast, faculty
members of IIMs are required to have knowledge and skills in
training of managers, consulting with clients, advising state and
central governments on policy issues, and raising management
issues in media in addition to management research [114]. Thus,
the difference between IITs and IIMs may be attributed more to a
smaller but more homogeneous sample than to any genuine dif-
ference in research productivity. This possibility is further corro-
borated by the result that the number of star researchers at the
IIMs according to Scheme III was exactly two times as large as that
at the IITs.
Two other results also deserve mention. One was that faculty
members who had their doctoral training abroad were more
productive over the years than those who were trained in India.
Another was that those trained at the IITs were more productive
than those trained at the IIMs. Taken together, these differences
call attention to the need for further improving the quality of
doctoral education in India in general and at the IIMs in particular.
Despite the objectivity in the estimated CI of research pro-
ductivity, one may still raise objection on the grounds that the
length of the published paper and the time spent on completing
the research program were totally discounted. One may write a 2-
page comment on a paper (or a shorter paper) published in Tier I
or Tier II journal but another may write an article of 21 pages [38]
and a chapter of 38 pages [117], each based on a decade of pro-
grammatic research. Since the study by Singh [117] was published
in an edited volume, the importance of this 8-experiment pro-
grammatic research conducted over 16 years was not realized until
a new volume on the most unloved work in social psychology
came out was in 2011 [118]. The very same research resulted in
Singh's inclusion in the website on Faces and Minds of Psychological
Science of the Association of Psychological Science [119]. In con-
trast, some authors in OM and DS areas had published shorter
papers of less than 10 pages in Tier 1 and Tier 2 journals which
pushed their CI considerably. Given our focus on journal publica-
tions and the six indicators of research productivity, unusual pie-
ces of research [38,117] might have admittedly been under-
weighted. It is possible, therefore, that our estimates of research
productivity could be on a slightly lower side than what they
ought to be.
As it is well-known, only basic contributions are cited in the
textbooks of a field. Our model did not consider such citations
either. Again, such omission occurred because of our six indicators
of research used in the directional-BOD model. Further, the total
citations and the author h-index might be underestimated also
because the Google Scholar did not perform well for older pub-
lications that have not been yet posted on the web [58]. It is
possible that Ramadhar Singh's CIs across Schemes I and II might
have been underestimated because his 43 papers were published
before 1990. Since Singh remained among star researchers across
all three schemes, our directional-BOD analysis seems to have
yielded valid estimates.
Given our past experiences in publishing articles in multi-
disciplinary journals, we are aware of differences in the citation
patterns across journals. For example, some of the economics
journals require citations of only those articles that are of direct
relevance for the issues under consideration and even restrict the
131
number of references. OB&HRM, A&F, and Marketing, in contrast,
encourage citations of all papers on the issue. Such practices have
obvious implications for the h-index and IF scores of journals of
different fields. Relying on a single indicator, as Oswald [120]
rightly cautioned, might yield a biased estimate of productivity.
Precisely because of such danger, our CI estimations included all
six indicators, using the directional-BOD model.
In sum, it can be said that nearly 94% of the B-Schools in India
continue to be fixated on only training of younger managers rather
than on research. The positive side that there has been a notable
shift in importance from training of managers to advancing
management knowledge in at least 6% of B-Schools in the recent
10 years. Nevertheless, there are still considerable differences
between faculty members of different areas. Given adequate time
and resources for research in all areas as suggested previously
[12,13], the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and Calcutta; the IITs at
Bombay, Delhi, and Madras; the IISc at Bangalore; and two private
B-Schools (i.e., ISB Hyderabad, MDI Gurgaon) can be expected to
generate impactful management knowledge in the future.
6. Suggestions for accelerating research productivity
Our current work on measurement of research productivity in
B-Schools allows us to offer some directions on the pressing
research policy issues related to accelerating research productivity
in India. Here we focus on the five important issues of (1) quality
of the doctoral programs, (2) self-renewals of the faculty members,
(3) research programs by the stars identified, (4) appointing aca-
