The Faculty of Economics and Business Administration has 297 researchers who teach, develop courses, conduct empirical studies, write books and articles. In addition, many of the researchers are in charge of: the administration of study programmes, departments and research programmes and participate in the public debate; they conduct research activities in cooperation with foreign research institutions, the business community and the public sector; they participate in fact-finding work and consultancy services as well as continuing education activities at CBS and elsewhere; they work as teachers of Master of Business Administration and PhD study programmes in Denmark and abroad; they work with the editing staff of national and international trade journals; and finally, they organise conferences and workshops and are on the boards of various professional associations.

Although only some of these activities may be regarded as research in the traditional sense of the word, i.e. creating new knowledge and exposing this knowledge to the international research community through conferences and various publications, they are all dependent on research. Research is therefore the driving force behind all the other activities.

Research as a driving force

Research is a driving force creating relations. Communication means producing research results of interest to other people. Communication is intensified through research, thereby increasing the dialogue on research processes and research results. This in itself creates further research results and strengthens research activities. The quantity and quality of research is improved through this positive spiral, thereby creating new relations to other research environments.

But that is not all. An increase in the quantity and quality of research also increases the competence of the researchers, improving their teaching capability. The result is better courses; increasingly up-to-date programmes; more perspective on the issues of the discipline; and better students. It also increases the number of international visitors and visiting lecturers. And it results in a greater variation in courses and a lot of influence from the globalised world. Word gets around that the Faculty has something to offer, and consequently more international students apply. Exchange agreements are made with universities in other countries based on the reputation of the Faculty and its position in international research. Thus, Danish students quickly link up to the internationalisation trend, and they are encouraged to play an active part in global education.

This also impacts the research process itself. The quality researchers may claim as part of the international research community enables them to develop better research projects – not least projects conducted in cooperation with private and public enterprises. Access to good international sparring partners and the certainty that local research environments at least possess a quality rendering them interesting to other researchers increases the quality of local research projects.

Especially quality in research – and the interest in empirical issues – makes it possible to develop interesting master's programmes of high quality (e.g. Master of Business Administration, Master of Management Development, Global eManagement, Master of Public Administration), which will only survive if they provide access to internationally qualified knowledge, including lecturers from abroad.

Research is also a driving force, because it is the foundation of both the production and the dissemination of knowledge. It is the foundation of the Faculty's endeavours to obtain visibility in the international research community, thereby accentuating the shape of individual researchers and research environments. It creates better results and a better background for generating new results in terms of education and dissemination.

Do we do enough? Are the success criteria fulfilled?

This is a difficult question. The figure below shows Faculty production in recent years.

Figure 1: Types of Faculty publications 2001-2005

In a way, this is an example of adding apples and pears. Each graph covers both articles and books, and no distinction has been made between "good" and "not so good" channels of publication. The figure illustrates that the number of foreign language (especially English) publications has increased in 2005 in comparison to 2004, whereas the number of Nordic language publications has stagnated. This is still not quite satisfactory as the scientific staff increased slightly during the same period. The number of "Other publications" is also increasing. This is a somewhat mixed category, but it often refers to general contributions to newspapers and trade journals. It is all right to produce contributions to publications of this kind, but obviously the contributions are not as important as proper research publications. The number of working papers and proceedings fluctuates around a stable level, which is not bad at all. Such publications may be important to get in touch with colleagues around the world, but they are not final publications even though many of them are given as references in papers published by other researchers. It seems that working papers and proceedings are gradually being substituted by proper research production, which is promising as it means that the research work will then be finalised.

The research productivity of individual researchers varies greatly – at least when measured by the number of publications per employed researcher. The medium of publication also varies greatly. This means that our researchers reach a wide audience in terms of research issues and themes; in terms of "level" as well as methods. There is a high degree of heterogeneity, the advantage being the many links to the surrounding world. It also reflects the size of the Faculty – 297 researchers can only equal heterogeneity.

On average, each researcher accounts for 1.34 foreign language publication, 1.16 Nordic language publication and 1.29 working paper/proceeding. A slightly higher output would be ideal. Indeed, the Faculty aims to achieve an even higher publication rate by encouraging department progress through academic planning and sound recruiting. An increased publication rate is particularly important, because it is a prerequisite for objective dialogue.

