Value for money in the UK REF: Why invest in post-92 Business Schools and sector-wide collaboration?

Argues that post-92 Business Schools pull above their weight in many elements of the REF, that QR funding should be distributed more equally, and that we should have a ring-fenced budget to promote sector-wide learning

Anne-Wil Harzing - (updated Mon 8 Sep 2025 09:58)

© Copyright 2024-2025 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. First version, 8 Sept 2025

Note: This white paper refers to Business Schools as the unit of analysis as this is the term that is best recognised in common parlance. However, not every university submitting to the unit of assessment Business & Management (UoA17) in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) has a freestanding Business School. Many REF submissions might be from departments that are part of a Faculty/School of Business & Law or even a Social Sciences Faculty/School. Some submissions might even consist of an ad-hoc collection of individuals spread across organizational units doing research in Business & Management.

The UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) – a national research assessment that is conducted every 7-8 years, most recently in 2021 – rates institutions’ publications, impact case studies, and research environment on a scale from 0 (unclassified) to 4 (world leading), with 1 to 3 defined respectively as recognised nationally (1), recognised internationally (2) and internationally excellent (3). The results of this assessment are publicly available and provide the primary basis for the analyses in this white paper.

REF results are used to distribute QR (Quality Related) block grant funding to the UK higher education sector, an allocation of around £2 billion per year. This block grant funding is used to support research infrastructure, such as staff salaries, buildings, and libraries. It is distinct from funding for specific research projects, which is gained in a competitive process through submitting funding applications to the various national and European research councils, charities, industry, and governmental bodies.

As I have discussed in my white paper In defence of the Business School: One myth and four truths, Business & Management had by far the largest submission in the 2021 REF. No less than 108 universities made a submission to this unit of assessment (UoA17), with ten institutions submitting for the first time. All but one of these ten new institutions were post-92 institutions, i.e. new universities, polytechnic institutions that received university status in 1992 or later.

As a result, 50 out of the 108 submitting institutions in Business & Management are now post-92 universities; 24 universities are part of the elite association of Russell Group universities, whilst the remaining 34 universities are not part of either group. The latter are a mix of largely non-Russell group research-intensive universities and a few lower ranked institutions such as the universities of Salford, Aberystwyth, and Keele. In this white paper – for lack of a better name – I will call this third group unaffiliated.

In this white paper I argue that, rather than being discarded as low-value added institutions, post-92 Business Schools should be recognised as providing excellent value for money in their research, and in some areas could be argued to outperform more established Business Schools. I also suggest that the UK’s current emphasis on incentivizing competition between institutions and concentrating QR funding in a small group of elite institutions might be counter-productive, especially for Business & Management, but also for the wider Social Sciences and Humanities. Finally, I provide a range of suggestions to engage in sector-wide collaboration and sharing of best practices.

Table of contents

Post-92 Business Schools: Lower REF performance overall, but large variance across criteria and institutions

Table 1 shows – for each of the three groups of universities mentioned above – the average full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff submitted to the REF, the Grade Point Average (GPA), the Power rating, and the % of QR funding received. For post-92 Business Schools, it also reports the highest and lowest performing Business School on the overall GPA metric. Definitions of each of these elements are below:

  • FTE = The full-time equivalent number of academics that were defined as research active by the institution and thus submitted to the REF.
  • GPA = Grade Point Average, calculated by multiplying the proportion of research that was valued at 4*, 3*, 2*, and 1* by 4/3/2/1 and divide the result by 100.
  • GPA is provided separately for outputs (publications), impact (impact case studies), and the research environment statement (RES).
  • Power rating = The overall research power of the university calculated by multiplying its GPA by the number of FTE submitted.
  • % of QR funding = The percentage of QR funding allocated to universities. As any research ranked lower than 3* is disregarded for funding purposes, this is calculated by including only 4* and 3* rated research, with 4* research counting four times as much as 3* research. This is then multiplied by FTE and divided by total level of QR funding.