demic leaders with experience and focus on research, and
(5) retaining the star researchers.
1. Faculty members who had their doctoral degrees from abroad
and/or had worked abroad for a few years were more produc-
tive than those who had such degrees or experiences exclu-
sively in India. To us and many colleagues who constructively
commented on our first version of this article, such difference
points to the inadequacy in the existing indigenous doctoral
programs at IIMs. In addition to professionally strengthening
the doctoral programs as noted next, it might be proper to
annually support advanced degree of at least 50 young Indian
scholars abroad. Whenever there is an opportunity for faculty
exchange between Indian and foreign B-Schools, such oppor-
tunity should also be availed of.
2. The current faculty members who had the title of a Fellow from
the IIMs were less productive than those who had their doctoral
degrees from IITs and/or abroad. A number of colleagues and
doctoral students privately shared with us that supervisors never
take research guidance seriously, nor do examiners take evalua-
tion of the dissertation seriously. Through right-to-information
(RTI) channel, they suggested, it should be possible to find out
whether examiners have in fact been recommending award of the
title or degree without mentioning the key contributions by the
candidate! Thus, the doctoral programs at the IIMs should
provide students with opportunities to be mentored by only
those faculty members who are themselves active and productive
in research. Based on our own experiences, we further recom-
mend that students admitted to a doctoral program should be
required to publish at least two papers in peer-reviewed inter-
national journals before submitting their doctoral dissertations.
This requirement should be even stricter for those who had not
written an honors or master's thesis before joining the doctoral
program. We recommend the above because publications in peer-
reviewed international journals would first place accountability
demands on the supervisors and then expose students to inter-
national level of professionalism.
132 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139
3. One's doctoral training has a life cycle of no more than 5–6
years. In order to be a good mentor or research supervisor,
therefore, the faculty member has to be more knowledgeable
than the student supervised. This goal can be achieved only
when faculty members have been leading a research program.
Research programs facilitate mentoring of younger scholars as
well as self-renewal of the faculty members themselves. While
younger faculty members should be given more time and
support for running a research program, the tenured ones
should be required to go on sabbaticals to a reputed school to
recharge themselves with the advances in literature and
method of their specialization. No less important, full professor-
ship, higher academic grades to full professors, and/or member-
ships on the faculty evaluation committee to professors of B-
Schools should be strictly based on quality publications and
their subsequent impact on literature as evinced by citations in
journals and textbooks. Accordingly, any of the preceding three
forms of recognition by only the number of years of teaching
experience at a school has the danger of reversing the recent
priority from advancing knowledge to mere teaching by pro-
fessors at B-Schools of India.
4. As of February 28, 2015, there were 16 IIMs. Among star
researchers and/or subject matter experts listed in Appendices
A1–A4, however, only three names of acting and/or current
Directors (IIMs at Ahmedabad, Kozhikode, and Raipur) appear!
This raises the often-debated issue of whether a successful
leader of a management institution needs to be an academic
with great research and teaching records or a Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) who can run the institution by proxies. While it is
difficult to resolve this issue conclusively, having a leader of
management institution with poor research record does have
several notable disadvantages in India. It is difficult to imagine a
director who is not an accomplished or active researcher to be
able to credibly inspire, mentor, monitor, or retain those who
are active researchers. Worse still, an academically weak direc-
tor or CEO may adopt a governance strategy that keeps him or
her more in the company of “lovable fools” (incompetent or
unaccomplished but obedient faculty members) who have
similar inadequate research records than “competent jerks”
(competent but questioning ones) who may be well accom-
plished researchers [121,122]. Research requires questioning the
status-quo and offering a better alternative; blind obedience to
an academically weak authority or CEO, by contrast, kills the
culture of creativity and innovation [123]. For the sake of
promoting and preserving the culture of creativity and research,
placing top priority on the research accomplishments of the
contenders of directorships of IIMs and even private B-Schools
thus seems not only important but also necessary. The use of
