EFS PhD Scholarships 2007

Applications are invited for PhD research scholarships available full time at Macquarie University in 2007, tenable in the
Departments of Accounting & Finance, Actuarial Studies, Business, Economics or Statistics

While applications from any discipline area in the Division are welcome, the Division is especially keen to receive applications from persons wishing to undertake doctoral research in one of the following areas:

Department of Accounting and Finance

Financial Accounting: An International Comparison of Ethical Codes

This project firstly involves a comparison of ethical standards across selected countries, as codified by International Federation of Accounting. The impact of these differences in ethical codes will be evaluated by surveying and analyzing, reporting decisions of financial report preparers and auditors, in the context of the new environment of International Financial Reporting Standards. Conclusions will be drawn as to the effect of differing ethical standards on the comparability of accounting reports across countries.

Principal Supervisor: Professor Chris Patel

Other projects in the areas of accounting, auditing and finance will be considered.

Department of Business

Strategic Renewal in Top Management Teams

This project investigates the relationships between creative thinking (among other factors) and strategic renewal in top management teams (TMT). The latter are continuously charged with the responsibility to grow the business and to achieve sustained competitive advantage over time. In the absence of strategic renewal, the project examines how organizational rigidities prevent and impoverish creative thinking. This is as much to do with poor TMT learning as with individual learning styles incorrectly matched to team activities. The project examines in depth how creative thinking is conceived, the relationship between culture and individual learning, and between organizational learning and strategic renewal. Currently, much is known about organizational learning and organizational renewal (Crossan et al 1999; Edmonson et al., 2003), but very little is known about the connection between creative thinking and achieving organizational renewal through superior TMT processes. The project addresses this gap. Strategic renewal is currently a hot topic in the broader field of strategic research. The field of research is important for top management teams since process losses (the difference between potential minus actual productivity) continues to account for up to 30% of team outputs.

Principal Supervisor: Dr Peter Murray

Determinants of Leadership Effectiveness

This project examines the relationships between self-efficacy, organizational contexts that influence leader activities, and transformational leader behaviours. While much research has heralded the strengths of the transformational leadership approaches (Kets de Vries, 2002; Bass, 1985), it is difficult to conceive how leader behaviour can be separated from the contexts leaders face as a powerful determinant of leader effectiveness. While much research suggests that the belief one has in achieving goals is attributable to, among other things, leader behaviour, leader influence conceived independent of the environment is different from leader influence conceived with multiple environmental pressures. Leadership theory appears to gloss over contextual issues, highlighting the inadequacy of leadership research. The capacity of the organization to build a learning culture is an example of one context that should be investigated. Leader influence cannot be separated from the learning context on which it depends since behavioural change depends on both cognitive change as well as a change in the behavioural routine itself. Accordingly, the relationship between self-efficacy, context, and influence requires more extensive examination leading to new theory building and a greater contribution to leadership practice.

Principal Supervisor: Dr Peter Murray

Effectiveness of Human Resource Strategy

The project will examine human resource (HR) strategy development and implementation within a sample of organisations in Australia. Specifically, the study will focus on three main topics. The first relates to the amount of influence corporate level strategy has in HR strategy development with the objective to ensure an alignment between the two. The second involves how HR strategy implementation effectiveness is measured and subsequently evaluated. Third, the project will examine how institutional forces influence HR departmental roles and strategies. Accordingly, HR strategy processes are assessed.

The importance of intellectual capital to the firm cannot be understated. Previous studies have focused on the core competencies of human capital (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989;1990; Barney, 2001), as a basis for building competitive advantage. While many advances have been made in the field, corporate strategy often takes a marketing focus where the importance of human capital is not a prime function. Similarly, corporate implementation strategies often treat human resources as a downsizing tool often outsourced and sub-contracted as a commodity. The implementation of HR strategies then become ‘add-ons’ or commodities for cost reduction. An example of this is the continuation of offshore contracting. The project will explore and examine the relationship between strategic human resource development and competitive advantage, the effectiveness of human resource implementation, and how institutional forces, both within and external to the firm influence human resource development. Depending on the level of reliance on human capital for organisational success, the research will examine several Industries such as Information Technology, Pharmaceuticals, and Manufacturing . 

Principal Supervisor: Dr Peter Murray

Department of Economics

Social Networks in Economic Development

The focus of the research program is on the social relationships through which individuals participate in market and other exchanges of economic significance. Our overarching research objective is to examine the ways in which social networks structure individuals’ economic activity, including productive and reproductive activities. Current research projects in the area include topics on agricultural markets, social learning, migration, health care and innovation systems. Members of the department have expertise on a number of Southeast Asian and South Asian countries.

Further information is available from Assoc. Professor Melanie Beresford: melanieb@efs.mq.edu.au

Department of Statistics

Statistical investigation of student university experience

The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is an exit survey of all graduates from Australian universities, and as such seeks to encapsulate their overall experience during their tertiary studies. It is also a tool of great political importance, since large amounts of government funding are distributed to universities on the basis of results obtained on CEQs from earlier years. The CEQ has a numerical component, the ratings given by students on a variety of scales associated with pedagogical dimensions, and also a qualitative component, where students are asked to write comments about the ‘best aspects’ of their overall experience, and those that most ‘need improvement’. A recent project carried out by a team headed by Professor Geoff Scott from University of Western Sydney developed a IT-supported method (called CEQuery) for automatically coding these comments, and classifying them into five main domains of pedagogical interest and more than 20 sub-domains. The first analysis from this project, under the title “Accessing the Student Voice”, was recently added to the DEST website. This includes details of preliminary analyses that I carried out in my role as statistician for the project. However, the data (potentially augmented by data from more universities and from more recent CEQs) admit further opportunities for statistical analysis in order to investigate students’ views in greater depth and to allow universities to enhance the quality of the learning experience that they offer to their students.

Principal Supervisor: Assoc Prof Peter Petocz