Foster Academic Influencers
In a sweeping new index of scholarly impact, 18 Foster faculty rank among the top one percent of the world’s most-cited scientific researchers of the past 60 years
What’s the best measure of scholarly impact? Number of published papers over time is a good place to start. Papers published in the most prestigious journals is even better.
But the gold standard must be citations, the mechanism by which scholars refer to another’s work as foundational to theirs. And citations are easily quantified.
A new Stanford University study has done just that, comprehensively calculating the total number of citations ascribed to 9,071,122 researchers who have published at least five academic papers between 1960 and 2020—across 20 scientific disciplines and more than 175 sub-disciplines that range from astrophysics to anthropology, econometrics to epidemiology, industrial engineering to international relations.
The result is an index of what could be called the world’s foremost academic influencers.
And the University of Washington Foster School of Business has many of the most influential.
Eighteen Foster faculty members are listed among the top percentile of scientific scholars in the index tracking research citations over the year 2021—the best indicator of both impact and currency.
Foster Faculty Influencers
This roster of uppermost-echelon researchers—or faculty influencers—at the Foster School of Business includes:
Department of Management and Organization
Bruce Avolio – top 0.02%
Terence Mitchell – top 0.18%
Christopher Barnes – top 0.29%
Scott J. Reynolds – top 0.42%
David Sirmon – top 0.43%
Thomas Jones – top 0.50%
Thomas Lee – top 0.53%
Warren Boeker – 0.61%
Xiao-Ping Chen – 0.64%
Charles Hill – 0.66%
Suresh Kotha – 0.83%
Department of Finance and Business Economics
Jarrad Harford – top 0.08%
Jonathan Karpoff – top 0.18%
Department of Marketing and International Business
Robert Palmatier – top 0.10%
Ann Schlosser – top 0.49%
Charles M. C. Lee – top 0.22%
Sarah McVay – top 0.43%
Dawn Matsumoto – top 0.88%
The highest-rated member of Foster’s contingent is Bruce Avolio, a professor of management and the Mark Pigott Chair in Business Strategic Leadership. Avolio, an authority in leadership development, is ranked in the top 0.02% of most-cited scientific researchers overall, and #38 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
Avolio is the founding executive director of Foster’s Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking, and the author of more than 150 published papers and 13 books. He is the recipient of the 2013 Eminent Leadership Scholar Award from the Academy of Management’s Network of Leadership Scholars.
A 2019 study in The Leadership Quarterly ranked Avolio the #1 scholar in the world at connecting authors in the field of leadership research, and #2 in productivity and influence of his leadership studies. An index published that same year in the journal Academy of Management Learning and Education listed Avolio the #3 most-influential author in the field of organizational behavior. And a 2008 Journal of Management study ranked him the #133 most-influential management scholar of all time—a position that would surely advance if it were recalculated today.
Jarrad Harford, the Paul Pigott-PACCAR Professor of Finance, is in the top 0.08% of most-cited researchers overall, and #32 among the 11,203 finance scholars in the index.
Harford is chair of the Department of Finance and Business Economics, and a renowned investigator of corporate finance, business valuation, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, dividend and payout policy/stock splits, and private equity. He is the author of the textbook “Fundamentals of Corporate Finance,” managing editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and past associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Corporate Finance.
At Foster, Harford has received the the Dean’s Faculty Research Award (2021, 2008), the William A. and Helen I. Fowler Award for Special Achievement in Finance (2013, 2009) and the Dean’s Junior Faculty Research Award (2004). Beyond his extraordinary research acumen, he also has received the Interfraternity/Panhellic Council Teaching Excellence Award (2011, 2013), the ISMBA Excellence in Teaching Award (2006), the Wells Fargo Faculty Award for Undergraduate Teaching (2005), and has been named Undergraduate Professor of the Year in Finance seven times.
Rob Palmatier, a professor of marketing and the John C. Narver Endowed Professor in Business Administration, ranks in the top 0.10% of most-cited scientists overall, and #42 among the 12,338 marketing researchers in the index.