the estimated CI and the six criteria used in the directional-BOD
model might make the decision on a suitable director more
objective than the subjective opinions about one's seeming
pedigree and standing in the field.
5. Given that even the so-called CIs of 0.085 and 0.035 can result
in one's categorization as the star researcher and the subject
matter expert, respectively, in India, demands of such faculty
members across IIMs and other B-Schools can always be high. It
is important for B-Schools, therefore, to make special efforts
toward not only attracting such faculty members and support-
ing their research programs but also retaining them. For
example, the mean CI for IIM Bangalore from 80 faculty
members was just 0.0365. With departure of Jayant Kale
(0.119), Pankaj Chandra (0.102), Devanath Tirupati (0.131) and
Ramadhar Singh (0.314), the mean CI slips down to 0.029, along
a scale of 0 (not all productive) to 1 (most productive), making
IIM Bangalore even below MDI Gurgaon in terms of research
productivity. Likewise, exit of even one scholar such as Ravi
Shankar (IIT Delhi), Bala Balachandran (Great Lakes), or Biresh
Sahoo (XIM) from his respective B-School will yield a drastic fall
in its current rank. As many colleagues privately reported,
research productivity at our B-Schools has disturbingly been
falling because “dirty notes” (i.e., those who are unemployable
elsewhere) have collectively been driving out “clean notes” (i.e.,
those who are readily employable elsewhere) from the current
productive B-Schools [124–126]! For the purpose of maintain-
ing or improving upon the existing international rakings, there-
fore, the challenges before B-Schools are not only attracting
well-trained potential scholars but also retaining them.
7. Limitations and future research
In any study, what one observes is not TRUTH per se but TRUTH
accessed through the particular method that was employed. Our
evaluation of research productivity in B-Schools in India has the
same limitation. Thus, what we report in this article are findings
from the directional-BOD model meta-frontier analysis, using the
three criteria about the journal and the three criteria about the
author. Given new inputs and criteria of research, the estimated
productivity of some faculty members might change. As we noted,
our use of these six criteria was guided by their availability in the
public domain and hence verifiability by other researchers.
Nevertheless, we recommend that the future work along this line
might benefit more by applying the technology structure under-
lying network DEA model (2) by Lee and Worthington [64] parti-
cularly when the data about research grants, unpublished reports,
and doctoral students of faculty members of B-Schools will also
become available in the public domain.
In our directional-BOD model meta-frontier analysis, we
assumed the deterministic nature of research production. One may
question the validity of our findings on the grounds that the data
might have been biased by factors in the external environment
surrounding production of research. Such doubt may be countered
from two angles. First, macroeconomic and market conditions
usually change accounting standards and price levels and hence
contaminate accounting data substantially. In our case, however, the
data on the various indicators might not have been so much con-
taminated because research production environment in India is not
yet volatile as already evinced by the low but stable efficiency pat-
tern reported in this article. Second, faculty members with super-
efficiency score of two or more [127] are regarded as outliers in the
research production technology set. Such outliers generally tend to
inflate or deflate efficiency estimates. In the three sets of our data,
however, we did not find any such outlier according to the slacks-
based measure of super-efficiency of Tone [128].
It should be emphasized that research in B-Schools of India has
been assuming importance over the years. As we also noted at the
outset, the GOI has been encouraging quality research, and B-
Schools have been using publications in peer-reviewed journals for
financial incentives, recruitment, tenure, and promotion of faculty
members [18–20]. Should such priority for advancing knowledge
continues, there might be high level of competition and even vola-
tility in research production. Accordingly, we recommend that the
future research should also consider using Simar et al.'s [129] robust
frontier estimation method that uses bootstrap procedures for sta-
tistical inference about directional distance, estimation of confidence
intervals, and bias correction. We are ourselves keen to see how our
current effort toward assessing research productivity in B-Schools of
India spurs more similar assessments using recent advances in data
analyses [64,129]. Such assessments of research productivity may
then bode well for the public who demand accountability and
transparency in research investments and for policymakers who
need useful metrics to measure and improve research in India.
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139 133