On average, post-92 Business Schools show a much lower GPA than Russell Group Business Schools, with unaffiliated Business Schools scoring in between. Post-92s submit only a third of the staff that Russell Group Business Schools do, and their average power rating is only a quarter of that of the elite Business Schools.

In terms of QR funding the difference is even starker. On average post-92 institutions received 0.31% of the total UoA17 QR funding, whilst this was 2.03% for Russell Group and 1.05% for unaffiliated Business Schools. Combined, the fifty post-92 Business Schools received only 15% of the UoA17 QR funding, with nearly half (49%) going to the 24 Russell Group Business Schools. The 34 unaffiliated Business Schools received 36% of the funding.

Small differences in GPA between different groupings

The difference in terms of GPA between post-92 Business Schools on the one hand, and the two other groups on the other hand, is much smaller than the difference in QR funding. Their overall GPA sits at 76% of the Russell group and 83% of unaffiliated Business Schools, and at 2.57 is just over mid-way between internationally recognised and internationally excellent research. Post-92s perform even better on research impact where their GPA of 2.81constitutes 82% of that of Russell Group Business Schools and 89% of that of unaffiliated Business Schools. Their worst performance is on the Research Environment Statement where their average of 2.25 is only 62% and 72% of that of Russell Group and unaffiliated Business Schools respectively.

Given that most of the investment in a university’s research environment derives from their QR funding, the lower average score for their research environment statements is not surprising. Moreover, as the length of the RES was linked to the number of FTE submitted, post-92s faced the disadvantage of having fewer words available to make their case. The top-10 performers had twice as many words to play with than the bottom two dozen performers. This is also reflected in the fact that, at 0.77, the correlation between GPA and FTE for the RES was much stronger than for outputs (0.59) and impact (0.50) where the playing field was more equal.

Significant variance within the group of post-92 Business Schools

There is very significant variety, however, within the group of post-92 Business Schools. The highest performing Business School on average GPA – Middlesex University – outperforms the average of unaffiliated Business Schools on all metrics except for the GPA for outputs. The lowest performer – University of Bolton – has a power rating that is less than 5% of that of the highest post-92 performer and didn’t receive any QR funding at all.

When sorted on the GPA ranking, there are three post-92 Business Schools (Middlesex, Anglia Ruskin, and Manchester Metropolitan) that outperform at least one Russell Group university. When sorted on the % of QR funding received, i.e. incorporating a size of submission element, this is true for half a dozen post-92s, with three (Northumbria, Middlesex, and Portsmouth) outranking no less than five Russell Group Business Schools and nearly two dozen unaffiliated Business Schools.

Many high-ranking post-92 Business Schools also significantly outperform the universities that they are a part of. Middlesex University Business School gained 1.30% of the sector-wide UoA 17 QR funding, but only 0.27% of the total HE sector QR funding went to Middlesex University overall, i.e. the Business School outperformed the university by a factor of nearly five! Northumbria gained 1.47% of the UoA17 QR funding vs 0.43% of the total HE sector QR funding for the university overall. The proportions for Portsmouth were 1.15% vs 0.37%, and for Manchester Metropolitan 1.10% vs 0.41%. Thus proportionally, these three Business Schools all gained around three times as much funding as the university they are part of.

High “return on investment” for post-92 Business Schools?

Raw GPAs matter. But from a value for money perspective, we also need to consider “return on investment”. We suggest that comparing scores on research environment on the one hand and research outputs and research impact on the other might be one way of doing this, seeing it as an evaluation of the “efficiency” of converting research inputs into research outcomes.

The research environment element of the REF assesses the vitality and sustainability of the institutional research environments. It reports on a range of metrics relating to infrastructural support, research funding, and PhD completions, supplemented by a more narrative approach evidencing the UoA’s overall research strategy, staffing strategy, resources for staff development, as well as collaboration with and contribution to the discipline and wider society.

