Identifying the Most Research Intensive Faculties of Business in Australia: A Multidimensional Approach

Abbas Valadkhani and Simon Ville

Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Abstract: There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities, and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. Using averaged and all available data for 2000-2004, cluster analysis is used to classify Australian Commerce Faculties into groups that exhibit similar research performance, measured by publication, PhD completion and secured competitive research grant funding. We also use factor analysis to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting two or three clusters. It is found that in terms of total research output, with the exception of Adelaide all the Go8 members plus UTS and Griffith always belong to “Clusters A”. However, when research performance is expressed in per academic staff terms, an additional eleven universities join this same cluster. Our results additionally show that eight Australian faculties of Commerce not only possess low total research output but their per capita performance is also poor.

Keywords: Faculties of Business; Australian higher education; Cluster analysis; Factor analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 A19 C63 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-sog
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