Arvind Parkhe, chair of the Strategic Management Department at the Fox School of Business, was recently ranked as having the highest citation count and highest average citations per paper of all of the recipients of the Academy of International Business (AIB) Best Dissertation Award from 1987 through 2012.
The late Alan Rugman, dean of the AIB Fellows, and Daniel O’Connell of the University of Reading, wrote an article about the past winners of the AIB Best Dissertation Award and examined how those winners fared through the years in terms of research output and publications in top journals. Impact of research was measured by looking at the number of times an article was cited in reputable journals.
“The more that people cite your articles, the more influential your work is,” Parkhe said. “You wrote something important for people to draw upon, base their thesis and arguments on. I was pleasantly surprised to be ranked at the top.”
The number of articles published, especially in top-tier journals, and the number of citations collected are some of the other metrics used to evaluate the impact AIB Best Dissertation Award winners have had.
Parkhe’s dissertation studied the structuring of strategic alliances – partnerships between two companies – using two theoretical lenses, game theory and transaction cost economics. He analyzed data from 342 real-world alliances to draw conclusions on how companies that are involved in strategic alliances can practice and promote cooperation and eliminate non-cooperative (cheating) behavior. His dissertation was completed at Temple University in July 1989, at which time Parkhe joined the faculty at Indiana University (Bloomington).
Parkhe received a similar award, the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) Decade Award, in 2001. JIBS examined the top articles published within it and looked at the impact during a 10-year period. Parkhe’s article, which was published in 1991, was judged to have the greatest impact between 1991 and 2001.
“Research impact matters. I consider it a great honor to have won a decade award and a research excellence award and to have been asked to become an editor of a top journal,” Parkhe said, referring to his time as editor of Academy of Management Review.
Parkhe, who currently serves as vice president of the Consortium for Undergraduate International Business Education (CUIBE), said his successes reflect well not only on him but also on the school and on his colleagues – just as their successes reflect positively on him. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” he said. –Alexis Wright-Whitley