Obviously, there isn’t always a direct, one-to-one relationship between a supportive research environment and high-quality research outputs and impact. There are at least two reasons for this.

  • First, there is likely to be a time lag between initiatives taken to improve the research environment on the one hand and improved research outputs and research impact on the other hand.
  • Second, high-quality outputs could be the result of external rather than internal support, or they could simply have been “bought in” through appointment of academics with stellar publication profiles close to the submission deadline.

However, even if the relationship is weak, a supportive research culture is valuable in its own right, especially if it:

  • addresses our sector's considerable problems with harassment and bullying, questionable research practices or even outright research misconduct,
  • actively improves research integrity and openness in research through Open Science initiatives,
  • promotes inclusion for non-traditional research(ers).

Over- and underperformance across three groups of Business Schools

Even so, on average universities that have a very supportive research environment could be expected to score higher on both research outputs and research impact. Thus, universities that display a higher score on their research environment than on research outputs and research impact could be argued to be “underperforming”, whereas the reverse is true for universities that show higher scores on research outputs and research impact than on their research environment.

There is a very significant difference between Business Schools in this respect. Table 2 compares the three groups identified above. It reveals a pattern where post-92 Business Schools overperform significantly in terms of output and impact when compared to their research environment, whereas Russell Group Business Schools underperform, significantly so for outputs. Unaffiliated Business Schools show relatively little difference for the three elements.

Note: the overall GPAs in Table 2 are a bit lower than those in my earlier white paper as here we calculate the average over 108 institutions, giving each institution an equal weight. The REF UoA data used in “In defence of the Business School” incorporated a size element. As higher scoring (usually Russell Group) Business Schools typically having a larger submission, this raised the average.

Granted, given the caveats I listed above, my analysis of over- and under-performance may seem a little simplistic. So, I would not recommend putting too much weight on it. Even so, it provides us with an indication of the relationship between the “research inputs” provided in an institution’s research environment and its “research outcomes” in the form of publications (outputs) and impact.

But what about attracting competitive research funding and training the next generation of academics, two other key research inputs/outcomes? How do post-92s compare in these areas? We’ll turn to the level of competitive research funding first and then discuss the number of doctoral students graduated.

Competitive research funding:
pockets of excellence in post-92 Business Schools

As shown in “In defence of the Business School” average funding levels differ dramatically by discipline. Even in Business & Management, however, competitive research funding is a crucial research input, especially in the current financial context. One would expect elite institutions to be more successful in acquiring competitive research funding as – beyond having a larger pool of excellent researchers – they can draw on the dual benefits of having more research support and a better institutional reputation.

Table 3 provides an overview of the total amount of funding gained by the three different groups of Business Schools, as well as the three different funding sources that make up the three biggest tranches of funding. Together they cover 70% of total competitive research funding.

We can draw several conclusions from this. First, as also discussed In defence of the Business School: One myth and four truths – funding per year/FTE is very low in Business & Management. This confirms my earlier arguments in the blogpost: Finding a Unicorn? Research funding in Business & Management research, partly replicated here.

Therefore, getting significant funding in Business & Management might not be quite as impossible as finding a Unicorn, but it is very hard indeed. Senior administrators should therefore ensure they are not comparing apples with oranges. Yes, the Social Science disciplines might bring in relatively low levels of research income, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are underperforming. Given that in many universities promotion is linked to the generation of research income, it is very important to be aware of disciplinary differences in terms of access to research funding.

Second, Russell Group Business Schools clearly manage to acquire a huge share of the competitive research funding, nearly 60% of the total yearly funding goes to the 24 Russell Group Business Schools (who make up only 22% of the total number of Business Schools), with another 33% going to unaffiliated institutions, almost exactly replicating the proportion of these institutions (32%) in the total Business & Management landscape. Post-92 Business Schools (who make up 46% of the total Business School landscape) managed to attract a mere 9% of the funding.