Acknowledgment who commented on the first draft and the implications of our find-
ings for promoting management research in India. We thank them.
The authors are grateful to M. Mehdiloozad and M. Khoveyni for
developing the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) code
which we used to estimate the CI scores. This version of the manu-
script has benefited substantially from the extremely constructive Appendix A
suggestions and criticisms of three anonymous reviewers, the chief
editor, the area editor, Elisa Fusco, and numerous colleagues in India See Tables A1–A4

Table A1
Top 5% of most productive researchers from Scheme I (1968-69–2014-15).

Rank Researcher Current PhD Area of Research exp. Author h- Citation No. of Tier score Journal h- IF CI
affiliation research index paper index

1 C Rajendran IIT Madras IIT Madras OM 25 48 7115 129 528.57 3056.66 83.03 1
1 Bala V Great Lakes Carnegie Mellon A&F 52 17 1325 51 661.71 1915.14 52.64 1
Balachandran
1 Ravi Shankar IIT Delhi IIT Delhi OM 16 43 6864 167 218.35 1292.26 57.18 1
4 Ramadhar Singh IIM Bangalore Purdue OB&HRM 42 18 1048 70 328.57 2275.07 61.79 0.314
5 Indranil Bose IIM Calcutta Purdue MIS 19 21 1242 46 254.05 1761.77 55.71 0.257
6 TT Narendran IIT Madras IIT Madras OM 39 21 2112 63 188.45 948.18 27.44 0.213
7 VK Kathuria IIT Bombay IGIDR Econ. 17 17 1160 40 206.02 971.77 31.71 0.172
8 P Balachandra IISc Bangalore IISc Bangalore SM 25 17 1067 36 167.04 869.18 41.07 0.169
9 Debashis Saha IIM Calcutta IIT Kharagpur MIS 24 18 2034 35 108.53 707.32 31.97 0.160
10 Amit Garg IIM Ahmedabad IIM Ahmedabad SM 17 16 1085 35 130.49 1297.94 36.47 0.154
11 Vijay Aggarwal MDI Gurgaon Case Western OM 36 19 1110 22 180.24 803.12 20.77 0.146
Reserve
12 RP Sundarraj IIT Madras Tennessee MIS 28 14 781 31 171.38 1009.32 32.34 0.145
13 Sajal Ghosh MDI Gurgaon N.A. Econ. 14 11 777 25 183.93 888.90 41.82 0.145
14 RK Pillania MDI Gurgaon N.A. SM 10 13 449 50 89.29 658.80 51.95 0.139
15 Gajendra K Adil IIT Bombay Manitoba OM 27 12 525 37 185.36 859.14 26.90 0.136
16 Devanath IIM Bangalore MIT OM 31 16 1225 32 142.79 573.89 17.78 0.131
Tirupati
17 Pulak Ghosh IIM Bangalore Oakland DS 12 19 516 24 170.07 864.30 17.26 0.129
18 S G Badrinath IIM Bangalore Purdue A&F 31 11 1578 17 155.95 619.24 20.63 0.125
19 M H Bala IISc Bangalore ISEC Bangalore Econ. 22 13 640 35 141.90 609.24 23.38 0.120
Subrahmanya
20 B Mahadevan IIM Bangalore IIT Madras OM 25 12 1559 21 126.71 740.72 18.82 0.119
21 Jayant R Kale IIM Bangalore Univ. of Texas at A&F 28 12 1296 12 153.62 630.93 21.80 0.119
Austin
22 PR Shukla IIM Ahmedabad Stanford SM 29 17 855 33 86.43 678.68 25.46 0.117
23 Sanjay Kallapur ISB Hyderabad Harvard A&F 25 12 1820 12 137.86 412.57 15.62 0.116
24 D Banwet IIT Delhi IIT Delhi OM 23 19 1649 48 31.95 268.73 15.24 0.116
25 G Srinivasan IIT Madras IIT Madras OM 25 12 912 28 119.83 648.75 21.23 0.110
26 A Patwardhan IIT Bombay Carnegie Mellon MIS 32 18 1560 27 50.63 464.02 19.30 0.109
27 Kripa Shanker IIT Kanpur Cornell OM 40 11 804 23 149.68 634.94 16.34 0.107
28 LS Ganesh IIT Madras IIT Madras OM 29 16 1328 26 78.61 495.33 16.06 0.107
29 Biresh K Sahoo XIM IIT Kharagpur Econ. 16 13 543 24 124.43 866.46 19.53 0.104
Bhubaneswar
30 M Patibandla IIM Bangalore JNU SM 27 10 535 24 198.21 608.14 13.09 0.103
31 U Dinesh Kumar IIM Bangalore IIT Bombay DS 21 14 816 26 96.71 648.49 19.59 0.103
32 Pankaj Chandra IIM Bangalore Wharton OM 26 13 1123 15 126.67 597.80 12.72 0.102
33 BS Sahay IIM Raipur IIT Delhi OM 20 19 1334 26 39.48 338.74 17.69 0.102
34 Sukhpal Singh IIM Ahmedabad ISEC Bangalore SM 25 13 772 26 136.83 373.92 9.95 0.100
35 Sumeet Gupta IIM Raipur NUS MIS 9 16 1405 25 65.34 357.83 12.59 0.099
36 R Chakrabarti ISB Hyderabad UCLA A&F 16 14 980 16 107.37 433.42 14.04 0.096
37 Annapurna Shaw IIM Calcutta Univ. of Illinois at SM 31 9 244 18 183.33 387.67 15.02 0.096
Urbana-Champaign
38 Ishwar Murthy IIM Bangalore Texas A&M DS 28 8 417 22 138.05 742.49 17.80 0.091
39 RH Dholakia IIM Ahmedabad MS Univ. Baroda Econ. 37 9 459 33 142.82 341.25 7.13 0.089
40 Dishan Kamdar ISB Hyderabad NUS OB&HRM 11 11 950 14 80.95 588.86 18.22 0.085

Note: A&F: Accounting and Finance, Econ.: Economics, OM: Operations Management, DS: Decision Sciences, MIS: Management Information Systems, OB&HRM: Organiza-
tional Behavior and Human Resource Management, and SM: Strategic Management, N.A.: Not Available.
134 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139

Table A2
Top 5% productive researchers from Scheme II (1968-69–2014-15).

Rank Researcher Affiliation PhD Area Research exp. Author Total No. of Tier score Journal IF CI
(years) h-index citations papers h-index

