Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Business,

#251

Raghavendra Rau

#27369

Overall Influence

Raghavendra Rau holds the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professorship of Finance at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge and the Mercer’s School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College. He is a founding director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

#252

Linda Smircich

#41916

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Linda Smircich is a Professor of Management in the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst where she teaches Organizational Alternative Paradigms. She is part of the critical management studies approach field and a critical researcher in organizational culture and gender.

#253

Leigh McAlister

#50069

Overall Influence

Leigh McAlister is a professor of business marketing at The University of Texas at Austin and is an Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. She is known for her work on retailing, consumer behaviour and variety seeking buying behavior.

#254

T. Marshall Hahn

#8238

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Thomas Marshall Hahn Jr. was an American educator. He served as President of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from 1962 to 1974 and CEO of Georgia-Pacific Corporation from 1983 to 1993.

#255

Söhnke M. Bartram

#35610

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Söhnke Matthias Bartram is a professor in the Department of Finance at Warwick Business School . He is also a research fellow in the Financial Economics programme and the International Macroeconomics and Finance programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research , a charter member of Risk Who's Who, and a member of an international think tank for policy advice to the German government. Prior to joining the University of Warwick, he held faculty positions at Lancaster University and Maastricht University and worked for several years in quantitative investment management at State Street Global...

#256

Neal Ashkanasy

#34574

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Neal M. Ashkanasy is an Australian academic best known for his work on emotions in the workplace. He was honored for his "service to tertiary education, to psychology and to the community." He began his career as a civil engineer but is now a Professor of Management at the University of Queensland Business School.

#257

Stewart D. Friedman

#43934

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Stewart D. Friedman is a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program and Wharton's Work/Life Integration Project. He has been on the Wharton faculty since 1984 and became the Management Department's first Practice Professor in recognition of his work within the fields of Leadership Development, Human Resources and Work–Life Integration on the application theory and research on the real challenges facing organizations. In 2001, Friedman completed a two-year assignment as the director of the Leadership ...

#258

Alex Malley

#56296

Overall Influence

Alex Malley, is an Australian accountant and business executive who is currently the CEO of the Australian Chiropractors Association since 2022, and the former chief executive of CPA Australia from 2009 to 2017. He was removed by the CPA board of directors in late June 2017 after months of controversy regarding his salary and the use of CPA funds for self-promotion of his book and TV program.

#259

William Beauchamp

#46596

Overall Influence

Rev. E. William Beauchamp, CSC, J.D., was named the University of Portland's 19th president by the Board of Regents on November 20, 2003. He served in that capacity until 2012, at which time he began service for the provincial administration of the Congregation of Holy Cross.

#260

Tom Ruegger

#5933

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Tom Ruegger is an American animator and songwriter. Ruegger is known for his association with Disney Television Animation and Warner Bros. Animation. He also created Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Histeria!.

#261

Joel S. Demski

#37395

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Joel S. Demski is an American accounting researcher and educator, and Frederick E. Fisher Eminent Scholar at University of Florida, inducted to the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2000. Life and work Born in Sturgis, Michigan to George and Athalia Demski, Demski moved with his family to Pinconning, Michigan, where he grew up and his father had his own machine shop. He received a BSE in industrial engineering in 1962 from the University of Michigan, and MBA degree with high distinction in 1963. In this MBA program he encountered William A. Paton and took courses from Stephen A. Zeff and Samuel R. Hepworth.

#262

Michael Ahearne

Michael Ahearne

#53885

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Michael Ahearne is Professor and C.T. Bauer Chair in Marketing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston. He is also the Research Director of the Sales Excellence Institute. He is an associate editor at several journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Service Research. He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.

#263

Ulrike Schaede

#44530

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. She is a leading scholar of Japanese business, management, and the Japanese economy, and specializes in Japanese business organization, employment practices and management strategies, Japan's industrial groups and political economy, antitrust, financial system and corporate governance, entrepreneurship and innovation. She is the Founding Director of the Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology and head of the International Management track at GPS. She has written seven books and over 50 articles on Japanese corporate strategy, business and management.

