Research performance of AACSB accredited institutions in Taiwan: before versus after accreditation

Introduction: More and more universities are receiving accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which is an international association for promoting quality teaching and learning at business schools. To be accredited, the schools are required to meet a number of standards ensuring that certain levels of teaching quality and students’ learning are met. However, there are a variety of points of view espoused in the literature regarding the relationship between research and teaching, some studies have demonstrated that research and teaching these are complementary elements of learning, but others disagree with these findings. Case description: Unlike past such studies, we focus on analyzing the research performance of accredited schools during the period prior to and after receiving accreditation. The objective is to answer the question as to whether performance has been improved by comparing the same school’s performance before and after accreditation. In this study, four AACSB accredited universities in Taiwan are analyzed, including one teaching oriented and three research oriented universities. Research performance is evaluated by comparing seven citation statistics, the number of papers published, number of citations, average number of citations per paper, average citations per year, h-index (annual), h-index, and g-index. Discussion and evaluation: The analysis results show that business schools demonstrated enhanced research performance after AACSB accreditation, but in most accredited schools the proportion of faculty members not actively doing research is larger than active ones. Conclusion: This study shows that the AACSB accreditation has a positive impact on research performance. The findings can be used as a reference for current non-accredited schools whose research goals are to improve their research productivity and quality.