Palmatier has published 101 papers and ten books since 2004, offering valuable insights into CRM marketing, loyalty programs, online marketing, data privacy, influencer marketing, sales management and sales channels and retail management. Most recent among his enormous collection of research accolades are the Sheth Journal of Marketing Award (2022), the American Marketing Association Berry Book Award (2021), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the AMA Interorganizational Research Group (2020), and the AMA’s Vijay Mahajan Award for career contributions to marketing strategy (2019). The AMA listed him #6 in its 2023 ranking of the 50 most productive scholars in the world in the discipline’s top four journals over the past decade.
Palmatier is past co-editor of the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and founding research director of the Foster School’s Center for Sales and Marketing Strategy.
Terry Mitchell, a professor emeritus of management, is in the top 0.18% of most-cited scientists overall, and ranks #385 among the 48,100 researchers in business & management.
His nearly 150 research papers and four books published since 1969 have delivered groundbreaking insights on leadership, motivation, decision making and employee turnover. In 2010, Mitchell received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management. In 2013, the AoM’s Human Resources Division presented him its Scholarly Achievement Award. In 2021, he received the UW Distinguished Retiree Excellence in Community Service Award.
Mitchell, an influential past director of the Foster School’s PhD Program, has been named the #18 most influential scholar of all time in the field of industrial and organizational psychology, #23 most influential in organizational behavior and #35 most influential in general management. He is a fellow of the AoM, the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industry and Organizational Psychology, from which he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1998.
Jonathan Karpoff, a professor of finance and the Washington Mutual Endowed Chair in Innovation, is ranked in the top 0.18% of most-cited scientists overall, and #67 among the 11,203 finance scholars in the index.
Karpoff is an expert in corporate finance, governance and crime and punishment. He has received numerous research awards, including the Outstanding Contributions to Research in Corporate Governance Award from the Drexel Center for Corporate Governance (2015), the William F. Sharpe Award for Scholarship in Financial Research (2012), and the Griliches Prize in Empirical Economics (2003).
Both a fellow (inducted in 2016) and board member of the prestigious Financial Management Association, he also serves on the executive committee of the Financial Economists Roundtable and as associate editor of two major academic journals. He previously served as managing editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and president of the Financial Management Association International, and is a former international research fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.
Charles Lee, the Kermit O. Hanson Professor in Accounting, is ranked in the top 0.22% of most-cited scientists overall, and #79 among the 11,203 finance scholars in the index.
Lee, a former managing director of Barclays Global Investors (now Blackrock) and co-founder of Nipun Capital, is renowned for his studies in behavioral finance, financial accounting and portfolio management. According to the current BYU Accounting Rankings, he is the world’s #183 most productive accounting researcher of the past 33 years (in the discipline’s top 12 journals), and #65 most productive in the area of financial accounting.
In addition to teaching excellence awards at Michigan, Cornell and Stanford, Lee received the Q Group’s Roger F. Murray Prize in 2018. The American Accounting Association has honored him with its Innovation in Financial Accounting Education Award (2017) and Notable Contribution to Accounting Literature Award (2003). He is a past AAA Presidential Scholar. And he received Stanford’s Asian American Faculty Award for outstanding achievements and service.
In 2022, Lee was selected as the accounting “legend” in the book, “Seven Essentials for Business Success: Lessons from Legendary Professors.”
Chris Barnes, the Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Management, is ranked in the top 0.29% of most-cited scientists overall, and #468 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
A former officer and behavioral scientist in the United States Air Force, Barnes is an expert on human sustainability whose prolific studies have confirmed a litany of ill effects of sleep deprivation in the workplace.
He has received the Cummings Scholarly Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management (2020), the Distinguished Early Career Award from the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2017) and the Responsible Research in Management Award from IACMR (2017). The Western Academy of Management named him an Ascendant Scholar in 2014. And he’s won or been a finalist for numerous best paper awards in several top journals.
Beyond academia, his research and writings have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the BBC, Harvard Business Review, Freakonomics, Scientific American and Huffington Post, among many others.
Scott J. Reynolds, a professor of business ethics and Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Management, is ranked in the top 0.42% of most-cited scientists overall, and #791 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
An expert in business ethics, his research has produced insights on moral decision making, moral awareness, moral intuition and identification of moral issues. He has received numerous awards for teaching, research and mentorship. Among them: the Lex N. Gamble Family Award for Excellence in Case Development and Curriculum Innovation (2014), the Faculty PhD Mentor Award (2013), and the Dean’s Junior Faculty Research Award (2007). In 2019, he was awarded the honor of “Master Teacher of Ethics” by the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University.
