UQ’s strengths in this area span FoR codes 1501 Accounting, 1502 Finance, 1503
Business and Management, 1505 Marketing and 1506 Tourism. Of the 210 staff
contributing to FoR15, >50% are employed in the UQ Business School. Other
researchers are from the Schools of Psychology (organisational behaviour) and
Tourism (accounting for about half of FoR1506).
Central to the research performance of FoR15 is the UQ Business School (UQBS),
founded in 2002 by merging the Schools of Commerce and Management. Today, it is
one of the largest Business Schools in Australia, and attracts high-quality research
staff, competitive ARC and industry funds, and postgraduate research students from
throughout Australia and internationally. The School has 125 full time academic staff
and 81 RHD students. Its research capacity has been further enhanced from 2009 with
the Professorial appointments of Faff and Watson (Finance), Hartel (Management)
and Hodgson (Accounting). These appointments add to a long line of high quality
researchers who have worked in UQ business in the past, such as Bob Officer
(Melbourne), Ray Ball (Chicago), Frank Finn (UQ), Ron Weber (Monash) and Ian
Zimmer (UQ).
UQ’s FoR15 researchers have made distinctive contributions through large-scale
applied research programs into complex and often intractable business-related issues;
several long-term and strategically focused research programs have attracted
considerable ARC, industry and UQ funding. Prominent are projects into improved
investment, risk and financial management strategies (Brailsford, P and S Gray,
Alcock), better management of environmental and tourism assets (Ballantyne, Getz,
Tisdell), building better workplace cultures by managing conflict, emotions and work
stress more effectively (Ashkanasy, Callan), identity and organisational commitment
(Alvesson, Sandberg, Paulsen), and increased disclosure and reduced fraud through
developments in accounting and IT (Adams, Clarkson, Green). Each of these research
foci supports honours, RHDs, postdoctoral students and ECRs.
FoR15 researchers have won ~$5 m in total research funding during the audit period,
with the vast majority being competitive ARC funding. During the audit period, staff
have been involved in 35 ARC grants, including significant applied research projects
in partnership with BHPBilliton, Rio Tinto, CSIRO, Qantas, CPA Australia, the
Accounting and Finance Association of Australia, Queensland Health and others. The
establishment of the UQBS Commercial and Corporate Education arms has
accelerated the number of industry partnerships.
Honours and PhD programs attract high quality students with 75 RHD completions
2003 - 8. In the audit period, 5 students won the UQ Dean’s Award for Outstanding
PhD theses. UQ honours graduates from the Business School have been accepted into
PhD programs worldwide including Chicago, INSEAD, Duke, Stanford and
Rochester. A number hold senior appointments at top universities - Leftwich
(Chicago), Kleidon (Stanford), Grundy (Wharton), Smith (Duke), Lynch (NYU),
Penman (Columbia), and Marsh (Berkeley).
Accounting (1501) and Finance (1502) at UQ have traditionally been closely aligned.
UQ Accounting research has built a reputation around high quality studies of the
accounting policy choices of firms, the nature of financial reports and the effects of
financial information on firm valuations. This work contributes to UQ’s core focus on
improved investment, risk and improved financial management. There is a Peter
Brownell Awards (Wyatt) for best article in the journal Accounting and Finance.
During this period, Zimmer was elected to ASSA for his international contributions to
accounting research.
Finance has a critical mass of researchers whose applied research programs are
supported by 7 ARC grants and industry funds. Researchers contribute across the
spectrum of modern finance, including studies into the cost of capital, asset pricing
models, funds management, and risk modelling and management. The group has 41%
of its papers in A*/A journals. Total research income is ~$1.1 million. Highly-cited
and influential papers include S Gray’s 1996 model on short-term interest rates and
Adams’ article on the theory of friendly boards with 700 and 300 Google Scholar
citations, respectively.
Awards to UQ Finance researchers include the 2003 All Star Paper Award in Journal
of Financial Economics; the 2005 Yetton Best Paper Award for Australian Journal of
Management; Best Derivatives Paper 2007 at the Banking and Finance conference;
and the SIRCA Special Award for contributions to financial markets. Editorship of
Accounting and Finance has been held by various UQ Finance Professors (Finn). In
2003, Brailsford won the Prime Minister's Centenary Medal of Australia for services
to the finance discipline.