However, part of this is simply caused by the differential size of the submission in the three different groupings. When converting yearly funding to yearly funding per FTE, differences are much smaller. The share of Russell Group Business Schools drops to 40% of the funding, but other Business Schools increase their share to 36%, and post-92 nearly triple their share to 24%.

Post-92 Business Schools punching (above) their weight in EU and UK government funding

Third, there are significant differences between the three groups in terms of the most important funding sources. As Table 3 shows post-92s do very badly on UK Research Council funding, only 11% of their total competitive research funding comes from this source, whereas this is nearly a third for both Russsell Group and unaffiliated institutions.

Post-92 Business Schools perform best for EU funding, where – on a funding per FTE basis – they actually outperform the two other groups. Post-92s also do not differ much from the two other groups for UK government funding. On a funding per FTE basis, they acquire 90% of the UK government funding that Russell Group Business Schools bring in and 96% of the unaffiliated group.

The overall distribution of funding for post-92s is thus heavily geared towards EU and UK government funding with nearly six times as much funding coming from these two sources combined than from UK Research Councils. In stark contrast, for Russell Group Business Schools, EU and UK government funding combined are only marginally higher than UK Research Council funding.

The focus on different funding sources is also clearly demonstrated when we look at the top-20 Business Schools with the largest amount of funding per FTE for the various funding sources. Post-92 Business Schools dominate the top-20 in EU funding and to a lesser extent in UK government funding, whereas Russell Group Business Schools dominate in UK Research Council funding. Other Business Schools narrowly pip Russell Group Business Schools for total funding.

So even though total funding levels in post-92 Business Schools are much lower, it is clear that there are strong pockets of excellence in this type of Business Schools that are rewarded especially with EU and UK government funding. The lack of success in UK Research Council grants for post-92s is concerning, but in the context of success rates below 10% not entirely surprising.

Doctoral training: post-92 Business Schools punching (above) their weight on doctoral graduates

Universities also play a crucial role in training the next generation of academics. So how do post-92 Business Schools compare with more research-intensive Business Schools in this important service to the wider academic community?

Overall, universities in Business & Management graduated nearly 9,200 doctoral students in the last REF period. Table 5 compares the three groups in terms of the number of students they graduate. Russell Group Business Schools graduate the largest number of students per institution, but unaffiliated Business Schools graduate the largest number in total.

Interestingly, however, post-92 Business Schools graduate the largest number of doctoral students per FTE, nearly twice as many as Russell Group Business Schools. They also hold their own in terms of the total number of students they graduate in total, delivering 81% of the numbers of students graduated by Russell Group Business Schools. Hence, in addition to research funding, post-92s certainly punch (above) their weight in terms of doctoral training.

Replace the heavily concentrated QR funding with more distributed funding?

The UK is currently characterised by a highly stratified university system in which a very large share of QR funding goes to a small group of elite Business Schools. As shown in Table 1 above, on average, a post-92 Business School only receives 0.31% of the total QR funding in UoA 17 whereas the average Russell Group Business School receives 2.03%.

The 50 post-92 Business Schools combined receive a mere 15% of the total QR funding, with nearly half (49%) going to the 24 Russell Group Business Schools. The 34 unaffiliated Business Schools receive 36% of the funding. On average, a Russell Group Business School thus receives a whopping 6.5 times as much QR funding as a post-92 Business School, whereas an unaffiliated Business School on average receives nearly 3.5 times as much.

Granted, these stark differences are partly caused by size, Russell Group Business Schools on average employed three times as many research active academics as post-92 Business Schools, whereas the ratio vis-à-vis unaffiliated Business Schools approaches two. However, the REF’s disproportionate emphasis on 4* ratings also explains a large part of the differential funding. No funding is provided for any research (publications, impact, or environment) scored lower than 3*. Moreover, 4* research counts for four times as much as 3* research.