Reynolds is an associate editor of Business Ethics Quarterly and a former guest editor of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and Personnel Psychology. At Foster, he currently chairs the Department of Management and Organization.
Sarah McVay, the William A. Fowler Endowed Professor of Accounting, is ranked in the top 0.43% of most-cited scientists overall, and #62 among the 5,491 accounting scholars in the index.
McVay’s research and teaching examine many facets of financial accounting, as well as earnings quality, management disclosures, managerial ability and the interactions between market participants. At Foster, she has received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (2019), PhD Faculty Mentor Award (2016), TMMBA Excellence in Teaching Award (2016) and William and Helen Fowler Award for Special Achievement in Accounting (2014).
McVay is currently serving as the vice president of research and publications for the American Accounting Association (AAA). She is a past president of the AAA’s Financial Accounting and Research Section (2019-2020), and also past editor the Journal of Financial Reporting and Contemporary Accounting Research.
According to the BYU Accounting Rankings, McVay is the world’s #93 most productive accounting researcher of the past 33 years (in the discipline’s top 12 journals), and the #44 most productive scholar in the area of financial accounting.
David Sirmon, a professor of management and the Robert Herbold Professor in Strategy, is ranked in the top 0.43% of most-cited scientists overall, and #824 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
For his prolific research on strategy, entrepreneurship and family business, Sirmon has won or been a finalist for numerous honors. He has received the Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management Review (2022) and a Special Mention Award from Academy of Management Perspectives (2019). And he won the 2011 Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Management Strategy.
Clarivate Analytics has named him a “Highly Cited Researcher” three times (2014, 2017 and 2018). And a 2018 Academy of Management report listed him #18 among the 100 most influential scholars of all time in the field of strategic management.
At Foster, Sirmon has been named Professor of the Year in the Evening MBA Program six times and received the 2017 Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award.
Ann Schlosser, a professor of marketing and Evert McCabe Endowed Fellow, is in the top 0.49% of most-cited scientists overall, and #247 among the 12,338 marketing researchers in the index.
Schlosser’s prodigious research in digital marketing, e-commerce, marketing research, advertising, customer behavior and social media includes foundational work on the dynamics of online interaction. She received the Foster School’s Lex Gamble Family Award for Excellence in the Field of E-Commerce in 2006.
A 2009 Journal of Marketing study ranked her among the 50 most prolific marketing scholars in the discipline’s four leading journals between 1982 and 2006. A 2006 listing in the Journal of Advertising named her the #2 most prolific scholar of Internet-related marketing research in its formative years: 1994 to 2003.
Schlosser is an associate editor of the Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research. She also serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Consumer Psychology and Journal of Interactive Marketing.
Tom Jones, a professor emeritus of management, is in the top 0.50% of most-cited scientists overall, and ranks #965 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
Jones is a trailblazing scholar of corporate ethics. His “ethical continuum” of corporate approaches to stakeholders won the 2007 Best Paper Award from the International Association for Business and Society. His proposal of “stakeholder happiness” as a neo-utilitarian objective for the modern corporation earned him the 2013 Best Article in Business Ethics Quarterly. And his 1991 Academy of Management Review paper on ethical decision making by individuals in organizations was ranked the #11 most-cited article of all time in management textbooks.
At Foster, Jones won the Dean’s Research Award in 2000 and the Dean’s Citizenship Award in 2003. He is the founding editor of the journal Business & Society and received the 2005 Sumner Marcus Award for lifetime achievement from the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management.
Tom Lee, the former Hughes M. Blake Professor of Management (now deceased), is ranked in the top 0.53% of most-cited scientists overall, and #1,010 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
Lee authored nearly 100 publications on goal-setting, decision-making, employee voice and recruiting, and co-created landmark theories on why employees choose to leave or remain in their jobs.
The longtime associate dean for academic and faculty affairs also served as editor of the Academy of Management Journal and president of the Academy of Management. He was elected a fellow of the AoM and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
In 2015, the Human Relations Division of the AoM honored Lee with its Herbert Heneman Jr. Award for Career Achievement. The Academy went even further in 2016, bestowing upon Lee its overall Career Achievement Award for Distinguished Service.
A 2012 article in the Journal of Management Inquiry heralded Lee as the quintessential model of an “academic decathlete,” who excels at research, teaching, service, mentorship and leadership. A 2019 paper touted Lee as an “inspiring exemplar” for aspiring scholars in any discipline.