#264

Francisco Veloso

#44781

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Francisco Veloso is a Portuguese academic. He is the dean of INSEAD and the former dean of the Imperial College Business School. Early life and education Francisco Veloso was born in 1969 in Lisbon, Portugal. He graduated from the University of Lisbon, where he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. In 2001, he earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#265

William N. Goetzmann

#23617

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

William N. Goetzmann is the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies at the Yale School of Management, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2018, he received the James R. Vertin Award by the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute Research Foundation "for a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals".

#266

Andrew Hoffman

#30151

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Andrew J. Hoffman is a scholar of environmental issues and sustainable enterprise. He is the Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and School for Environment and Sustainability . His research uses a sociological perspective to understand the cultural and institutional aspects of environmental issues for organizations. In particular, he focuses on the processes by which environmental issues both emerge and evolve as social, political and managerial issues. He has written extensively about: the evolving nature of field level pressur...

#267

Myles Brand

#10125

Overall Influence

1942 - 2009 (67 years)

Myles Neal Brand was a philosopher and university administrator who served as the 14th president of the University of Oregon, the 16th president of Indiana University, and the fourth president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association of the United States.

#268

Andrew Hargadon

#30162

Overall Influence

Professor Andrew Hargadon is the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship and a professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management, University Of California, Davis. Professor Hargadon is the founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Energy Efficiency Center at UC Davis. His research focuses on the effective management of innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in the development and commercialization of sustainable technologies. Professor Hargadon is the author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, w...

#269

Peter Pronovost

Peter Pronovost

#15162

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Peter J. Pronovost is Chief Quality and Transformation Officer at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, the main affiliate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. At UH, Pronovost is responsible for improving value across the health system, helping people stay well, get well and manage their most acute medical conditions. He is the clinical lead for population health and the lead for high-reliability medicine, with direct responsibility for the UH employee accountable care organization. He is also responsible for telehealth and virtual health programs serving patie...

#270

Stephen R. Barley

#29991

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Stephen R. Barley is an American organizational theorist and Christian A. Felipe Professor of Technology Management at the College of Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. Previously he was The Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Barley's research focuses on the role of technology in organizational change and organizational/occupational culture.

#271

Mark S. Joshi

#28263

Overall Influence

1969 - 2017 (48 years)

Mark Suresh Joshi was British researcher and consultant in mathematical finance. His last position was a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia. His research focused on derivatives pricing and interest rate derivatives in particular. He was the author of numerous research articles and seven books; his popular guides, "On becoming a quant" and "How to Get a Quant Job in Finance", are widely read.

#272

Steen Hildebrandt

#51433

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Steen Hildebrandt is a Danish academic and author on business, organizational theory and management. He is Professor Emeritus of Management Studies at Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus and an associated professor at Copenhagen Business School.

#273

Stefan Thomke

#60242

Overall Influence

Stefan Thomke is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Thomke joined the technology and operations management division at Harvard Business School in 1995, on completion of his doctoral studies at MIT. Thomke's research is focused on the process, economics, and management of experimentation and testing in the context of innovation management.

#274

Teppo Felin

#25876

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Teppo Felin is the Douglas D. Anderson Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He is also the Founding Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Study. From 2013 to 2021, Felin was Professor of Strategy at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on cognition, rationality, perception, organizational economics, markets and strategy.

#275

James Herriot

#12074

Overall Influence

1916 - 1995 (79 years)

James Alfred Wight , better known by his pen name James Herriot, was a British veterinary surgeon and author. Born in Sunderland, Wight graduated from Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939, returning to England to become a veterinary surgeon in Yorkshire, where he practised for almost 50 years. He is best known for writing a series of eight books set in the 1930s–1950s Yorkshire Dales about veterinary practice, animals, and their owners, which began with If Only They Could Talk, first published in 1970. Over the decades, the series of books has sold some 60 million copies.