The top-30 institutions, i.e. just over a quarter of the submitting Business Schools, take home more than two thirds (67%) of the funding. They include all but five of the Russell Group Business Schools and eleven unaffiliated Business Schools. Given that their average GPA is 3.36, this might well be seen as justified. However, the GPA of the remaining 78 institutions is 2.74, well on the way towards internationally excellent research.

We also showed that - on a per FTE - basis post-92 Business Schools perform quite well in terms of competitive research funding, outperforming the other groups for EU funding and drawing a similar amount of UK government funding. In terms of doctoral training, they also deliver more students per FTE than unaffiliated Business Schools and nearly twice as many as Russell Group Business Schools, punching well above their weight. So, is the concentration of QR funding in the top quarter of UK Business Schools really justified by the relatively small differences in research quality?

The case for distributed funding: higher marginal returns?

Concentrated funding may work well if the aim is to create a handful of world elite universities. But I argue that – unlike disciplines that need very high infrastructural investments – opportunities for research breakthroughs in Business & Management (and the wider Social Sciences and Humanities) are not limited to elite universities only. Spreading funding a bit more evenly might well provide a higher marginal return.

Experiencing a 100K cut on an average QR budget of nearly 2 million pounds per year is unlikely to lead to substantively less or lower quality research for the top-30 Business Schools. On the other hand, granting another 100K to the 30 lowest ranked Business Schools – currently on average receiving barely more than 100K per year – may allow them to appoint (additional) research support staff, implement a pump-priming small grants scheme, or pay for research development events.

A little money can go a long way! Moreover, it might not only have an outsized impact on research outcomes, but also on staff morale and confidence. I have certainly seen this happening with the writing retreats I organised for Middlesex University as the two participant quotes below demonstrate (see also: Our 9th Middlesex writing bootcamp). I will never forget the look on my colleagues' faces, when – at breakfast at our first writing retreat (see Middlesex University Winter 2018 writing boot-camp) – they saw the Middlesex University table next to the London School of Economics and Kings College London tables.

In eras of gloom, being hosted in a royal residence, and treated like royalty, makes you feel incredibly lucky to be working for an institution that values you enough to send you on such a retreat. It also reminds me of the unique collegiality and shared values of my MDX colleagues. The team spirit and institutional loyalty generated surely must be priceless.

When I came to my first Cumberland Lodge event, I was so impressed by what the university was offering to us researchers. It signalled that research and we as research active staff are valued by our employer.

Spreading funding more equally will also benefit many individual members of academic staff at non-elite institutions. Academics at elite institutions would hardly miss 5% in their personal research budgets. Generous budgets might even lead to less than careful spending. Who hasn’t gone to one more conference or bought a raft of books to spend their research budget just before the end of the year? I certainly have when I worked at a research-intensive university with generous personal budgets.

On the other hand, for academics at non-elite institutions, small sums of money might make a huge difference. Small (e.g. 1-2K) internal grants, conference funding sufficient for full funding a conference at least every other year, or the opportunity to pay for professional development courses. Small investments like this can turn someone from being research-inactive to doing nationally or even internationally recognised research. It also means that academics who – through no fault of their own – had to take up jobs at less well-resourced universities at the start of their career are not doomed to be research-inactive for the rest of their careers.

Obviously, the exact formula for reallocating some of the QR funding would be up for discussion, but why not reconsider the decision to suppress funding for research that is nationally or internationally recognised? Research at many post-92 Business Schools is closely tied to the local and regional context and important for its economic development. In a country in which regional disparities – from economic development to health – are growing I consider this type of research to be something we should encourage, not discourage.

Can we lift the UK Business School sector through strategic investment?

QR funding pits universities against each other. There is a finite pool of money and those with the highest proportion of 4* ratings will sweep up most of it. I argue this may well lead to suboptimal results for the Higher Education sector as a whole, especially at times where the sector isn’t exactly ‘the flavour of the day’ and needs to fight to reclaim its legitimacy in the eyes of both politicians and the general public.