1 C Rajendran IIT Madras IIT Madras OM 25 48 7115 129 528.57 3056.66 83.03 1
1 Ravi Shankar IIT Delhi IIT Delhi OM 16 43 6864 167 218.35 1292.26 57.18 1
1 RK Pillania MDI Gurgaon N.A. SM 10 13 449 50 89.29 658.80 51.95 1
4 Indranil Bose IIM Calcutta Purdue MIS 19 21 1242 46 254.05 1761.77 55.71 0.408
5 Pulak Ghosh IIM Bangalore Oakland DS 12 19 516 24 170.07 864.30 17.26 0.351
6 Sajal Ghosh MDI Gurgaon N.A. Econ. 14 11 777 25 183.93 888.90 41.82 0.323
7 Sumeet Gupta IIM Raipur NUS MIS 9 16 1405 25 65.34 357.83 12.59 0.315
8 VK Kathuria IIT Bombay IGIDR Econ. 17 17 1160 40 206.02 971.77 31.71 0.294
9 SM Kunnumkal ISB Hyderabad Cornell DS 9 8 212 15 120.71 510.24 14.96 0.276
10 Amit Garg IIM Ahmedabad IIM Ahmedabad SM 17 16 1085 35 130.49 1297.94 36.47 0.263
11 PR Srivastava IIM Rohtak BITS Pilani MIS 7 12 498 22 10.16 204.00 18.76 0.249
12 Mukta Kulkarni IIM Bangalore Univ. of Texas at OB&HRM 9 6 560 20 88.17 375.78 16.19 0.241
San Antonio
13 Dishan Kamdar ISB Hyderabad NUS OB&HRM 11 11 950 14 80.95 588.86 18.22 0.231
14 Deepa Mani ISB Hyderabad Univ. of Texas MIS 9 7 331 6 99.90 305.09 15.66 0.224
15 K Mukherjee IIM Bangalore INSEAD OB&HRM 6 3 57 5 59.71 354.56 15.20 0.223
16 Sarang Deo ISB Hyderabad UCLA OM 10 7 207 12 106.79 547.44 13.44 0.215
17 Amit Mehra ISB Hyderabad Rochester MIS 9 5 114 7 103.45 320.74 17.32 0.214
18 R Chittoor ISB Hyderabad IIM Calcutta SM 8 5 442 8 71.31 302.46 12.39 0.199
19 Bala V Great Lakes Carnegie-Mellon A&F 52 17 1325 51 661.71 1915.14 52.64 0.196
Balachandran
20 Biresh K Sahoo XIM IIT Kharagpur Econ. 16 13 543 24 124.43 866.46 19.53 0.195
Bhubaneswar
21 SK Srivastava IIM Lucknow IIM Lucknow OM 11 8 1798 11 45.24 296.24 17.71 0.190
22 Smeeta Mishra IMT Ghaziabad Univ. of Texas at OB&HRM 9 6 99 11 110.71 177.29 4.70 0.188
Austin
23 Ramendra Singh IIM Calcutta IIM Ahmedabad Marketing 7 7 156 21 36.37 223.53 8.46 0.184
24 TT Niranjan IIT Bombay MDI Gurgaon OM 8 8 138 15 53.19 270.29 9.78 0.184
25 P Balachandra IISc Bangalore IISc Bangalore SM 25 17 1067 36 167.04 869.18 41.07 0.181
26 Ramadhar Singh IIM Bangalore Purdue OB&HRM 42 18 1048 70 328.57 2275.07 61.79 0.179
27 I Mukherjee IIT Bombay IIT Kharagpur OM 9 7 412 15 44.67 358.23 14.40 0.173
28 R Chakrabarti ISB Hyderabad UCLA A&F 16 14 980 16 107.37 433.42 14.04 0.169
29 A Nandkumar ISB Hyderabad Carnegie Mellon SM 9 7 199 4 83.33 275.67 6.89 0.168
30 Debashis Saha IIM Calcutta IIT Kharagpur MIS 24 18 2034 35 108.53 707.32 31.97 0.167
31 Abhijeet Vadera ISB Hyderabad Illinois OB&HRM 7 5 211 5 49.81 212.09 9.91 0.166
32 Rohit Varman IIM Calcutta Utah Marketing 13 10 451 18 98.67 228.66 11.04 0.164
33 Gopal Das IIM Rohtak IIT Kharagpur Marketing 6 5 63 13 20.60 218.95 10.77 0.158
34 Jyotsna MDI Gurgaon IIT Delhi OB&HRM 12 15 962 19 34.81 298.64 7.97 0.157
Bhatnagar
35 Surya P Singh IIT Delhi IIT Kanpur DS 13 9 376 16 90.14 427.61 12.36 0.157
36 MH Bala IISc Bangalore ISEC Bangalore Econ. 22 13 640 35 141.90 609.24 23.38 0.152
Subrahmanya
37 R P Sundarraj IIT Madras Tennessee MIS 28 14 781 31 171.38 1009.32 32.34 0.143
38 Gajendra K Adil IIT Bombay Manitoba OM 27 12 525 37 185.36 859.14 26.90 0.142
39 Haritha Saranga IIM Bangalore Univ. of Exeter OM 18 11 450 18 108.02 655.51 16.16 0.138
40 Prachi Deuskar ISB Hyderabad New York Univ. A&F 8 6 125 4 55.24 169.26 6.36 0.138

Note: A&F: Accounting and Finance, Econ.: Economics, OM: Operations Management, DS: Decision Sciences, MIS: Management Information Systems, OB&HRM: Organiza-
tional Behavior and Human Resource Management, and SM: Strategic Management, N.A.: Not Available.
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139 135

Table A3
Top 5% productive researchers from Scheme III (2004-05–2014-15).

Rank Author Affiliation PhD Area Author Total No. of Tier score Journal IF CI
h-index citations paper h-index