#276

Yadong Luo

#41436

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Yadong Luo is the Emery M. Findley distinguished chair and professor of management at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Luo is a fellow of the Academy of Management and a fellow of Academy of International Business. He has written over 20 books and over 200 research articles , dealing with topics from global strategy and cooperative alliances to cross-cultural management and emerging market businesses. He has contributed to a long range of business and management issues, including developing such theories as the springboard theory, composition-based view, global co-opetition, and others.

#277

Ali Akdemir

#41322

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Ali Akdemir is a Turkish University Professor for Management and former Rector of the Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University . He is the former Dean of the Biga Faculty Of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University . His main research area is on management and leadership issues, has some several articles and presentations.

#278

Mrityunjay Athreya

#49213

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Mrityunjay Athreya is an Indian author, educationist and management advisor, widely regarded as one of the founders and pioneers of Indian Management movement and education. A former professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, the London Business School and the Strathclyde Business School, Scotland, and a known speaker at various international forums, he is the founder of Sampradaan Indian Centre for Philanthropy, a non-profit non governmental organization, serving as a platform for charity initiatives by high-net-worth individuals. The Government of India honored him, in 2014, ...

#279

Leonard Schlesinger

Leonard Schlesinger

#46722

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Leonard A. Schlesinger is an American author, educator, and business leader. He is currently the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and President Emeritus of Babson College where he served as the college's 12th President from 2008 through 2013.

#280

Haridimos Tsoukas

#29835

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Haridimos "Hari" Tsoukas is a Greek theorist on organization and leadership. Tsoukas currently is The Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Cyprus, and Distinguished Research Environment Professor of Organization Studies at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Editor-in-chief of Organization Studies, a major management journal. He has conducted pioneering research in the fields of knowledge-based perspectives on organizations, the epistemology of practice, epistemological issues in organization theory, an...

#281

Nancy J. Adler

#47784

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Nancy J. Adler is professor of Organizational Behavior and Samuel Bronfman Chair in Management at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Early life and education Originally from the Inglewood, California, United States, she completed her undergraduate and graduate studies entirely at the University of California, Los Angeles , beginning with a Bachelor of Arts in economics, followed by a Master of Business Administration, and finally with a Doctor of Philosophy specializing in management.

#282

Eitan Muller

#46747

Overall Influence

Eitan Muller is an Israeli professor of marketing at Stern School of Business at New York University and Arison School of Business at Reichman University. Muller's research focuses on diffusion of innovation, new products and tech, and monetization and pricing.

#283

Rajiv Banker

#60237

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Rajiv D. Banker was an accounting researcher and educator, recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the 150 most influential researchers in economics and business. He was the Director of the Center for Accounting and Information Technology at the Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University. He was also President of the International Data Envelopment Analysis Society and Editor-in-Chief of the Data Envelopment Analysis Journal.

#284

Katherine Schipper

#55547

Overall Influence

Katherine Schipper is an American accounting researcher and educator. Currently the Thomas F. Keller professor of accounting at Duke University, she has also been a professor at University of Chicago and Carnegie-Mellon University. She is a past president of the American Accounting Association. Also, she has taught the MBA programs at University of Frankfurt's Goethe Business School.

#285

Yoshiko Shirata

Yoshiko Shirata

#47657

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

"Cindy" Yoshiko Shirata is a Japanese accounting scholar who specialized in corporate bankruptcy prediction. She is best known for her SAF2002 bankruptcy prediction model. Her bankruptcy prediction model has been used by major banks and rating companies in Japan. She is considered one of the most well-known experts to develop bankruptcy prediction models in Japan.

#286

Franco Bernabè

#20155

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Franco Bernabè is an Italian banker and manager, formerly the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Telecom Italia, appointed on 3 December 2007. Early life Bernabè was born at Vipiteno/Sterzing . He graduated in 1973 from the University of Turin and worked as a post-graduate fellow in economics at the Einaudi Foundation from 1973 to 1975. He is the author of several publications in economics and has received an honorary doctorate degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Parma.