I am not the only one making this argument. Here is an extensive quote from a WonkHE blogpost My research culture is better than yours by one of my all-time favourite “influencers” in the area of research policy and management, Elizabeth Gadd. Although focusing on the move to allocate 25% of the QR funding to research culture, I would argue its general argument to promote collaboration over competition is valid for all elements of the REF.

The risk of pitting us all against each other in some unholy research culture competition is that hyper-competition was always at the heart of so many of our unhelpful research cultures. In fact, a lot of the research culture challenges we face are outwith the agency and reach of individual institutions, leaving collaboration as our only mechanism to create real change [my emphasis].
One thing is for sure: if we don’t get this right and research culture does become the next big competition in HE, we all know who’s going to win: our large, old and wealthy friends, the Very Research Intensives. Not only do they do more research – a fundamental prerequisite when it comes to research culture – they also benefit from many other forms of social and economic ‘research capital’.
For starters, they have access to far more research culture funding. The Wellcome Trust are currently deliberating as to which of their already well-funded institutions they are going to further fund to improve their research cultures. Similarly, the research culture funding allocated to English HEIs by Research England is based on institution size. The have-nots get £50K, the have-lots get £1M.
And whilst you might argue that more researchers require more support, remember there are economies of scale here. A research culture post costs the same whether it’s in Cumbria or Cambridge, but it will absorb a much lower proportion of a £1M budget than that of a £50K one. (As Terry Pratchett taught us it’s expensive to be poor).
The other privilege available to the privileged of course, is direct access to a host of exclusive networks to support their efforts: Researchers 14 (for researcher developers in Russell Group HEIs), the Brunswick Group (for REF aficionados in Russell Group HEIs), the Research Directors Group for Russell Group HEIs, and of course Research Libraries UK(for Russell Group HEIs and friends thereof)… You get the picture.

Invest small slice of QR funding into diffusion of best practices

So rather than creating even more competition – which mainly rewards already well-funded institutions – this time for research culture, why not invest a small slice of the QR funding to enable a much broader group of institutions to share best practices with the entire HE sector?

I can see at least four separate avenues where this could be useful:

  • the top-5 best performing Business Schools on outputs, impact, and environment could share their best practices,
  • the most improved Business Schools could do likewise,
  • high-performing post-92 Business Schools could share their knowledge on how to improve research performance with limited budgets, and finally
  • the elite institutions receiving Wellcome funding for research projects to improve their research cultures could be requested to share the outcomes with the entire sector in an accessible format.

I will discuss each of these in more detail below. However, sharing best practices may also have a range of generic benefits. First, given that there are nearly 50 different institutions that are “the best” at something, it promotes sharing a wide range of experiences, whilst providing a confidence boost for some of the traditionally lower-ranked institutions in the process.

Second, it provides Research Deans/Directors and other – senior and junior – academics (keen to be) involved in research support additional opportunities to meet fellow professionals committed to high-quality research. This is likely to increase the development of the type of collaborative funding applications needed to address our manifold societal challenges.

Third, when supported by digital archiving of materials or even fully online video courses – such as my own courses for Research Deans on how to build inclusive research cultures, and how to support ECRs, and for researchers on how to improve your research profile, how to publish in top journals, and how to navigate research across career stages – it provides a growing store of knowledge for future role-holders and academics alike.

Top-5 Business Schools sharing their strategies

As evidenced in Table 6, the three different elements of the REF submission (outputs, impact, and environment) featured very different Business Schools as the top-5 performers. Only Imperial College London and the University of Manchester scored in the top-5 for more than one of the three elements.

