Research Ranking: The Most Influential Business Schools

Why do people write?

It’s because they care.

In academia, that caring is channeled into research. Call it a quest to find answers and make an impact. More than that, research is a means to influence people. That raises the question: Are academics tackling the issues that are relevant to decision-makers?  More to the point: Do their ideas provide guidance to non-academics in the trenches who are looking to disrupt industries, simplify operations, and increase value?

A NEW #1 BUSINESS SCHOOL

That’s a question that The Financial Times attempts to answer with its 2nd annual Research Insights Ranking, released on November 2nd. Forget the simplistic notion of citations in specific publications over a certain period. Instead, The Financial Times expands its scope to encompassing case studies and policy citations, while measuring downloads by practitioners and evaluating subject matter aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Last year, the University of Chicago’s Booth School topped its peer schools in the Research Insights Ranking. This year ushered in a new #1: the Wharton School. It jumped from 7th to 1st over the past year, as the Booth School tumbled to 4th. Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business filled the void, ranking 2nd and 3rd respectively. Noticeably, HBS moved up three spots, as MIT’s Sloan School slipped a spot to finish 5th. Columbia Business School, which finished 3rd in 2024, dropped four spots to 7th. The Yale School of Management, which ranked 17th last year, vaulted up to 8th this year, as Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, UC Berkeley, and New York University’s Stern School all maintained their Top 10 rankings in 2025.

The biggest shock? INSEAD fell back 11 spots to 21st.

Like the previous year, the Research Insights Ranking tends to favor American business schools, which accounted for the Top 13 programs (along with capturing 17 of the Top 20 spots). The Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University achieved the highest non-American ranking at 14th, the same spot it held a year previous. Last year’s top Asian program, Hong Kong University, lost two spots to finish 15th. In a surprise, the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, which didn’t even crack the Top 25 last year, sprung all the way to 16th.

 

A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT RESEARCH

The Research Insights Ranking is different than the FT’s Research Rank from February, which accounts for 10% of its overall MBA Ranking. According to the FT’s methodology, the latter is “calculated according to the number of articles published by full-time faculty members in 50 selected academic and practitioner journals from January 2022 to May 2024. The rank combines the absolute number of publications with the number weighted relative to the faculty’s size.”

While the Research Insights Rankings again focuses on the Top 50 academic journals, it is less narrow than its FT counterpart. It extends the scope to peer-reviewed research published from 2020-2025 (across 179 business schools, no less). Overall, the FT incorporated over 34,000 research articles into its measurement.

To produce the ranking, the FT factors in seven dimensions (along with their weights):

• Shares of Positive Citations – 16%
• SDG-Related Articles – 12%
• Teaching Case Studies – 12%
• Practitioner Downloads – 16%
• Policy Citations – 16%
• Altmetric Attention Score – 16%
• Faculty Productivity – 12%

The ‘Positive Citations’ metric is derived from a tool developed by Scite, which “signal(s) the extent to which fellow academics consider new work to be credible.” This is based on “net supportive citations in other academic journals.” ‘SDG-Related Articles’ is extracted from a dashboard supplied by OpenAlex, which “assesses how far the content maps to one or more of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals — a proxy for societally important challenges.” By the same token, ‘Teaching Case Studies’ – which covers the most popular teaching cases since 2018 – was culled from data supplied by the three largest case publishers: Harvard Business Impact, Ivey Publishing and The Case Centre.

To calculate ‘Practitioner Downloads’, the Financial Times taps into the SSRN website to see how many articles were downloaded from outside academia. Using the Overton Policy Impact Database, the FT calculates ‘Policy Citations’ by how many articles were cited by policymakers and think tanks alike. The ‘Altmetric Attention Score’ – which measures media and social media attention – stems from data collected by Digital Science. Finally, the ‘Faculty Productivity’ metric is quantified from dividing total articles by faculty size.

That said, the FT added some new wrinkles to this year’s ranking. In particular, it removed total citations and syllabi citations from the mix, replacing them with Altmetric Attention Score. Hence, it is difficult to conduct a clear side-by-side comparison between this ranking and the previous year.

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL MAKES A BIG MOVE

What led the Wharton School to being this year’s top performer in the Research Insights Ranking? Unlike last year, where Wharton only ranked 1st in one dimension (Practitioner Downloads) – the school ranked #1 across four dimensions: Positive Citations, SDG-Related Articles, Practitioner Downloads, and Altmetric Attention Score. That represented a 60% share of the total ranking weight. In other words, Wharton research attracted the most interest among academics, professionals, and the general public – all while addressing the issues that seemingly matter most. That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. The school ranked just 25th for its case studies being used – lower than HEC Montreal and Singapore’s Nanyang University.