1 Indranil Bose IIM Calcutta Purdue MIS 19 910 39 215.95 1453.82 45.50 1
1 Ravi Shankar IIT Delhi IIT Delhi OM 41 6328 159 203.81 1248.31 55.37 1
3 C Rajendran IIT Madras IIT Madras OM 26 1986 60 119.01 807.05 27.98 0.315
4 Sajal Ghosh MDI Gurgaon N.A. Econ. 9 439 23 157.26 766.90 38.13 0.239
5 Pulak Ghosh IIM Bangalore Oakland DS 10 323 24 170.07 864.30 17.26 0.228
6 RK Pillania MDI Gurgaon N.A. SM 13 449 50 89.29 658.80 51.95 0.227
7 P Balachandra IISc Bangalore IISc SM 14 868 23 112.68 633.12 30.00 0.209
8 Amit Garg IIM Ahmedabad IIM Ahmedabad SM 12 528 25 103.11 851.55 25.33 0.186
9 Biresh K Sahoo XIM IIT Kharagpur Econ. 13 453 21 118.24 807.65 17.23 0.186
Bhubaneswar
10 MH Bala IISc Bangalore ISEC Bangalore Econ. 13 562 28 94.76 526.38 21.69 0.168
Subrahmanya
11 VK Kathuria IIT Bombay IGIDR Econ. 14 449 25 96.86 573.10 18.43 0.158
12 PR Shukla IIM Ahmedabad Stanford SM 13 621 27 77.59 618.88 23.73 0.158
13 SM Kunnumkal ISB Hyderabad Cornell DS 8 212 15 120.71 510.24 14.96 0.154
14 Sumeet Gupta IIM Raipur NUS MIS 16 1405 25 65.34 357.83 12.59 0.149
15 Dishan Kamdar ISB Hyderabad NUS OB&HRM 11 950 14 80.95 588.86 18.22 0.148
16 Sarang Deo ISB Hyderabad UCLA OM 7 207 12 106.79 547.44 13.44 0.136
17 Haritha Saranga IIM Bangalore Univ. of Exeter OM 9 335 14 96.36 533.85 11.90 0.133
18 D Banwet IIT Delhi IIT Delhi OM 18 1513 43 27.07 265.69 14.67 0.131
19 Gajendra K Adil IIT Bombay Manitoba OM 8 355 24 90.12 420.33 13.43 0.130
20 Mukta Kulkarni IIM Bangalore Univ. of Texas at San OB&HRM 6 560 20 88.17 375.78 16.19 0.128
Antonio
21 Deepa Mani ISB Hyderabad Univ. of Texas MIS 7 331 6 99.90 305.09 15.66 0.127
22 Amit Mehra ISB Hyderabad Rochester MIS 5 114 7 103.45 320.74 17.32 0.124
23 Rohit Varman IIM Calcutta Utah Marketing 9 267 17 93.34 210.93 10.44 0.122
24 Smeeta Mishra IMT Ghaziabad Univ. of Texas at OB&HRM 6 99 11 110.71 177.29 4.70 0.116
Austin
25 T Bandyopadhyay IIM Ahmedabad Univ. of Calcutta DS 6 111 19 89.19 460.62 11.21 0.114
26 Surya P Singh IIT Delhi IIT Kanpur DS 9 349 15 76.81 377.61 11.20 0.112
27 SK Srivastava IIM Lucknow IIM Lucknow OM 6 1770 11 45.24 296.24 17.71 0.112
28 M Mathirajan IISc Bangalore IISc OM 13 520 19 55.24 372.89 12.93 0.110
29 RP Sundarraj IIT Madras Tennessee MIS 7 277 13 75.50 387.80 16.21 0.110
30 Sukhpal Singh IIM Ahmedabad ISEC Bangalore SM 8 245 12 87.50 145.00 3.95 0.103
31 Jyotsna Bhatnagar MDI Gurgaon IIT Delhi OB&HRM 15 951 19 34.81 298.64 7.97 0.099
32 A Nandkumar ISB Hyderabad Carnegie Mellon SM 7 199 4 83.33 275.67 6.89 0.098
33 D'Cruz Premilla IIM Ahmedabad TISS OB&HRM 10 263 16 64.21 196.97 10.31 0.098
34 TT Ram Mohan IIM Ahmedabad Stern A&F 7 126 19 182.38 291.81 6.31 0.098
35 R Chittoor ISB Hyderabad IIM Calcutta SM 5 442 8 71.31 302.46 12.39 0.097
36 Kausik Chaudhuri IIM Bangalore State Univ. of New Econ. 8 284 16 68.52 294.87 7.75 0.096
York
37 A Patwardhan IIT Bombay Carnegie Mellon MIS 16 1246 20 14.11 290.06 13.49 0.096
38 Jayanthi Ranjan IMT Ghaziabad Jamia Millia Islamia MIS 11 550 40 26.67 261.79 16.06 0.092
39 Ramadhar Singh IIM Bangalore Purdue OB&HRM 7 214 24 54.37 437.69 11.39 0.090
40 Arpita Khare IIM Rohtak Allahabad Marketing 9 206 37 35.62 274.02 16.85 0.087

Note: A&F: Accounting and Finance, Econ.: Economics, OM: Operations Management, DS: Decision Sciences, MIS: Management Information Systems, OB&HRM: Organiza-
tional Behavior and Human Resource Management, and SM: Strategic Management, N. A.: Not Available
136 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139

Table A4
Top 10 subject matter experts in different areas of management (meta-frontier approach).