The top-5 performers for output are four of the London elite institutions and Cambridge. All but one – London Business School – are Russell Group universities. The top-5 performers on impact are more diverse, with two post-92s topping the league, joined by a non-affiliated university (SOAS), and two Russell Group universities. They also demonstrate some geographical diversity although the top-3 are all located in London. The top-5 for research environment shows a more varied geographical distribution with Business Schools from across the UK – Northwest England (2), Wales, London, and the Midlands – taking up the top-5 positions. However, all but one – Lancaster – are Russell Group universities.

So, given the variety of institutions involved in these three top-5’s, why not fund the five elite Business Schools scoring highest for output to co-design a workshop on how to publish high-quality research in top journals? On average 70% of their output pool was assessed as 4*. Hence, they should have some useful lessons to share on how to ensure your research is “outstandingly novel”, “exceptionally significant”, “exceptionally rigorous”, has a “formative influence on the intellectual agenda” and constitutes a “primary or essential point of reference” [the 4* criteria for the Social Sciences].

Moreover, why not fund the top-5 Business Schools in terms of research impact to devise a workshop that answers questions on for instance “how to ensure impact is integrated from the start of the research process”, “how to diffuse research for maximum impact”, and “how to write the most effective REF impact case studies”. Their varied institutional circumstances and disciplinary foci are bound to lead to a useful learning experience, given that 75% of their impact case study narratives were scored 4*.

Finally, why not fund the top-5 Business Schools on research environment to share their experiences on creating a supportive research culture? With an average of 95% of their research environment statements rated at 4*, they surely have something to share that would be of interest to those universities struggling to build up their research environment.

Most improved Business Schools sharing their insights

Likewise, institutions that did particularly well in improving their outputs, impact, or research environment compared to the 2014 REF, and are now scoring at least 3.00, could be funded to share their experiences with the HE sector as a whole. Table 7 provides the top-5 meeting these criteria for each of the three elements. I argue that lessons from these institutions might be just as valuable, or even more valuable, than those from top performers.

To explain why, let’s move this to the individual level. My experience is that early career researchers often learn as much or more from those 5-10 years ahead of them than from superstar researchers whose performance might seem completely out of reach. Likewise, institutions keen to improve their performance from a low base might be able to learn more from those who have recently done exactly this than from those who have operated at the highest levels for decades.

In terms of output, the five most improved Business Schools managed to raise their rating between 0.53 and 0.93, quite a significant leap on a 4-point scale. They range from smallish post-92 Business Schools such as Anglia Ruskin [17.30 FTE] and Roehampton [18.7 FTE] to big Russell Group Business Schools such as Liverpool [139 FTE], with a medium-sized Russell Group [Exeter] and unaffiliated university [Surrey] in between. Hence, they should be able to share a diverse range of insights.

On impact, the five most improved are largely small post-92 Business Schools that started from a low – and sometimes a very low – base. They improved between 1.0 and 1.7 on a 4-point scale. No mean feat! As they submitted only 2-4 case studies, the learnings from them might be a bit idiosyncratic, however. Even so, their lessons may be helpful for other smaller institutions.

On environment, the top-5 most improved institutions gained between 0.75 and 1.38. The two most improved are post-92s of widely varying size [17.30 FTE and 84.10 FTE], whilst the next two are a medium-sized [Queen Mary University, 62.9 FTE] and large [Glasgow,127.3 FTE] Russell Group university. Birkbeck, a medium-sized university that isn’t one of the most research-intensive institutions closes the top-5. The wide variety in terms of type and size of institutions would make for an interesting sharing of best practices.

Top-5 post-92 Business Schools sharing research support practices

Similarly, post-92 Business Schools that have an overall average GPA over 3.0 such as Middlesex University (3.15), Anglia Ruskin University (3.15), Manchester Metropolitan University (3.07), and the University of Portsmouth (3.02) or those with a slightly lower GPA, but one of the largest number of FTE in Business & Management submitted (Northumbria, 2.79, 158.15FTE) could be asked to share their experience with other post-92 Business Schools.

