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Mary Uhl-Bien Is One of the Most Influential Scholars Since 1990

In a study on research productivity in the field of leadership, Mary Uhl-Bien, the BNSF Endowed Professor of Leadership, is ranked No. 6 in the world.

October 09, 2019

By Elaine Cole

Mary Uhl-BienLeaders have a meaningful impact on their company’s fate through their strategies and decisions. The study of leadership over the past decades has flourished, providing many new perspectives and theories.

When looking at the influence of research among 3,190 professors whose research was accepted and published in the top 10 academic journals – 2,115 articles from 1990 to 2017 – Mary Uhl-Bien ranks No. 6 in the Top 20 Influential Leadership Scholars.

The study was undertaken by Hao Zhao of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Chaoping Li of Renmin University of China. 

Zhao and Li state in their study that research impact is related to research productivity, but ultimately it is research impact that will advance the field. “Some authors published a handful of articles in selected academic journals during our study span, such as Bass and Uhl-Bien, but such articles turned out to be very influential in the leadership literature.”

Top 20 Influential Leadership Scholars

1.   Bernie Bass, Binghamton University
2.   Bruce Avolio, University of Washington
3.  Tim Judge, Ohio State University
4.  Bob Liden, University of Illinois at Chicago
5.  Jason Colquitt, University of Georgia
6.  Mary Uhl-Bien, Texas Christian University
7.  Amy Edmondson, Harvard University
8.  Bill Gardner, Texas Tech University
9.  David Day, Claremont McKenna College
10. Joyce Bono, University of Florida
* by Weighed Normalized Citation across Time

Top 10 Journals: Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, The Leadership Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology.