The Changing Roles and Responsibilities of Company Boards and Directors. This research project will examine the changing roles and responsibilities of company boards and directors, in the wake of CLERP 9, the new ASX corporate governance principles, and other recent best-practice guidelines in Australia. These guidelines themselves stemmed from widespread government, investor and public concerns regarding standards of accountability, disclosure and performance. There will be three levels of anal ....The Changing Roles and Responsibilities of Company Boards and Directors. This research project will examine the changing roles and responsibilities of company boards and directors, in the wake of CLERP 9, the new ASX corporate governance principles, and other recent best-practice guidelines in Australia. These guidelines themselves stemmed from widespread government, investor and public concerns regarding standards of accountability, disclosure and performance. There will be three levels of analysis firstly changes in values and beliefs among company boards and directors regarding corporate governance; secondly changes in structures and procedures; and finally changes in practices and behaviour. This will enable comparison with the adoption of corporate governance reforms internationally.Read moreRead less
Extending Leadership and Learning: Improving the effectiveness of new learning technology for culture change and improved regional business performance. This research project explores the complex relationships between new technology and learning, and the subsequent impact on organisational change and business effectiveness. The study will examine the use of video-conferencing and on-line training packages in the regional locations of a major bank, in order to determine more effective configurati ....Extending Leadership and Learning: Improving the effectiveness of new learning technology for culture change and improved regional business performance. This research project explores the complex relationships between new technology and learning, and the subsequent impact on organisational change and business effectiveness. The study will examine the use of video-conferencing and on-line training packages in the regional locations of a major bank, in order to determine more effective configurations of learning architecture that support organisational culture change and impact on business performance. The organisation has a strategic commitment to cultural change towards leadership and learning. This research intends to examine how new learning technologies can more effectively impact on achieving such cultural change and improved regional equity.Read moreRead less
Innovation in Australian mid-market firms: The critical role of leader cognition. The innovation literature has focused on innovation in large corporations and small entrepreneurial firms, ignoring medium-sized firms. With a rare opportunity to work with a partner organisation on a range of mid-market firms, the project aims to focus on the unique theoretical aspects of innovation in medium-sized firms. The project’s investigation addresses critical gaps in the innovation strategy literature and ....Innovation in Australian mid-market firms: The critical role of leader cognition. The innovation literature has focused on innovation in large corporations and small entrepreneurial firms, ignoring medium-sized firms. With a rare opportunity to work with a partner organisation on a range of mid-market firms, the project aims to focus on the unique theoretical aspects of innovation in medium-sized firms. The project’s investigation addresses critical gaps in the innovation strategy literature and contributes to a nascent literature on the microfoundations of organisational outcomes. Specifically, the project focuses on how leader cognitions drive the intensity and type of innovation and influence the performance consequences of innovation. The project also aims to provide practical prescriptions to medium-sized firms in Australia.Read moreRead less
Scenario driven management in a network environment. Scenario planning is the process of identifying plausible futures and their inherent risks. The organisation, the network within which it is embedded, and the environment in which the network operates, form a complex system of non-linear, dynamic, interrelationships. This project will develop a continuous process of scenario planning, capturing learning about the future as it emerges. The project fuses the use of agents for intelligent data co ....Scenario driven management in a network environment. Scenario planning is the process of identifying plausible futures and their inherent risks. The organisation, the network within which it is embedded, and the environment in which the network operates, form a complex system of non-linear, dynamic, interrelationships. This project will develop a continuous process of scenario planning, capturing learning about the future as it emerges. The project fuses the use of agents for intelligent data collection and negotiation with agent-based modelling to build powerful network-based scenario modelling systems for commercial applications. This outcome will place Australia on the frontier of smart information use.Read moreRead less
Developing Indigenous Entrepreneurship Frameworks: An Exploration of Sustainable Indigenous Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Frameworks within the Noongar Community of Western Australia. This study will investigate the effectiveness and sustainability of frameworks of indigenous enterprise and entrepreneurship within the Noongar Community of Western Australia with the primary aim of identifying appropriate models for adoption by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC), and the Gov ....Developing Indigenous Entrepreneurship Frameworks: An Exploration of Sustainable Indigenous Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Frameworks within the Noongar Community of Western Australia. This study will investigate the effectiveness and sustainability of frameworks of indigenous enterprise and entrepreneurship within the Noongar Community of Western Australia with the primary aim of identifying appropriate models for adoption by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC), and the Government of Western Australia.Read moreRead less