The CBS Faculty of Economics and Business Administration offers an environment of research and higher education using research as a driving force to circulate ideas and people in an international world. Research enables the Faculty to be a player in the international research community; it calls attention to competences and attracts interesting institutions and persons to Denmark from all over the world. For the Faculty, research is an international activity creating exposure and consequently interest and relations, international standards and perspectives, not only in research per se, but also in courses and business partnerships.

Figure 2: Faculty research figures 2001-2005

Research is part of all Faculty activities, and, therefore, it should be developed and supported. International publications are pivotal, because they indicate whether Faculty researchers are actually capable of finding an outlet to their ideas. International cooperation on projects is also important; visiting researchers are attracted by the Faculty's reputation, and participation in the organisation of international conferences and workshops is evidence of the Faculty's involvement in international "communities of practice".

Figure 3: Faculty student and study-programme figures 2001-2005

Research is also included in internationalised study programmes, as it is only possible to attract international students when being part of an international network of universities, often based on research reputation. Exchange agreements presuppose research ballast and that educational activities are performed in English.

Figure 4: Research funds 2001-2005 broken down by external and internal funds

Finally, internationalised research contributes to preparing the Faculty for improved partnerships with the business community. Internationalisation is important to cooperation partners, because of the inherent quality and because it is possible to exploit ideas developed elsewhere in the world without delay. Quite often, international research-based networks are the means of ensuring international participation in projects, including projects involving Danish companies. Especially internationalised research enables the Faculty to demonstrate competences that are of interest to potential partners.

Thus, research includes both input and output – it is the process by which the Faculty is constantly preparing to be a serious partner - both in a narrow sense with regard to knowledge production and in a broader sense - thereby acquiring competences to develop courses and partnerships and to participate in the public debate in a qualified way. The Faculty must have international representation in order to create value added research.

Faculty core research fields

Core fields:

Globalisation creates a number of special organisational, logistic and communicative issues in the area of strategic management. Increased outsourcing and international investments lead to new and complicated management problems, including a great need to tap into geographically distributed knowledge and to manage long, global supply chains. The framework conditions of enterprises become complex and numerous, because activities range from various commodity and capital markets to different social, institutional and cultural systems. The spectrum of potential business formats and employees with many different professional and cultural backgrounds complicates the basis for decisions of business executives. The effect of globalisation on the strategic issues of enterprise is not only associated with large, global enterprises, but also on changing the distribution of work and the competitive position in many industries and sectors.

Innovation

Research at the Faculty analyses product, service and process innovation at an enterprise level, industry level and at the level of national and international innovation systems and networks. The theoretical foundation is the interdisciplinary interaction between organisational economics theory, organisation theory and sociological theory. The research is interdisciplinary, discussing its field from an organisational economics perspective and an organisational and sociological perspective. Questions concerning research within this field include: How are innovation processes organised and managed? How do the various functions of an enterprise cooperate on innovation? How open should the innovation processes of enterprises be in relation to external players? How to best organise the cooperation of enterprises on innovation (e.g. in the form of licence agreements)? How to involve users and consumers actively in the innovation process? How to ensure efficient coordination between product innovation and production management? How do research institutions promote innovative applications of their research? How to ensure innovation diffusion and acceptance of innovation at the marketplace?

Management

The Faculty's research concerns the system of political and economic institutions and their effect on the competitiveness of countries. Comparative studies of the interaction of political institutions and private enterprises and their effect on the competitiveness of enterprises are prerequisite to obtain competent knowledge about the "institutional competitiveness" of the national economy. Institutional systems are constantly developing as part of a long historical process, where they adapt to the existing social structure, and as part of a shorter process where their functions and effects are adjusted. Knowledge about both is necessary to reform the efficiency and legitimacy of the institutions. Reform areas of the core field: how institutions develop new services and ground rules individually and in interaction with each other; how interest groups interact with the public sector; how media markets are developed and how politics are mediated; how the public sector is reformed through public governance and public and private partnerships; and how enterprises develop new forms of organisation and management and use strategic communication to influence their surroundings. Managing such an innovative and experimental institutional system is a very comprehensive and knowledge-intensive process that involves all areas of society and the interaction between both enterprises, knowledge producers, institutions of the welfare state and social groups. Generating this knowledge requires method and model development, the aim of which must necessarily be comparative. The theoretical foundation is socio-scientific in a broad sense with emphasis on institutional theories in the fields of economy, political science and sociology.