#287

Robert Litzenberger

#30318

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Robert Litzenberger is Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is best known for establishing the use of state prices in financial economics. Biography Litzenberger studied at Wagner College before going on to earn an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and receiving his PhD from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill three years later in 1969.

#288

Dawn Iacobucci

#51554

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Dawn Iacobucci is an American quantitative psychologist and marketing researcher, Professor in Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management, known for her work in the field of foundations of marketing research.

#289

Rhenald Kasali

#49212

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Rhenald Kasali is an academic and businessman from Indonesia. He is a Management Science professor at the Faculty of Economics, Universitas Indonesia. Kasali was confirmed as a professor on July 4, 2009.

#290

Georges Romme

#40275

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Sjoerd Abel Georges Lodewijk Romme is a Dutch organizational theorist and professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography Georges Romme received a MSc in economics from Tilburg University and in 1992 a PhD degree in business administration from Maastricht University. Since 2005, he is professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology , and since 2007 also dean of the Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences department.

#291

Karl H. Vesper

#45932

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Karl Hampton Vesper is an American scholar and professor emeritus of management, mechanical engineering and marine studies at the University of Washington . Vesper is known as a pioneer in the field of entrepreneurship research and education. He has launched several entrepreneurship courses and programs, and he has been involved in organizing some of the first conferences on entrepreneurship in the US.

#292

Baba Shiv

#29971

Overall Influence

Baba Shiv grew up in India and is an American marketing professor and an expert in the area of neuroeconomics. He is the Sanwa Bank, Limited, Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. His work has been featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CNN, Fox Business, Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Shiv received his PhD from Duke University.

#293

Ken McKinnon

#31786

Overall Influence

Kenneth Richard McKinnon was the second vice-chancellor of the University of Wollongong between 1981 and 1994. He also served as interim vice-chancellor of James Cook University in 1997 and Charles Darwin University from 2002 to 2003, where he was responsible for the name change from Northern Territory University. The main Law building and co-purpose lecture theatre at the University of Wollongong is named in honour of his contribution during this time.

#294

Nicholas O'Shaughnessy

#45973

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy is a British academic. He is professor of communications and of post-Cold War German history at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a Quondam Fellow of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge and has previously been a professor at Keele University and Brunel University. He is considered an expert on political propaganda, particularly Nazi propaganda.

#295

Børge Obel

#51913

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Børge Obel is a Danish organizational theorist, Professor at European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels, Belgium, and Professor at the Interdisciplinary Center for Organizational Architecture at Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University.

#296

Angappa Gunasekaran

#70693

Overall Influence

#297

David B. Yoffie

#49733

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

David B. Yoffie is the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration at Harvard Business School . Education and career Yoffie received his bachelor's degree pa from Brandeis University and his Master's and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford, where he taught for two years, and spent more than three years as a visiting scholar between 1995 and 2020. Over the last two decades, he has chaired the Harvard Business School's Strategy department, Harvard's Advanced Management Program, Harvard's Young Presidents' Organization program, Harvard's World President's Organization, Harvard's YPO Gold program, as well as several other executive programs.

#298

Pankaj Ghemawat

Pankaj Ghemawat

#28269

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Pankaj Ghemawat is an Indian-American economist, professor, global strategist, speaker and author known for his work in the study of globalization. He created the DHL Global Connectedness Index and the CAGE Distance Framework.

#299

Thomas S. Robertson

#57190

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Thomas S. Robertson is a Scottish-born American academic. He is the Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was also the dean from 2007 to 2014. Early life Thomas S. Robertson was born in Scotland. He graduated from the Wayne State University, earned a master of arts degree in sociology and a PhD from its Kellogg School of Management.

#300

Arne Nygaard

#56264

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Arne Nygaard is a Norwegian organizational theorist best known for his work with Robert Dahlstrom on transaction costs in franchising. Biography Nygaard obtained his Master of Business and Economics at the BI Norwegian Business School in 1982, his Master of Science at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, where he also obtained his PhD in 1992.

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