Our events

12 December 2019

The role of Machiavellian behaviour, perceived trustworthiness, and affect

The effectiveness of transformational leaders is due at least in part to their ability to foster follower trust. However, it is important to distinguish true transformational from manipulative and self-serving pseudo-transformational leaders who can be equally inspirational but lack other transformational qualities (Christie et al., 2011). We extend earlier research by developing a Perceived Machiavellian Leadership Scale (PMLS) to measure these manipulative and self-serving qualities. We then administered the PMLS along with the transformational leadership questionnaire in an experimental scenario study (N = 392) and a field survey study (N = 292). In the experimental study, we demonstrated that Machiavellian behaviours complement those characterizing the four facets of transformational leadership measured by the MLQ in distinguishing true from pseudo-transformational leaders. In both studies, we found that the PMLS contributed uniquely to the prediction of follower trust, and that the relationship was mediated by perceptions of leader trustworthiness and affective reactions to the leader.

Speaker

Amy Wei Tian (PhD Cardiff University) is an Associate Professor in human resource management at the Curtin Business School, Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Her research focuses on how strategic HRM and leadership affect people’s attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as creativity and innovation. She also examines how multicultural employees, leaders and teams can contribute to team and organisational success. Amy has published journals such as The Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology and International Journal of Human Resource Management.

Hosted by the Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Research Network (LOERN) within the Centre for Global Business (CGB).

22 November 2019

2 UK Health Projects

This seminar included two short research presentations and a discussion led by visitors from Warwick University, UK (Monash University’s partner in the Monash Warwick Alliance).

1. The paradoxes of hybrid middle managers: performing and belonging
How do hybrid managers negotiate the paradoxes inherent in their role? In particular, how do they negotiate the dual paradoxes of belonging (managerial vs professional identity) and performing (managerial vs professional work)? This seminar considers the case of nurse managers, where the complexities of hybrid roles are at the fore.
Charlotte Croft is an Associate Professor at Warwick Business School, UK. Her research focuses on issues of identity, leadership and collaboration in professionalised settings. Her work has been published in a range of world leading journals, such as Organisation Studies, Human Relations, and Public Administration.

2. The Influence of professional identity upon absorptive capacity: the case of healthcare
There is a lack of research about the effects of organisational context in general and that of the professionalised context specifically to absorb new knowledge and improve innovation. Moreover, approaches to ensure new knowledge is used and improve innovation practices haven’t sensitised to the problem of professions, nor has the context of professional organisation, and its underpinning dimensions relating to professional identity. Our study seeks to address this research gaps and provide insight into how the dimensions of professional identity impact upon the development, implementation and scale up of knowledge-based innovation.
Dimitrios Spyridonidis is an Associate Professor of Leadership and Innovation at Warwick Business School, UK. Dimitrios’ core research interests are Leadership and Innovation. Within these, current themes include leadership and leadership development, innovation and strategic change in professionalised organisations. His research has been published in leading academic journal including Organisation Studies, Public Administration, Human Relations and Human Resource Management Journal.

The Discussant: Bernard Crump is a Professor in Medical Leadership at Warwick Medical School. After studying medicine and then years in clinical practice and research, he returned to postgraduate training in public health medicine. He spent a decade as Director of Public Health in Birmingham, and in Leicestershire, where he was also Deputy CEO. He became CEO of Shropshire & Staffordshire Strategic Health Authority, until being appointed the first CEO of the UK National Health Service (NHS) Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The NHS Institute has developed a wide range of programmes supporting the improvement of the NHS, the Productive Ward and the Productive Series, the No Delays Achiever and commissioners. He has written and lectured on a range of topics in healthcare, including aspects of population health, the role of clinicians in management, health and healthcare improvement, the use of metrics in encouraging improvement and the use of health economics in decision-making.

Professor Greg Bamber of Monash Business School’s Department of Management was the seminar host.

18 November 2019

The 2019 South Asia Business and Economics Workshop for Early Career Researchers and advanced doctoral students took place on Monday, 18 November 2019 at Monash University. This event was co-hosted by the South Asia Research Network (SARN) (which is part of the Centre for Global Business) and Monash Business School's Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES).

The aim of the workshop was to provide an opportunity for early career researchers and advanced doctoral students in South Asian studies to share and discuss their latest research in the area of business and economics. We particularly encouraged papers on the following topics: development, financial sector, firm/enterprise, energy, agriculture and food security, education, labour, health, management, social enterprises and sustainability.

11 November 2019

Monash Business School's Global Value Chains Research Network (GVCRN) hosted a special two-day Industry-Academia Collaboration on Global Value Chains.

Through presentations, roundtable discussions and feedback sessions, the Collaboration aimed to build upon our research strengths and partner with other like-minded researchers, practitioners and policy-makers.

It focused on:

• Sustainable food value chains
• Health supply chains
• Small and medium-sized enterprise innovative participation in global value chains

We aimed to develop impactful research projects that we can carry out as pilot projects, leading to full scale projects that can attract funding from appropriate sources.

8 November 2019

Hosted by the South Asia Research Network (SARN) within the Centre for Global Business (CGB), in collaboration with the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES), the workshop aimed to explore the prospects and challenges of doing business in low-income communities in South Asian countries.