Rank Researcher Affiliation Ph.D. Research exp. Author Total No. of Tier score Journal IF CI
(years) h-index citations papers h-index

Accounting and finance (A&F)

1 Bala V Balachandran Great Lakes Carnegie Mellon 52 17 1325 51 661.71 1915.14 52.64 1
2 S G Badrinath IIM Bangalore Purdue 31 11 1578 17 155.95 619.24 20.63 0.125
3 Jayant R Kale IIM Bangalore Texas at Austin 28 12 1296 12 153.62 630.93 21.80 0.119
4 Sanjay Kallapur ISB Hyderabad Harvard 25 12 1820 12 137.86 412.57 15.62 0.116
5 R Chakrabarti ISB Hyderabad UCLA 16 14 980 16 107.37 433.42 14.04 0.096
6 TT Ram Mohan IIM Ahmedabad Stern 35 8 249 31 142.38 467.82 10.12 0.085
7 Srinivasan Rangan IIM Bangalore Wharton 17 8 1168 5 67.14 243.29 8.22 0.063
8 V Ravi Anshuman IIM Bangalore Utah 28 6 771 11 89.05 207.62 7.25 0.054
9 K Subramanian ISB Hyderabad Chicago 14 8 542 5 60.02 163.56 7.03 0.048
10 P K Jain IIT Delhi Delhi Univ. 32 10 402 14 33.33 142.86 7.02 0.047

Economics
1 Vinish K Kathuria IIT Bombay IGIDR 17 17 1160 40 206.02 971.77 31.71 0.172
2 Sajal Ghosh MDI Gurgaon Jadavpur Univ. 14 11 777 25 183.93 888.90 41.82 0.145
3 MH Bala IISc Bangalore ISEC Bangalore 22 13 640 35 141.90 609.24 23.38 0.120
Subrahmanya
4 Biresh K Sahoo XIM IIT Kharagpur 16 13 530 24 124.43 866.46 19.53 0.104
Bhubaneswar
5 R H Dholakia IIM Ahmedabad M.S. University 37 9 387 34 149.49 351.92 7.36 0.089
6 Kausik Chaudhuri IIM Bangalore State Univ. of New York 18 11 582 22 105.19 503.20 10.83 0.083
7 Rupa Chanda IIM Bangalore Columbia 21 9 990 14 55.05 391.20 17.68 0.072
8 Sebastian Morris IIM Ahmedabad IIM Calcutta 37 12 483 15 103.00 197.00 4.97 0.071
9 K Balooni IIM Kozhikode IRMA 18 10 313 23 41.55 448.94 25.02 0.070
10 A Damodaran IIM Bangalore Univ. of Kerala 28 7 115 12 73.33 391.33 13.71 0.053

Operations management (OM)

1 C Rajendran IIT Madras IIT Madras 25 48 7115 129 528.57 3056.66 83.03 1
1 Ravi Shankar IIT Delhi IIT Delhi 16 43 6864 167 218.35 1292.26 57.18 1
3 TT Narendran IIT Madras IIT Madras 39 21 2112 63 188.45 948.18 27.44 0.213
4 Vijay Aggarwal MDI Gurgaon Case Western Reserve 36 19 1110 22 180.24 803.12 20.77 0.146
5 Gajendra K Adil IIT Bombay Manitoba 27 12 525 37 185.36 859.14 26.90 0.136
6 Devanath Tirupati IIM Bangalore MIT 31 16 1225 32 142.79 573.89 17.78 0.131
7 B Mahadevan IIM Bangalore IIT Madras 25 12 1559 21 126.71 740.72 18.82 0.119
8 Devinder Banwet IIT Delhi IIT Delhi 23 19 1649 48 31.95 268.73 15.24 0.116
9 G Srinivasan IIT Madras IIT Madras 25 12 912 28 119.83 648.75 21.23 0.110
10 Kripa Shanker IIT Kanpur Cornell 40 11 804 23 149.68 634.94 16.34 0.107

Decision sciences (DS)

1 Pulak Ghosh IIM Bangalore Oakland 12 19 516 24 170.07 864.30 17.26 0.129
2 U Dinesh Kumar IIM Bangalore IIT Bomaby 21 14 816 26 96.71 648.49 19.59 0.103
3 Ishwar Murthy IIM Bangalore Texas A&M Univ. 28 8 417 22 138.05 742.49 17.80 0.091
4 T Bandyopadhyay IIM Ahmedabad Univ of Calcutta 31 8 172 27 123.36 605.96 13.95 0.080
5 Diptesh Ghosh IIM Ahmedabad IIM Calcutta 18 10 474 23 79.78 586.85 15.00 0.076
6 S M Kunnumkal ISB Hyderabad Cornell 9 8 212 15 120.71 510.24 14.96 0.074
7 M Bhattacharyya IIM Bangalore LSE 31 6 141 9 76.67 455.05 10.20 0.048
8 Debjit Roy IIM Ahmedabad Wisconsin-Madison 18 7 118 13 62.75 317.72 8.87 0.046
9 Bhaba K Mohanty IIM Lucknow IIT Kharagpur 28 7 188 13 45.12 364.14 12.70 0.046
10 Trilochan Sastry IIM Bangalore MIT 19 7 207 12 62.143 206.10 5.07 0.039

Organizational behavior and human resources management (OB&HRM)

