Herman Aguinis is an Argentine researcher, business professor, and author. He is the Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C., where he served as chair of the Department of Management and director of the Master of Human Resources Management Program.[1] He has been ranked among the world's top 100 most influential economics and business researchers in the world every year since 2018.[2][3][4][5] He served as president of the Academy of Management (AOM),[6] and has been inducted into The PhD Project Hall of Fame.[7] Prior to moving to Washington D.C. in 2016, he was the John F. Mee Chair of Management and the founding director of the Institute for Global Organizational Effectiveness in the Kelley School of BusinessatIndiana University.
Herman Aguinis was born in Rio Cuarto, Cordoba (Argentina).[8] He is the son of the Argentine author Marcos Aguinis and University of Buenos Aires School of Law professor Ana Maria "Marita" Aguinis (deceased).[9] He attended high school at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires[10] before receiving a Bachelor and master's degree in psychology from the University of Buenos Aires. He spent part of his high school years in New York City. Still, following his schooling in Argentina, he moved to the United States to study Industrial and Organizational Psychology, earning a Master's and then a PhD degree from the University at Albany, State University of New York in 1993.
Aguinis' research, teaching, and consulting are about acquiring and deploying talent in organizations and organizational research methods (i.e., behavioral science and data science). He has written extensively on the topics of star performance, corporate social responsibility & business sustainability, domestic and international workforce diversity, leadership, staffing, training and development, performance management, and innovative methodological approaches for developing and testing theories. His research has been featured by the media worldwide, including the Wall Street Journal,[11] and in U.S. Supreme Court cases.[12] He served as Editor-in-Chief of Organizational Research Methods (2005–2007) and has served or serves on the editorial board of 26 journals including Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology (journal), Journal of Management, and Journal of International Business Studies.[13]
Aguinis has delivered about 300 keynote addresses and presentations at professional conferences,[14] delivered about 150 invited presentations in all seven continents except for Antarctica,[15] and raised about $5MM for his research and teaching endeavors from private foundations and federal sources (e.g., National Science Foundation).[16]
Aguinis' research has placed him as one of the world's most influential and prolific contemporary management professors.[17][18][19][20][21][3][4] Every year since 2018, he has been ranked among the top-100 most impactful researchers in the world in economics and business (based on multiple articles published in the preceding decade ranked in the top 1% by citations), “demonstrating significant influence among their peers, this top 1% of the global research community represent magnets in their respective discipline.”[5] A 2023 Journal of Business Research article ranked as the #4 most dominant researcher in the area of strategic leadership from 1980 to 2020, the #4 most productive between 2011 and 2020, and the #12 most productive between 1980 and 2020 based on the Scopus database.[22] Another 2023 study ranked among the world's top 20 most impactful researchers in corporate social performance based on articles published between 1975 and 2023 in 35 journals and books in business, management, accounting, economics, econometrics, finance, and social sciences.[23] A study conducted in November 2022 involving 166,880 scientists ranked as the #38 best researcher in Business and Management in the United States and #68 in the world based on the D-index (Discipline H-index), which includes papers and citation values for an examined discipline.[24] Another article published in 2019 in Journal of Business Research article ranked him as the #1 most cited and prolific (i.e., based on h-index) researcher in the field of human resources training based on all publications between 1975 and 2016.[25] A 2019 Leadership Quarterly article as the world's #2 most influential researcher in the field of leadership based on all articles published in 10 highly prestigious academic journals between 2011 and 2017.[26] A 2017 Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education article ranked him among the top 100 most published authors in business and management education (BME) out of 7,209 unique authors who published at least one article in 17 BME journals from 2005 to 2014.[27] A 2016 Journal of Management (JOM) article published to celebrate the journal's 40th anniversary ranked him as the #5 most published author from 1975 to 2014 out of 2,270 different individuals who published at least one article each.[18] Based on Google Scholar, his work has received about 57,000 citations (h-index = 105), he is the world's #1 ranked researcher in the category "workforce diversity," #1 in “talent management,” #1 in “people analytics,” #1 in "business sustainability," and #3 in “corporate social responsibility”.[28] Based on Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics, his work has received about 21,000 citations.[29] His Performance Management for Dummies book has been recognized as one of “The 15 Best HR Books of All Time”[30] and one of “The 10 Best HR Books You Should Read in 2024”.[31] He has more than 31,000 LinkedIn followers.[32]