The workshop facilitated the dissemination of research-based knowledge and collaboration among researchers across disciplines. It also aimed to engage with local practitioners working towards market-based solutions to address issues of ‘under-development’ among low-income people in Australia.

Professor Israr Qureshi, Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and ICT for Development at the ANU College of Business and Economics, was the keynote speaker for the event.

4 November 2019

The aim of this workshop is to provide an opportunity to GARNET members and those conducting research in Governance and Regulation to share and discuss their research in a collaborative, supportive and inclusive environment.

The workshop will facilitate conversations between GARNET members to consider potential future research projects and to collectively plan the next year GARNET’s research activities.

The GARNET is part of Monash Business School's Centre for Global Business.

31 October 2019

An empirical investigation

Keith Whitfield (Professor of Human Resource Management and Economics, Cardiff University, UK and the former Head of Section, Cardiff Business School) used his study with Suhaer Yunus that used matched employer-employee data from the United Kingdom (UK) Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011 to examine the associations between high-performance HR (HP-HR) practices, perceived job demands, managerial support and employees’ health-related well-being.

Brian Cooper (left); Sean Way; Keith Whitfield; Greg Bamber; Qudsia Iftikhar; Qijie Xiao. Apart from Keith Whitfield, those mentioned are members of the Department of Management, Monash Business School.

Building on theory that challenges the assumption of beneficial effects of HP-HR practices for employing organisations and employees, the research indicated that such practices typically lead to heightened perceptions of work demands and work-related anxiety-depression amongst employees.

It also suggested that such negative consequences can be modified by creating a conducive work environment which fosters managerial support. Drawing on the Job-Demands Resources (JD-R) model, the research examined estimated moderated-mediation relationships, in a multi-level setting.

It related the interaction of job demands and managerial support to perceived levels of health-related well-being in individuals. The findings suggested that positive relationships between employees and their line managers significantly lower the detrimental effects of job demands on perceived work-related anxiety-depression.

Keith was formerly at Warwick University and earlier at Sydney University. The Chair was Dr Marjorie Jerrard. The Vote of Thanks was by Associate Professor Brian Cooper. The academic co-hosts were Professors Greg J. Bamber & Fang Lee Cooke.

30 October 2019

New Forms of Worker Representation: Substitute for or Complement to Unions and Collective Bargaining.

Amid a rapidly changing workforce being reshaped by forces such as the gig economy, new forms of collective worker representation are emerging.

Outside of unions and formal collective bargaining structures, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become a significant force in U.S. industrial relations. These NGOs include worker rights groups, worker and immigrant rights centers organisations and affinity groups within non-union companies.

What is the influence and staying power of these various forms of increasing collective representation? And are there lessons for the Australian union movement and Australian companies?

Renowned U.S. labour management expert and Cornell University professor Harry C Katz explores these questions in his upcoming keynote address for the annual Joe Isaac Industrial Relations Symposium, to be held at Monash Business School on Wednesday 30 October 2019.

Professor Katz is the Jack Sheinkman Professor and Director of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at the Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School, Cornell University.  He is President-elect of the International Labor and Employment Relations Association and Past-president of the U.S. Labor and Employment Relations Association. Professor Katz is also a member of the U.S. United Auto Workers Union Public Review Board.

Alternately hosted by Monash Business School and the University of Melbourne since 2010, the Joe Isaac Industrial Relations Symposium honours the contribution of Professor Emeritus Joe Isaac AO, one of Australia’s most distinguished scholars and practitioners in the broad field of industrial relations and labour economics.

The Joe Isaac Industrial Relations Symposium is held jointly by Monash Business School’s International Consortium for Research on Employment & Work (iCREW), Centre for Global Business and the Melbourne Human Resource Management Unit (MHRMU), Department of Management and Marketing.

16 October 2019

Monash Business School's Digital Economy Research Network at the Centre for Global Business will host the 2019 Monash workshop on Digital Economy and Industrial Organization on October 16, 2019, at the Caulfield campus of Monash University.

Six academic economists from universities in Australia, France and the Netherlands will present their latest research on digital intermediaries, online microloans, consumer privacy and social media.

In addition, policymakers and practitioners from Australia Competition and Consumer Commission, Productivity Commission, Frontier Economics and RBB Economics, will hold a panel discussion on the topic of 'Competition issues of online platforms: search advertising, consumer data, and market power'.

The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together people from academia, government agencies and private sector to exchange ideas about how to handle the challenges to market competition and consumer protection in the age of internet.

The workshop will also promote the research on digital economy undertaken at Monash Business School.

26 September 2019

The roles and contradictions of multinational corporations in developing workplace dialogue

A seminar jointly organised by the Department of Management and GARNET (Governance and Regulation Research Network), Centre for Global Business.

