Increasing pressures on and incentives for business school (B-school) researchers to publish in “A-journals” have led to qualms about an oligopoly wherein only a few institutions account for the majority of publications, thereby decreasing the diversity and impact of B-school research. We construct distinct measures to capture two different aspects of the presence and degree to which seven disciplines in the B-school (i.e., Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, Management, Marketing, Operations Management, and Organizational Studies) are oligopolized. We then empirically examine these concerns using 33 years of publication data (i.e., 1990-2022) for 45,340 articles drawn from 24 business A-journals across the seven disciplines. Overall, we find reasons for cautious optimism as our results show that B-school research is progressively becoming less oligopolized, with an average increase of 43% over 33 years across all disciplines. Furthermore, not only are researchers from a larger number of schools publishing in A-journals, but also the ability of researchers from a few B-schools to dominate the scholarly conversation within a discipline is decreasing. We discuss the implications of the declining oligopolies in business school research for researcher careers, doctoral education, and the administration and future of business schools and the field.
