Leadership and the Research Productivity of University Departments

Amanda Goodall (), John McDowell () and Larry D. Singell ()
Additional contact information
Larry D. Singell: University of Indiana Bloomington

No 7903, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Much of human knowledge is produced in the world's university departments. There is little scientific evidence, however, about how those hundreds of thousands of departments are best organized and led. This study hand-collects longitudinal data on departmental chairpersons in 58 US universities over a 15-year period. There is one robust predictor of a department's future research output. After adjustment for a range of personal and institutional characteristics, departmental research productivity improves when the incoming department Chair's publications are highly cited. A one SD increase in citations is associated with a 0.5 SD later rise in departmental productivity. By contrast, the quality-weighted publication record per se of the incoming Chair has no predictive power.

Keywords: scientific productivity; department chairs; expert leaders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I23 M51 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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