Warren Boeker, a professor of management and the Douglas E. Oleson Excellence Chair in Entrepreneurship, is ranked in the top 0.61% of most-cited scientists overall, and #1,095 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
Boeker’s voluminous publications have provided significant insights in entrepreneurship and technology and innovation strategy. At Foster, he has received the Dean’s Entrepreneurship Research Award and the Global Executive MBA Excellence in Teaching Award.
He has served on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, Organization Science and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. And he is past chair of the Academy of Management’s Organization and Management Theory Division.
Beyond the academic, Boeker has provided consulting expertise to a long list of organizations, including Microsoft, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Daimler-Benz, Merck, General Electric, Citygroup, PwC and IBM.
Xiao-Ping Chen, a professor of management and the Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair in Business Administration, is ranked in the top 0.64% of most-cited scientific researchers overall, and #1,171 among the 48,100 researchers in the category of business & management.
Chen has earned many accolades for her examinations of inter-cultural communication, entrepreneurial passion, leadership and creativity, and Chinese guanxi. She received the 2019 Scholarly Impact Award from the Journal of Management, the 2016 Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award from the International Association for Chinese Management Research, and was named Outstanding UW Woman in 2010. She is the author of 11 books and the co-creator of icEdge, an assessment of communication style.
The former associate dean for faculty and academic affairs at Foster is a fellow of the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She is the editor of the journals Management Insights and Management and Organization Review, and past editor-in-chief of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Charles Hill, an emeritus professor of management and organization and the former Hughes M. and Katherine G. Blake Endowed Professor in Business Administration, is in the top 0.66% of the most-cited scientists overall and #1,211 among the 48,100 researchers in the business & management category.
Hill is a legendary instructor, who has won numerous Foster teaching awards, including the Charles E. Summer Outstanding Teaching Award, and been named a Favorite MBA Professor by Poets & Quants. He is an equally impactful researcher of competitive strategy. A 2008 Journal of Management study ranked him #40 among the most-influential management scholars of all time and a 2018 Academy of Management report listed him the #6 most-cited researcher in strategic management textbooks).
But Hill’s broadest impact may come from his own blockbuster textbooks: Strategic Management, Global Business Today, and International Business, which has reigned at #1 in its category for more than 25 years and is translated into 14 languages.
Suresh Kotha, a professor of management and Oleson/Battelle Excellence Chair in Entrepreneurship, is in the top 0.83% of the most-cited researchers overall, and #1,447 among the 48,100 researchers in the business & management category.
At Foster, Kotha is research director of the Arthur W. Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, past chair of the Department of Management and Organization and co-founder of the West Coast Research Symposium on Technology Entrepreneurship.
He has produced scores of published papers, book chapters and case studies in the areas of competitive strategy, entrepreneurship, and technology and innovation strategy. Among his numerous accolades are the Lex N. Gamble Award for Excellence in Case Development and Curriculum Innovation (2014), TMMBA Excellence in Teaching Award (2012, 2010), International Award for Faculty Excellence (2004), Dean’s Citizenship Award (2003) and the Lex N. Gamble Family Award for Excellence in the field of E-Commerce (2001).
Kotha has served as a field editor of the Journal of Business Venturing and on the editorial boards of many top journals.
Dawn Matsumoto (PhD 1998), the Marion B. Ingersoll Professor of Accounting, is ranked in the top 0.88% of most-cited scientists overall, and #138 among the 5,491 accounting scholars in the index.
Matsumoto, who studies multiple aspects of financial reporting, has won the American Accounting Association’s Financial Accounting and Reporting Section Best Paper Award (2003) and Competitive Manuscript Award (2000).
At Foster, she has received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (2018), the Robert M. Bowen EMBA Excellence in Teaching award (five times), the William A. and Helen I. Fowler Endowment for Special Achievement in Accounting (2012), Dean’s Junior Faculty Research Award (2003), and Dean’s Achievement Award while she was a doctoral student (1994).
According to the BYU Accounting Rankings, Matsumoto is the world’s #183 most productive accounting researcher of the past 33 years (in the discipline’s top 12 journals), and #65 most productive in the area of financial accounting.
Learn more about business programs at the University of Washington Foster School of Business here.