Losey Award by the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation for lifetime achievement in human resource research[34]
Academy of Management Research Methods Division Distinguished Career Award for lifetime contributions[35]
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Scientific Contributions Award for lifetime contributions[36]
Academy of Management Practice Theme Committee Scholar Practice Impact Award recognizing an outstanding scholar who has affected policy-making and managerial and organizational practices[37]
IACMR-Responsible Research in Management Award recognizing excellent scholarship that focuses on important issues for business and society using sound research methods with credible results[38]
Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division IDEA Thought Leader Award[39]
Academy of Management Research Methods Division Robert McDonald Advancement of Organizational Research Methodology Award
Eight best article of the year awards from the journals Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior (twice), Academy of Management Perspectives, Organizational Research Methods, Business Horizons, and Management Research.[40][41]
Herman Aguinis has published about 210 journal articles [42] and 12 books.[43] His "Performance Management for Dummies" book has been recognized as one of “The 15 Best HR Books of All Time” [44]
Aguinis, H. 2025. Research methodology: Best practices for rigorous, credible, and impactful research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. ISBN978-1071871942.
Aguinis, H. 2019. Performance management for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN978-1119557654.
Aguinis, H. 2023. Performance management (5th ed.). Chicago, IL: Chicago Business Press. ISBN978-1-948426-48-0.
Cascio, W.F., & Aguinis, H. 2019. Applied psychology in talent management (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. ISBN9781506375915.
Aguinis, H. 2004. Regression analysis for categorical moderators. New York, NY: Guilford. ISBN1572309695.
Baruch, Y., Konrad, A.M., Aguinis, H., & Starbuck, W.H. (Eds.). 2008. Opening the black box of editorship. New York, NY: Palgrave-Macmillan. ISBN0230013600.
Aguinis, H. (Ed.). 2004. Test-score banding in human resource selection: Legal, technical, and societal issues. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN1567205208.
Aguinis, Herman; Ramani, Ravi S.; Alabduljader, Nawaf (January 2018). "What You See Is What You Get? Enhancing Methodological Transparency in Management Research". Academy of Management Annals. 12 (1): 83–110. doi:10.5465/annals.2016.0011.
Aguinis, Herman; O'Boyle, Ernest (June 2014). "Star Performers in Twenty-First Century Organizations". Personnel Psychology. 67 (2): 313–350. doi:10.1111/peps.12054.
Aguinis, Herman; Joo, Harry; Gottfredson, Ryan K. (November 2011). "Why we hate performance management—And why we should love it". Business Horizons. 54 (6): 503–507. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2011.06.001.
^Podsakoff, Philip M.; MacKenzie, Scott B.; Podsakoff, Nathan P.; Bachrach, Daniel G. (30 January 2008). "Scholarly Influence in the Field of Management: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Determinants of University and Author Impact in the Management Literature in the Past Quarter Century". Journal of Management. 34 (4): 641–720. doi:10.1177/0149206308319533. S2CID143858009.
^Aguinis, Herman; Suárez-González, Isabel; Lannelongue, Gustavo; Joo, Harry (May 2012). "Scholarly Impact Revisited". Academy of Management Perspectives. 26 (2): 105–132. doi:10.5465/amp.2011.0088.
^Aguinis, Herman; Ramani, Ravi S.; Campbell, P. Knight; Bernal-Turnes, Paloma; Drewry, Josiah M.; Edgerton, Brett T. (30 October 2017). "Most Frequently Cited Sources, Articles, and Authors in Industrial-Organizational Psychology Textbooks: Implications for the Science–Practice Divide, Scholarly Impact, and the Future of the Field". Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 10 (4): 507–557. doi:10.1017/iop.2017.69. S2CID148860324.
^Arbaugh, J. B.; Asarta, Carlos J.; Hwang, Alvin; Fornaciari, Charles J.; Bento, Regina F.; Dean, Kathy Lund (July 2017). "Key Authors in Business and Management Education Research: Productivity, Topics, and Future Directions". Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education. 15 (3): 268–302. doi:10.1111/dsji.12131.
