Research and academic activity

Having disciplines ranked among the best in Europe is important to strengthen BI's international reputation, academic influence and recruitment of academic staff in the long term.

BI has worked on international recruitment for several years, and in 2016 saw the results of the initiatives launched four years earlier. Through job market conventions and conferences for subjects and research internationally, BI has recruited talented young academics to BI as postdoctoral fellows. This has helped to strengthen BI’s academic environment and increase the proportion of professionals with an international background - something that has been an independent objective.

In 2016, a working group was established to work to stimulate and develop new mechanisms and indicators for quality research and excellent publications.

BI explored new benchmarks to assess our position and academic quality relative to the leading international business schools. Based on the indicators (UTD), which were used, we have evidence to say that our academic environment within Finance as of today is near the top-five in Europe.

BI proved itself as a venue for interaction by contributing as an organizer for two major international research conferences in 2016. As the host of EMAC (European Marketing Academy) 2016 in May, BI gathered about a thousand of the world's leading academics in the marketing field. In August, 750 graduates in the finance field met in Oslo when BI was host to the European Finance Association (EFA) Annual Meeting.

In 2016, BI was working actively to increase the intake quality of students to BI’s doctoral programme and more stringent requirements that supervisors must be published scientists were introduced. 12 candidates defended their doctoral thesis in 2016.

In collaboration with the University of St.Gallen BI started up Winter School in empirical research methods – GSERM in 2016. The first session was completed in January.

An important indicator of the quality of the PhD programme is that our graduates get jobs at highly rated institutions. Good examples from 2016 include:

Øyvind Nilsen Aas, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Arash Aloosh, NEOMA Business School
Chen Qu, University of Nottingham
Asmund Rygh, University of Manchester
Sinem Acar-Burkay, IESEG
Mehrad Moeini Jazani, University of Groningen

The academic activity of BI is divided into eight departments and a number of academic- and research centres are associated with these. The research covers the broad spectrum of subject areas and disciplines expected of a modern European business school. In 2016 it was decided to discontinue Innovation and economic organization as a separate department and to move and develop these professions in BI’s other eight institutes.

In 2016 BI had a total of 91 externally funded research projects, with a total sales value of 29.4 MNOK. It is a priority for BI to increase externally financed research and highlight how BI’s research can help solve the current challenges in society and business. There is also a stated expectation from the authorities that Norwegian education institutions shall increase revenue from contribution- and contract funded activities (BOA). As part of the focus on BOA and externally financed research, a new position as Director of externally financed research and innovation was established. Professor Amir Sasson was appointed to this position in October 2016.

Endowed Professorships

BI had four endowed professorships in 2016.

Professor Randi Kvålshaugen was appointed to a new endowed professorship funded by key players in the Norwegian construction- and property industry (Building, Construction and Real Estate industry). The current endowed professorship is given to research effective construction processes. The professorship will last until 2020 and is affiliated to the Centre for the Construction Industry at BI.

Endowed professorships appointed before 2016 include:

• Professor Per Ingvar Olsen, Endowed Professorship financed by Tine and Nortura. 
• Professor Torger Reve, Skibsreder Tom Wilhelmsens foundation professorship.  
• Professor Øystein Fjeldstad, Telenor’s Endowed Professorship in international strategy and leadership.

Larger projects

BI is working actively to qualify several research projects for funding from Horizon 2020. In 2016-2017, BI has two on going projects with H2020-financing:

• The FairTax project consists of a multidisciplinary international team of researchers from 11 different institutions, including several leading international tax researchers. The project started in March 2015 and will continue until 2019.
• PS2 project (Participation, Privacy and Power) is the first H2020-funded research project in which BI Norwegian Business School is consortium leader. The project focuses on the economic impact of the new sharing services and various aspects of privacy in the sharing economy. The project will also analyse the different challenges that the new sharing economy brings about regarding participation / exclusion and separation of powers. This project was started in 2016.

Awards

Several BI academics received awards and accolades in 2016:

Every third year BI gives out a research award to one of its researchers. In 2016 the Research Award went to Professor Bård Kuvaas.

Professor Emeritus Jørgen Randers was in 2016 appointed Honorary Professor at Fudan University, Shanghai.

Publications and publishing points

A high level of scientific publications gave BI 437 publication points according to the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions’ model for how to measure scientific production. This is a significant increase from 245 points in 2015.

For 2016, BI has reported to the authorities (DBH) 242 scientific papers in international and national journals, the corresponding number for 2015 was 181. 12 scientific monographs and 117 chapters in scientific anthologies were reported for 2016, versus 4 and 37 in 2015.

A total of 197 of BI's academic staff contributed to this scientific production in 2016.

83 people have published a total of 158 scientific publications (articles, chapters and monographs) in co-authorship with people at institutions abroad. This comapred to 67 people and 112 publications in 2015.

75 % of journal articles was at level 1 and 25 % at level 2. Corresponding distribution in 2015 was 80% and 20%.