Corporate Communication

The focus is on the strategic aspects of communication in particular, i.e. the way communication forms part of the fundamental processes and structures of enterprises. Managers are expected to be able to express the vision and strategic objectives of the organisation and to ensure a sense of backup and identification in the organisation across geographical distances and cultural communities. The management endeavours to define the culture, basic values and identity of the organisation through "story-telling", "corporate branding" and "reputation management". Numerous initiatives are taken on a daily basis to capture, interpret and respond to positions and demands from the organisation's many stakeholders as part of its "issue management" and the relation to its "stakeholders". As part of these processes, enterprises and public organisations construct a reality of their own and of their many internal and external stakeholders through communication. As part of this construction process, enterprises enter into a dialogue with the growing number of printed and electronic media. The printed and electronic media are undergoing an economic process of concentration these years, which makes them even more important players. The market communication of the enterprises constitutes a major part of the income basis for these media, and it is researched in both an international and an intercultural context, including studies of advertising and consumer behaviour.

Applied financial economics and corporate management

The development and an application of the theory of financial economics are considered when trying to understand and solve corporate and socially relevant problems. This field includes corporate governance, i.e. management and control of enterprises through ownership, supervisory boards, incentives and other mechanisms. Increased global competition tightens the requirements for economic management, and the handling of financial risks is therefore essential. New financial products and services are emerging as a necessary complementarity to new and more complex production and corporate structures. The global angle is very much present by way of growing cross-border financing. The core field includes (i) development of risk management models to manage risk in financial institutions; (ii) management and handling of credit risks; and (iii) optimal investment portfolio strategies for individuals and pension funds.

Language, culture and social development.

Area studies have experienced an international renaissance after being hard-pressed for a long time by a purely discipline-oriented approach to the study of social conditions. At CBS, area studies in the sense of scientific competences in cultural and social conditions, combined with linguistic knowledge, have also been strengthened in recent years based on the realisation that industrial development is determined by a number of parameters that can generally be described as the "business environment". The business environment of a particular country or region comprises the social, cultural and political factors and, last but not least, the language as an essential approach to the cultural context. Thus, the theoretical basis of the field is the interaction between a large number of disciplines within the arts and social sciences, including history, (business) economics, law, psychology, history of ideas, literary analysis, cultural studies and political science. The CBS area studies cover Europe, and as a special area Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, America and Asia.

Budding core fields:

Experience economy

Special issues of business economics are linked to the emergence and organisation of enterprises in the field of experience economy that covers areas such as culture, sports, tourism, fashion, design, architecture, films, games and entertainment. Enterprises that compete in the field of experience economy are characterised by the special nature of "experience products", where the focus is more on entertainment, aesthetics and symbolism than on a clear utility function. Enterprises and managers involved in the start-up, production, marketing and distribution of experience products are thus subject to a number of special conditions as distinct from other industries. Issues such as the coordination of artistic and commercial activities, supply chain organisation in the light of internationalisation and globalisation, management of complex teams, and the location, employment and growth of the experience industry are all issues of business economics that are important to the core field of experience economy. The theoretical basis of the field is a number of theories of business economics such as resource-based theory, consumer behaviour theory, institutional theory, project management theory, network theory, service economics and culture theory, economic psychology and general economic theory.

Competition and law economics

The academic focus of this core field is on the special issues arising in the field of tension between law and economics. This field of tension is very old, but new business and market structures and new theoretical developments have made it a dynamic and important research area. Globalisation has created new problems in the fields of both competition and intellectual property law. International cooperation processes and organisations have generated new legal economic fields, where competition is promoted and regulated in an increasingly complex institutional game. Growing interdisciplinary cooperation between economics and law has created a new academic discipline, where the methods of the two fields are applied to the same issues. The central legal disciplines are contract law, law of torts, environmental law and criminal business law, legal regulation of the financial sector and intellectual property law as well as competition law. The economic fields include in particular industrial economics, including tendering, liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. The theoretical basis is legal theory and economics, notably industrial economics. The interdisciplinary cooperation between lawyers and economists is essential to the development of the field.

Institutional competition

Institutional competition is the system of political and economic institutions and their effect on the competitiveness of countries. Comparative studies of the interaction of political institutions and private enterprises and their effect on the competitiveness of enterprises is a prerequisite to obtain competent knowledge about the "institutional competitiveness" of the national economy. Institutional systems are constantly developing as part of a long historical process, where they adapt to the existing social structure, and as part of a shorter process, where their functions and effects are adjusted. Knowledge about both is necessary to reform the efficiency and legitimacy of the institutions. Reform areas of the core field are as follows:

Managing such an innovative and experimental, institutional system is a very comprehensive and knowledge-intensive process that involves all areas of society and the interaction between both enterprises, knowledge producers, institutions of the welfare state and social groups. Generating this knowledge requires method and model development, the aim of which must necessarily be comparative. The theoretical foundation is socio-scientific in a broad sense with emphasis on institutional theories in the fields of economy, political science and sociology.

