Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences
Volume 2006 (2006), Article ID 96542, 16 pages
doi:10.1155/JAMDS/2006/96542
Factors affecting research productivity of production and operations management groups: An empirical study
Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, University of Cyprus, Kallipoleos 75 Street, P.O. Box 20537, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus
Received 11 July 2004; Accepted 11 January 2005
Copyright © 2006 George C. Hadjinicola and Andreas C. Soteriou. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This paper identifies factors that promote research productivity
of production and operations management (POM) groups of
researchers in US business schools. In this study, research
productivity of a POM group is defined as the number of articles
published per POM professor in a specific period of time. The
paper also examines factors that affect research quality, as
measured by the number of articles published per POM professor in
journals, which have been recognized in the POM literature as an
elite set. The results show that three factors increase both the
research productivity and the quality of the articles published by
professors of a POM group. These factors are (a) the presence of a
POM research center, (b) funding received from external sources
for research purposes, and (c) better library facilities. Doctoral
students do assist in improving research quality and productivity,
but they are not the driving force. These results have important
implications for establishing policy guidelines for business
schools. For example, real-world problems are funded by external
sources and have a higher probability of publication. Furthermore,
schools could place more emphasis on external funding, as most
engineering schools do, since groups receiving external funding
are more productive in terms of research.