Work related road safety countermeasures in a large fleet (QFleet). Despite accounting for more than 20% of the road crashes, relatively little research has been conducted on fleet safety in Australia. This research will develop guidelines for current best practice and design, implement and evaluate several new countermeasures. More importantly, it will develop a comprehensive model for future design, implementation and evaluation of fleet safety that will extend the frontier of knowledge in cra ....Work related road safety countermeasures in a large fleet (QFleet). Despite accounting for more than 20% of the road crashes, relatively little research has been conducted on fleet safety in Australia. This research will develop guidelines for current best practice and design, implement and evaluate several new countermeasures. More importantly, it will develop a comprehensive model for future design, implementation and evaluation of fleet safety that will extend the frontier of knowledge in crash analysis and prevention. By working closely with QFleet, current fleet safety thinking will be advanced to reduce the frequency and severity of road crashes thereby reducing road trauma and increasing business effectiveness.Read moreRead less
Knowledge sharing in teams. There is considerable interest in understanding principles governing effective management and sharing of knowledge in organisations. Members of organisations acquire much knowledge from external sources, other staff, practice, and experience, which, if shared efficiently, makes a significant difference to performance. This project focuses on the team, the basic unit in modern organisations. Four studies are proposed to examine antecedents of knowledge sharing, the re ....Knowledge sharing in teams. There is considerable interest in understanding principles governing effective management and sharing of knowledge in organisations. Members of organisations acquire much knowledge from external sources, other staff, practice, and experience, which, if shared efficiently, makes a significant difference to performance. This project focuses on the team, the basic unit in modern organisations. Four studies are proposed to examine antecedents of knowledge sharing, the relationship between amount and type of knowledge shared and team performance, identification of different knowledge-sharing roles taken by team members, and the effect of several highly active knowledge sharers on team performance. The findings will add to the literature on communication and information exchange in organisations, and will point to strategies for implementing effective knowledge sharing practices.
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Organizational Innovation Adoption: The Effect of External, Technology Diffusion Agencies. Organizational innovation is imperative in maintaining international competitiveness, but less than one quarter of Australian manufacturing companies adopt innovations. While previous studies have identified a large number of organisational factors affecting adoption decisions, little research has examined the effect of external, technology diffusion agencies. Our proposed research uses advanced statistica ....Organizational Innovation Adoption: The Effect of External, Technology Diffusion Agencies. Organizational innovation is imperative in maintaining international competitiveness, but less than one quarter of Australian manufacturing companies adopt innovations. While previous studies have identified a large number of organisational factors affecting adoption decisions, little research has examined the effect of external, technology diffusion agencies. Our proposed research uses advanced statistical modelling and qualitative methods to study the interaction between organisational factors and external agencies in the adoption process. Our aim is to understand how external agencies and policy information is used in the adoption process in order to identify good practices for these agencies.Read moreRead less
Outsourcing - Leveraging productivity improvements and better performance from new approaches. Through exploring customer expectations, reasons for outsourcing, and the results obtained, this research will discover those success factors that contribute to positive outsourcing outcomes for key stakeholders, such as the labour force, the outsourcing company and the customer. It will develop models to leverage current performance and use the resulting knowledge to improve Australia's performance in ....Outsourcing - Leveraging productivity improvements and better performance from new approaches. Through exploring customer expectations, reasons for outsourcing, and the results obtained, this research will discover those success factors that contribute to positive outsourcing outcomes for key stakeholders, such as the labour force, the outsourcing company and the customer. It will develop models to leverage current performance and use the resulting knowledge to improve Australia's performance in outsourcing sectors such as Business Processes and IT. The project will lead to a robust, long-term relationship between industry and academia to produce industry relevant, theoretically sound research.Read moreRead less
Learning Mechanisms and the Development of Dynamic Capabilities within Firms. The project has the following national/community benefits: (1) a more comprehensive study of the specific and unique features of the structure and innovative process operating within a major Australian producer of commodities, (2) a greater understanding of how knowledge can be created and captured in the form of firm-level dynamic capabilities, contributing towards the creation of an effective knowledge and innovation ....Learning Mechanisms and the Development of Dynamic Capabilities within Firms. The project has the following national/community benefits: (1) a more comprehensive study of the specific and unique features of the structure and innovative process operating within a major Australian producer of commodities, (2) a greater understanding of how knowledge can be created and captured in the form of firm-level dynamic capabilities, contributing towards the creation of an effective knowledge and innovation economy, and (3) assisting regional communities by providing specific recommendations for generating learning mechanisms and more importantly, capturing value from learning in terms of process improvement and innovation.Read moreRead less