Harvard Business School made runner-up, buoyed by placing 2nd in Positive Citation, Practitioner Downloads, and Policy Citations (and 3rd for Altmetric Attention Score). HBS also finished 1st for Teaching Case Studies, hardly a surprise considering the school’s ong-standing reliance on case-based teaching. Along with MIT’s Sloan School and Stanford GSB, HBS was also the only business school to rank in the Top 10 in six of the seven dimensions. Its Achilles Heel? Faculty Productivity, where it ranked 39th.

Stanford GSB finished 4th in three dimensions – Positive Citations, Practitioner Downloads, and Policy Citations. Better still, its lowest placements came in Teaching Case Studies (10th) and Faculty Productivity (11th). MIT Sloan made the Top 5 in four dimensions – SDG-Related Articles, Policy Citations, Altmetric Attention Score, and Faculty Productivity – though its ranking was dragged down by finishing 26th in Teaching Case Studies. The same could be said for the University of Chicago’s Booth School, which didn’t even rank among the Top 50 for Teaching Case Studies. Last year’s #1, Booth lost ground in SDG Citations (2nd to 6th) and Positive Citations (1st to 4th). At the same time, it held onto its #1 ranking for Policy Citations, while improving considerably in Faculty Productivity (25th to 13th). In the end, Booth’s downfall could be traced more to Harvard Business School’s ascension; it improved in every dimension…even Faculty Productivity (62nd to 39th).

ARIZONA STATE PUNCHES ABOVE ITS WEIGHT

The Research Insights Ranking also contains a few unconventional surprises. In Positive Citations, for example, Arizona State’s W. P. Carey School ranked 6th. While higher than three Ivy League schools, this ranking also reflects the larger university’s reputation for groundbreaking research (It has ranked 1st for Innovation for 11 consecutive years according to U.S. News). Equally impressive, W. P. Carey ranked in the Top 10 for SDG-Related Articles and Altmetric Attention Score. When it comes to SDG-Related Articles, the Polimi School of Management ranks among the heavyweights at 2nd, better than Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia.

In terms of Faculty Productivity, the top of list is a decidedly American affair: Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School, UC Berkeley’s Haas School, Yale School of Management, MIT Sloan, and Columbia Business School. However, none of these programs, when adjusted for scale, can best the Netherland’s Tias Business School, which ranks 1st in this dimension.

Like the Research Insights Ranking, the Wharton School also ranks 1st in the Financial Times Research Ranking (which is tied to its MBA Ranking). However, there are several outliers that don’t appear in Insights. Take the University of Texas at Dallas’ Jindal School. Although it finished 6th in the February ranking, it doesn’t even appear in Impact. The University of Washington’s Foster School and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School, which ranked 9th and 12th respectively last February, appear at 33rd and 28th with Impact respectively. At the same time, the trio of UCLA’s Anderson School, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School, and Imperial Business School – Top 25 research schools in the main ranking – don’t even appear among the Top 50 in Research Insights.

WHY RESEARCH MATTERS TO BUSINESS

Such differences can create confusion in the marketplace – a gap that The Financial Times is already working to correct. Last month, the FT sent out a school survey that posed several questions reflecting an inclination to change direction. For one, the survey asked respondents whether it should add more journals to the mix – even non-academic journals. For another, it questioned whether its ranking should factor in items like societal impact or citations. By moving its standard research ranking closer to its Research Insights Ranking in both structure and spirit, the FT could potentially jostle its overall ranking. With ranking often guiding school resources, it could force schools to be more responsive to practitioners – the ones who could truly benefit from faculty insights.

That may be one thing the FT Ranking needs to further reveal which faculty bring the most relevant and cutting-edge ideas to their classrooms. In an article accompanying the Research Insights Ranking, the FT outlines many of the issues surrounding business research. David Reibstein, a Wharton marketing professor, points to the publish-or-perish imperative of academics, which requires professors to rack up citations in peer-reviewed publications that don’t always reward relevance – or innovative thought.

Professor Tima Bansal, a professor of sustainability and strategy at Ivey Business School, framed the issue this way in The Financial Times: “We build elegant models that explain business-related performance, rather than creating tools that shape it.”

That can be issue for the unique needs of business students, some of whom are already working jobs or starting ventures and looking to get immediate return on their educational investment. In other words, research is a differentiator – one that the Wharton School recognizes as core to its mission.

“Business schools have to be in the service of business,” says Wharton Dean Erika James in an interview with The Financial Times. “Research has to have academic integrity and be relevant to the real-world issues that industry is looking to solve.”

To see The Financial Times’ Top 50 Business Schools for Research, go to the next page.

DON’T MISS: THE TOP 100 BUSINESS SCHOOLS IN 2025, RANKED BY RESEARCH