1 Ramadhar Singh IIM Bangalore Purdue 42 18 1048 70 328.57 2275.07 61.79 0.314
2 Dishan Kamdar ISB Hyderabad NUS 11 11 950 14 80.95 588.86 18.22 0.085
3 Noronha Ernesto IIM Ahmedabad TISS 21 13 507 26 79.52 206.78 6.89 0.074
4 Jyotsna Bhatnagar MDI Gurgaon IIT Delhi 12 15 962 19 34.81 298.64 7.97 0.072
5 Mukta Kulkarni IIM Bangalore Univ. of Texas at San 9 6 560 20 88.17 375.78 16.19 0.070
Antonio
6 Kanika T. Bhal IIT Delhi IIT Kanpur 19 12 443 21 40.12 348.86 12.44 0.063
7 Debashish IIM Calcutta Univ. of Illinois at 30 10 270 16 109.29 160.52 3.33 0.062
Bhattacherjee Urbana-Champaign
8 Baldev R Sharma IMI Delhi Michigan State 48 9 269 17 90.00 187.00 4.68 0.058
9 D'Cruz Premilla IIM Ahmedabad TISS 14 10 272 16 64.21 196.97 10.31 0.057
10 B S Pawar IIM Indore Oklahoma State 18 7 768 6 53.33 333.33 14.39 0.056

Management of information system (MIS)

1 Indranil Bose IIM Calcutta Purdue 19 21 1242 46 254.05 1761.77 55.71 0.257
2 Debashis Saha IIM Calcutta IIT Kharagpur 24 18 2034 35 108.53 707.32 31.97 0.160
3 RP Sundarraj IIT Madras Tennessee 28 14 781 31 171.38 1009.32 32.34 0.145
4 Anand Patwardhan IIT Bombay Carnegie Mellon 32 18 1560 27 50.63 464.02 19.30 0.109
5 Sumeet Gupta IIM Raipur NUS 9 16 1405 25 65.34 357.83 12.59 0.099
6 Jayanthi Ranjan IMT Ghaziabad Jamia Millia 14 11 553 40 26.67 261.79 16.06 0.072
7 Rekha Jain IIM Ahmedabad IIT Delhi 27 8 369 11 115.83 339.33 13.50 0.071
8 K Ranganathan IIM Ahmedabad Univ. of Chicago 14 11 1831 6 16.00 184.80 6.23 0.065
9 Deepa Mani ISB Hyderabad Univ. of Texas 9 7 331 6 99.91 305.09 15.66 0.063
10 Ambuj Mahanti IIM Calcutta Univ. of Calcutta 32 10 710 19 37.38 321.69 12.66 0.062
 B.K. Sahoo et al. / Omega 66 (2017) 118–139 137

Table A4 (continued )

Rank Researcher Affiliation Ph.D. Research exp. Author Total No. of Tier score Journal IF CI
(years) h-index citations papers h-index

Marketing
1 Rohit Varman IIM Calcutta Utah 13 10 451 18 98.67 228.66 11.04 0.072
2 Arpita Khare IIM Rohtak Allahabad 13 9 206 37 35.62 274.02 16.85 0.063
3 Siddharth S Singh ISB Hyderabad Northwestern 13 9 1058 10 52.85 211.84 7.46 0.061
4 Arvind Sahay IIM Ahmedabad Univ. of Texas at Austin 19 6 1002 7 57.62 315.52 12.58 0.059
5 Sridhar Samu ISB Hyderabad Indiana Univ. 20 8 602 11 51.07 260.95 11.00 0.054
6 Sangeeta Sahney IIT Kharagpur IIT Delhi 14 10 620 13 9.40 206.90 9.47 0.046
7 Ramendra Singh IIM Calcutta IIM Ahmedabad 7 7 156 21 36.37 223.53 8.46 0.043
8 Dheeraj Sharma IIM Ahmedabad Louisiana Tech 11 7 176 16 33.88 229.03 7.97 0.039
9 S Bharadhwaj Great Lakes Maryland 13 7 182 19 30.71 134.24 5.66 0.038
10 Piyush K Sinha IIM Ahmedabad Sardar Patel 13 10 424 7 12.21 82.50 4.21 0.035

Strategic management (SM)

1 P Balachandra IISc Bangalore IISc 25 17 1067 36 167.04 869.18 41.07 0.169
2 Amit Garg IIM Ahmedabad IIM Ahmedabad 17 16 1085 35 130.49 1297.94 36.47 0.154
3 RK Pillania MDI Gurgaon N.A. 10 13 449 50 89.29 658.80 51.95 0.139
4 PR Shukla IIM Ahmedabad Stanford 29 17 855 33 86.43 678.68 25.46 0.117
5 Murali Patibandla IIM Bangalore JNU 27 10 535 24 198.21 608.14 13.09 0.103
6 Annapurna Shaw IIM Calcutta Univ. of Illinois at 31 9 244 18 183.33 387.67 15.02 0.096
Urbana-Champaign
7 R Chittoor ISB Hyderabad IIM Calcutta 8 5 442 8 71.31 302.46 12.39 0.051
8 Shailendra Mehta IIM Ahmedabad Harvard 25 10 205 12 49.57 302.31 7.29 0.048
9 A Nandkumar ISB Hyderabad Carnegie Mellon 9 7 199 4 83.33 275.67 6.89 0.047
10 Ashish Nanda IIM Ahmedabad Harvard 23 13 760 5 8.00 91.59 2.28 0.043

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