The Department of Business Administration was reestablished in 1980, with Professor Chen Bingfu, a well-known management scientist, serving as the first department head. The department started to recruit undergraduates in 1981, and in the same year offered the master degree program. In 2005, the Ministry of Education identified the undergraduate program of Business Administration as the key professional development program and selected it as one of the first batch of The Second Type of Featured Program Construction Sites in Business Administration in China.

Faculties in the Department of Business Administration have published more than 100 papers on high-level journals both at home and abroad, and some of them were included in the SCI, SSCI and EI. Besides, they have presided over 100 research projects sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Social Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education and Tianjin Government. Among them are a key research project of National Natural Science Foundation of China, titled Research on Mechanism and Growth Mode of New Enterprise, and some major research projects funded by the Ministry of Education.

Faculties in the department have also won many prizes, such as the Outstanding Achievements Prize on Humanities and Social Sciences among Chinese Universities, IPMA International Research Annual Prize on Project Management, and the First Prize of Outstanding Achievements on Social Sciences in Tianjin.