Auburn business professor ranked 23rd nationally, 40th globally by Research.com

Auburn University Professor Dave Ketchen has been ranked number 23 nationally and number 40 globally in Research.com’s inaugural listing of the top business professors.

“Auburn provides the tools to be successful,” said Ketchen, management professor and Harbert Eminent Scholar in the Harbert College of Business. “Since I joined Auburn in 2006, we have had three very supportive deans: Paul Bobrowski, Bill Hardgrave and Annette Ranft. The culture of research has become stellar.”

Research.com, which has been ranking science professors since 2014, took into account professors’ number of publications, number of citations by fellow researchers and the H-index, a measurement based on analysis of the productivity and impact of a particular scientist. The rankings are among tens of thousands of business professors.

Ketchen has published 163 articles, and his work has been cited more than 41,000 times since 2014, according to Research.com. In addition, according to Google Scholar, Ketchen has more than 49,000 lifetime citations. His H-index is 80 on Research.com.

A recent example of Ketchen’s research looks at pharmaceutical companies’ recalls of dangerous products and why companies issue recalls faster or slower.

“We found that companies with more women on the board of directors issue recalls much faster. Women change board dynamics to bring more empathy to these decisions, and the result is reduced harm to consumers,” Ketchen said of the study, which gained coverage in The Wall Street Journal.

Ketchen co-authored the study with professors Kaitlin Wowak, University of Notre Dame, George Ball, Indiana University, and Corinne Post, Villanova University.

Ketchen’s overall research interests include entrepreneurship and franchising, strategic supply chain management and the determinants of superior organizational performance. His textbook, “Mastering Strategic Management,” is used at dozens of universities and colleges, and his four graphic novel textbooks have been covered in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Ketchen is now collaborating with businessman and motivational author Larry Thornton to convert Thornton’s book “Why Not Win?” into an illustrated version targeted at middle- and high-school students. Thornton, among the first African American students to integrate Montgomery city schools in the late 1960s, earned his bachelor’s degree from Alabama State University and later became the first African American to own a McDonald’s franchise in Birmingham. He now owns seven McDonald’s and serves on Coca-Cola United’s board of directors.

“The book covers many vital life lessons that young people need to understand,” said Ketchen, a member of the Why Not Win Institute board of directors. “I feel senior professors should be doing more beyond teaching classes and writing peer-reviewed journals. We need to find a passion project where we can leverage our expertise and experience for the benefit of society.”

Ketchen’s awards include the Southeastern Conference’s 2018 Faculty Achievement Award for Auburn, and, in 2012, the Smeal Graduate Distinguished Achievement Award from Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University, his alma mater.

Several fellow Auburn professors also made the Research.com list of top business professors, including current faculty O.C. Ferrell and Glenn Richey and professors emeriti Achilles Armenakis and Terry Bird in the business and management category, as well as Jim Barth in the economics and finance category.