Almost half of FoR15’s output is in FoR1503, driven by conceptual and applied
research programs into workplace culture, identity management and organisational
theory. 42% of papers are in A*/A journals. Its members held 21 ACG grants, of
which 18 were ARC grants, many with high profile Australian firms. Total funding
was ~$1.7 m. There was also an ARC LIEF grant, unusual in this area (Graham,
Rooney, Gallois et al., $312K from ARC of a total $742.5K) in 2003. Highly
influential contributions include books and papers by Alvesson (eg. Reflexive
methodologies, 1400 citations) and Hogg (Social identity theory of leadership, 300
citations). Google Scholar counts >15,000 citations in total for Alvesson, and
Alvesson and Hogg have highly cited papers in the A* Academy of Management
Review. Ashkanasy, Dodgson, Callan, and Sandberg have each attracted >3,000
Google Scholar citations.
Researchers (Ashkanasy, Alvesson, Hayward, Sandberg, Westwood, Zammuto) hold
editorial positions on A* journals including Academy of Management Learning and
Education, Journal of International Business Studies, Organisation Science,
Organisation Studies, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management
Studies, Organizational Research Methods and Journal of Organisational Behaviour
(Ashkanasy, Editor in Chief). Liesch is Senior Editor of Journal of World Business
(A), and there are 14 other Editorial Board memberships in B and other journals.
Awards include four US Academy of Management Best Papers and ANZAM Best
Papers 2005, 2006 and 2008. UQ FoR15 staff have had the largest number of papers
accepted from a non-US university to the prestigious US Academy of Management.
Further recognition of international impact includes European Academy of
Management’s 2005 Management Book of the Future Award for Dodgson’s book
Think, Play, Do, and his 2007 Eureka Prize for Innovation; Dodgson’s and Callan’s
Fellowships of ASSA; Ashkanasy’s Society for Industrial & Organisational
Psychology Fellowship (US) is an Australian first; Green is a Fellow of the Australian
Computer Society; Wiltshire was awarded an Order of Australia for contributions to
the Australian public sector and UNESCO.
Despite its smaller size, Marketing (1505) has established an international reputation
in services research, service breakdown and customer rage. McColl-Kennedy’s work
on services organisations, together with her Australian (UWA, UNSW) and overseas
contributors (Indiana), has won 4 ARC grants since 2004, and provided insights into
the best customer-focused strategies to advantage organisational
performance.Weerawardena and Sullivan Mort’s 2006 paper on social
entrepreneurship is listed among the Top 10 cited articles published in Journal of
World Business in the last 5 years; Albert was the 2007 Winner of the "Highly
Commended" Emerald Journal Literati Awards.
Best Paper Awards include 2003 European Marketing Conference Winner; 2004
American Marketing Association’s Summer Educators’ Conference; EFMD
Outstanding Doctoral Research Award 2005; ANZMAC 2008; and Best Paper in
2008 Marketing Intelligence and Planning. Editorial roles include the Associate
Editor of the Australasian Marketing Journal McColl-Kennedy) and editorial boards
of Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Journal of Public Sector and Voluntary Sector
Marketing, International Journal of Learning and Change and International Journal
of Knowledge and Learning. Members of the marketing group have a long history of
involvement in developing new researchers through the ACSPRI teaching programs;
Coote is current Vice-Chair.
Spanning several disciplines at UQ, Tourism (1506) researchers have made
significant contributions to understanding tourist behaviour, and the factors that
influence more environmentally sustainable behaviour. Researchers such as Tisdell
have developed economic models and techniques to measure the value of tourism to
communities, as well as specific tourism resources such as national parks, cultural
institutions and events. The UQ Tourism School was recently ranked 5th in the world
for the highest number of journal outputs in the top five tourism journals. Some 37%
of their papers are in A*/A journals. Getz and Ballantyne are listed in the Top 41 most
frequently cited scholars in the field (1990-2007).
As further evidence of their international reputations, UQ staff in 1506 are Editors or
Co-Editors of 6 journals, including Visitor Studies, Current Issues in Tourism and
Annals of Leisure Research; Getz is on the Boards of A* journals Tourism
Management and Journal of Travel Research, and is a Fellow of the International
Academy for the Study of Tourism. Tisdell is a Fellow of ASSA.
Significantly, UQ staff were founding members of the successful Sustainable Tourism
Cooperative Research Centre and actively involved in its sustainable destinations and
economics research programs. The Centre was the largest dedicated tourism research
organisation in the world operating from 1996-2010.