Informatics

Research is conducted in management and control of the development and linking of innovative IT systems with information and communication technologies, including their legal regulation. IT technology plays an increasingly important role in the information society, where globally linked, fully integrated systems are a significant competitive factor. Management of the use, development and governance of these systems are therefore important factors. Because of the transcendent nature of the technology, both economic, cultural, technological and legal perspectives are involved. The registration of personal data, regulation of marketing and copyright are examples of the topics involved in the global perspective as well as economic and legal angles. The theoretical basis of this field includes a number of disciplines such as information systems, business economics and jurisprudence.

For further information, see the websites of the individual departments and the CBS experts directory at: Experts@cbs - www.cbs.dk/library/bln450002.shtml.

The 2005 development contract between CBS and the Danish Ministry of Science follows CBS' new strategy for the upcoming years, and the new focus areas are: innovation and entrepreneurship, politics and business, experience economy and globalisation. These areas are characterised by their broad academic spectrum and, to a varying degree, they involve the research environments of most of the Faculty's departments. Several major interdepartmental research projects and centres were established within these focus areas in the course of 2005.

The capacity for constant innovation will be decisive to the competitive power of the business community. The ability to organise and manage development processes, transform technical inventions into business goals, assess market potential and risks, safeguard and negotiate rights and establish new business areas will be crucial for growth and welfare in the future. Together, the Faculty departments possess a lot of the requested knowledge, but it must be made visible to the public. The Faculty strengthened research in this field in 2004 with a centre in the Biotech sector.

Experience economy

Increasing welfare, not only in Denmark, but also in a number of development areas around the world, is expected to create a basis for considerable growth in industries such as design, culture, experience, leisure and tourism. Research in the enterprises and institutions of the experience economy is important to be able to understand the correlation between experience, business and economy. The establishment of two new centres in 2004 - the Center for Tourism and Culture Management and the Center for Creative Industries Research – imagine, strengthened research in this field.

Business and politics

Changing interfaces between business and state/market call for increased research and education. With the establishment of the International Center for Business and Politics, steps have been taken to strengthen overall Faculty research within this field of research. The centre supplements current research with more departments while strengthening CBS' international network in the field.

Globalisation

To gain access to markets constituting an increasing part of the world economy in a global perspective, it is necessary to have in-depth knowledge of the culture, economy, politics and social conditions of the area in question. Therefore, the Faculty wishes to intensify ongoing research in areas such as Asia, Europe and North and South America, while also focusing on the new development economies that are expected to represent the next stage in the global development. In this area obvious fields of cooperation with the Faculty of Languages, Communication and Cultural Studies are emerging. In 2004, the Faculty opened a Center for Business and Development Studies to strengthen research in this field together with the previously established Center for Asia Research and the Center for Strategy and Globalization established in 2005.

A significant part of the international and national publication is the result of achievements in many of the Faculty core areas not covered by the four focus areas described above.

Research quality

Announcements from the government and various councils emphasise "research quality" as a criterion that will influence the future allocation of research resources in different ways. This is probably going to be the case of both basic funds and competition funds. It is not certain that the core fields identified will form the basis of resource allocation, but what is certain is that the institutions will be asked to account for the quality of the research conducted with a view on research allocation.

In 2005, a quality list of the most accepted journals for publication of CBS research was drawn up. It was a difficult process, because there are different opinions about the importance of individual journals, and because CBS has a broader academic span than typical business schools. With the input of the Academic Council and heads of department, impact statements regarding a large number of journals and inspiration from the Financial Times' list of 40 journals, the Faculty succeeded in drawing up a TOP 60 list for CBS (see the annex at the end of this report). The purpose of the list is to express a very high level of ambitions for research publication. It should be noted, however, that traditionally our commercial lawyers and business historians do not use these journals. In addition to the TOP 60 list, local "department lists" were prepared for what must be characterised as good-quality journals. These initiatives are important to understand CBS' efforts to stimulate higher research quality. In the upcoming years, we will observe the consequences of publication, and we must be prepared to adjust the lists based on experience gained.

Research reports of the institutes