Today the British government published the results of its Research Excellent Framework, which is used every five years to decide some of the state funding directed at business schools. 101 schools are ranked by the power and quality of their research outlook. It is certainly not a guide to MBA quality, but it's a good sign of schools that will have more resources in the years ahead.

Below are the top schools, ranked by research power. I've put a * after the 15 schools producing the most research at the highest level, 4*.

Institution Research power
Lancaster 387 *
Manchester 373 *
Warwick 329 *
London 325 *
LSE 279 *
Nottingham 260 *
City 253 *
Cardiff 238 *
Strathclyde 233 *
Leeds 233 *
Bath 208 *
Imperial 197 *
Loughborough 180
Newcastle 164
Leicester 159
Edinburgh 157 *
Belfast 156
Brunel 154
Birmingham 151
Essex 144
Aston 142
Oxford 141 *
Exeter 140
Durham 137
Cambridge 134 *
Liverpool 132
Stirling 127
Sussex 126
Reading 124
Cranfield 124
Holloway 124

It is possible to 'game' these rankings a little. It's notable that some schools have entered smaller numbers of academics (Cambridge, Henley, Cranfield) and that could be a sign they have cherry picked the most powerful. Most of the schools are producing more than 25% of their research at the highest quality: Brunel and Leicester are notable for producing less than 15% of their research at that high quality.

[Edited by Duncan on Dec 19, 2014]

Thank you for the post, Duncan. The picture is also subject to some changes when we examine the rankings considering all the three components together (Research output, impact & environment). A GPA calculated over these is given by THE (Times Higher Education), accessible via the link below.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/ref-2014-results-by-subject/2017594.article

There, for example, continuing from your points on Brunel and Leicester, what I spot at a first glance is these two schools from the list above seem to have fallen behind some others that are not in the list like Bradford, Kingston and Middlesex, which rank 44, 47 and 51 respectively.

I like rankings, and playing with them, too. However, the interpretation might be subject to changes, normally, according to one's point of view and relative weights on the components.

Those are excellent points, and helpful ones too. Indeed, one can use any measure you prefer, but GPA is the worst since that looks at impact per submitted academic. That's the easiest measure to distort by only submitting high impact professors. So that's why, perhaps, Brunel and Leicester are lower down when that advantage is taken away. Here's a great picture showing raw volume: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hh31monccqe06hw/Screenshot%202014-12-18%2018.08.30.png?dl=0 This chart ranks the schools by the volume of 4* research. There Brunel and Leicester are, respectively, at 37th and 33rd place: certainly not terrible but you can see that their advantage is really the volume of medium-quality research rather than the ability to really develop thought leadership on a par with the top 15 or 20 schools.