Post-92 institutions typically operate within very different resource conditions than research-intensive Business Schools. Thus, having another post-92 institution explain how they improved their research outcomes – and in particular their research environment – might be really beneficial.

As Staff Development Lead for Middlesex University, the largest of the two top-scoring post-92 Business Schools on average GPA, I have done exactly this over the past 5-10 years. I presented at the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ conferences and courses for Research Deans and Research-oriented Professors, as well as at the EFMD research leadership programmes and several other seminar series. Links to publicly accessible write-ups and/or videos are listed below:

Over the past 10 years, I have also written up many white papers and blogposts on publishing, research impact, and research cultures, some of which are signposted below. My Working in academia page provides a good entry point to some of these resources and my five career guides below provide guidance for individual academics.

Aug 2022:

Only £5.95...		 Nov 2022:

Only £5.95...		 Feb 2023:

Only £5.95...		 May 2023:

Only £5.95...		 August 2023:

Only £9.99...

Writing and publishing

Research diffusion & impact

Research environment

However, none of these diffusion efforts benefitted from dedicated financial support. So rather than relying on the good-will of individual academics, who would typically need to sacrifice time they could have spent on their own research, why not support the individuals or their institutions with a (small) QR budget to engage in diffusion of best practices to support the HE sector as a whole.

Research culture funding recipients sharing key lessons

In 2023, as part of Institutional Fund for Research Culture (IFRC) the Wellcome Trust provided much-appreciated funding (up to 1 million over 2 years) to investigate specific research culture initiatives or barriers to developing more supportive and inclusive research cultures. However, this funding was only available for about a third of UK universities (see here for details). Organisations had to have held at least ten Wellcome grants in the last five years to be eligible.

Out of the 24 applications (involving a total of 26 universities) that were ultimately funded, two thirds came from Russell Group universities, with the remaining 8 coming from other research-intensive universities. All but five of these 26 universities were not yet listed as one of the seven top-5s above, thus bringing the total number of exemplar universities discussed in this white paper to over 50.

It is understandable that Wellcome – a funder for medical research – decided to limit its funding to those institutions that regularly apply for and are successful in their grant application processes. However, given how much funding was allocated, I suggest that dedicating part of the funding for sharing of key lessons and best practices would have been well spent.

Diffusion of research results to stakeholders is now an essential part of most competitive external research funding. Hence applying the same principle to research culture funding would ensure that the REF fulfils its purpose of improving research in UK Higher Education system as a whole, rather than increasing competition between universities. Note that this may well have been the intention of the Wellcome Trust [see below].

What Wellcome Trust hope to achieve with IFRC

The write-up of the results of the IFRC call includes the following text on engagement with the sector. I wrote to Wellcome early September enquiring after progress in this area, but haven’t heard back so far.

“The call has also raised several exciting social and philanthropic research questions we want to explore, evaluate, and engage the sector with. We will invite everyone who applied to join a “community of practice” (CoP) over the next two years.

Within this community, we want to examine several themes and questions, such as:

  • How do we promote collaboration, sharing and transparency of different ideas and approaches within the research culture space?
  • What does success look like for the call, and how should we evaluate this?
  • What commonalities and cross-cutting themes exist between the awarded applications?
  • What can we learn from institutions about the existential challenges of implementing culture change at scale?
  • When the funding finishes, what has worked and what hasn’t, and what, if anything, does this say about the decision-making we did and didn’t do for this scheme?
  • How can we utilise the outputs of this call to create a permanent shift in institutional research cultures for the future?”

In sum

Rather than seeing post-92 Business Schools (and other non-elite Business Schools) as “poor women’s universities” (many post-92s employ a comparatively higher proportion of female staff), that should simply focus on churning out graduates, providing them with just a bit more resources might well lead to better research performance for the entire UK HE sector in Business & Management, the discipline that employs by far the largest number of academics and teaches one in five students.

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Copyright © 2025 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Mon 8 Sep 2025 09:58

Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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