Abstract

Political CSR scholarship has highlighted the role of multinational corporations in the development of global standards to protect stakeholder rights in the absence of government regulation. We examine political CSR and the role of MNCs in dialogue with those most affected– workers in global supply chains. While attention has mainly focused on transnational level processes, we utilise industrial democracy to understand the possibility of worker-centric dialogue at the “coalface” where labour rights violations occur. Drawing on a qualitative study of the introduction of workplace dialogue in parts of the Bangladesh apparel industry, we highlight the roles of MNCs as guarantors, capacity-builders and enforcers in workplace dialogue. We show how these roles become inherently contradictory and require corporations to confront the structural antagonism of the sourcing relationship. Our research has the potential to re-politicize pCSR by explaining how local-level “beneficiaries” can become active participants in deliberative processes, rather than as passive recipients.

Speakers

Juliane Reinecke is Professor of International Management & Sustainability at King’s Business School, King's College London, having joined in 2017. Previously, she was a Professor at Warwick Business School. She is a Research Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School, where she earned her MPhil and PhD, and Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, both University of Cambridge. Juliane’s research draws on insights from organization theory, political philosophy and process studies to explore, broadly speaking, how transnational governance institutions emerge and evolve as a result of the interactions of multiple stakeholders to promote a more just and sustainable forms of globalization in global supply chains, but also organizations in general. She is currently an Associate Editor at Business Ethics Quarterly and Organization Theory.

Jimmy Donaghey is Professor of Management, Department of Management, Monash University based at the Caulfield Campus, having joined in April 2019.  Prior to joining Monash, Jimmy was Professor of International HRM at the University of Warwick from 2015-2019.  He joined Warwick as Associate Professor in 2010, having previously worked as Lecturer in Management at Queen's University Belfast, from where he received his PhD. His research interests focus on the internationalisation of the employment relationship and employee voice with a particular focus on transnational governance. He is currently an Associate Editor for the Human Resource Management Journal and was a member of the ESRC Peer Review College from 2010-2019

2 September 2019

We are living in an inhospitable world. Countries like the United States, United Kingdom and Australia are hardening their borders while organisations and societies are mounting a backlash against even the most modest advancements towards gender and racial equality. Leadership has served as a vehicle through which domination and oppression are normalised and romanticised. Despite its troubled history, leadership continues to enjoy a sacred status in our cultures and is often upheld as the solution for inclusion. This seminar, based on a forthcoming book with Bristol University Press, aims to identify and challenge the violences of leadership by confronting the hegemony of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist and patriarchal ideologies within leadership theorising and practice. In doing so, the book draws on the complex and distinct traditions of anti-racist feminisms in order to offer redemptive possibilities for ‘leadership’ that may be exercised from the values of justice, solidarity and love.

Speaker

Helena Liu is a Senior Lecturer at UTS Business School in Sydney, Australia. Her research critiques the way power sustains our enduring romance with leadership and imagines the possibilities for organising through solidarity, love and justice. She is currently a co-Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery project, ‘Leadership diversity through relational intersectionality in Australia’. She serves as Associate Editor at Human Relations, Management Learning and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. In addition to those journals, her work has also appeared in Organization, Journal of Business Ethics, Gender, Work and Organization, Culture and Organization, and Leadership. Her first book, ‘Redeeming Leadership: An Anti-Racist Feminist Intervention’, will be coming out with Bristol University Press in January 2020.

Hosted by the Centre for Global Business's Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Research Network (LOERN).

15 – 16 July 2019

The ‘New Normal’ of Slower Chinese Growth

What's next for China and the world?

After three decades of explosive economic growth and massive current account surpluses fuelled by booming exports, China seems to have settled into a slower growth trajectory – the "New Normal" following the 2008 global financial crisis. This is accompanied by major policy changes in China signalling a shift from an investment led growth to consumption led growth.

What lies ahead? In an increasingly volatile global economic and political environment, will China become a victim of the ‘Middle Income Trap’, or will it be able to make the transition to be a high productivity, high income country? Can China succeed in coping with the social and political challenges of rising popular expectations, deepening inequality, and massive environmental degradation? Will it continue to be the engine of the global economy in the decade ahead? What are the implications for commodity exporters like Australia and the wider global economy?

These will be among the issues that will be discussed by scholars and analysts at the 31st Annual Conference of the Chinese Economics Society Australia (CESA) on 15 – 16 July 2019, at Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Melbourne, Australia, hosted by the Monash Business School, the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES) and the Department of Economics of Monash University.

This year's conference is supported by the Chinese Research Network, Centre for Global Business, Monash Business School.

This year, the keynote speakers include Professor Yang Yao, from the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University.

Learn more

21 June 2019

“Just Words? Just Speeches?” On the Economic Value of Charismatic Leadership

The Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Research Network (LOERN) invites you to a seminar, titled: “Just Words? Just Speeches?” On the Economic Value of Charismatic Leadership, presented by Professor John Antonakis, Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract
Leadership theories in sociology and social psychology argue that that effective leaders influence follower behavior not only through the design of incentives and institutions, but also through personal abilities to persuade and motivate. Although charismatic leadership has received considerable attention  in the management literature, existing research has not yet established causal evidence for an effect of leader charisma on follower performance in incentivized and economically relevant situations. We report evidence from a field experiment that examines whether charisma—in the form of a stylistically  different motivational speech—can induce costly effort among workers, and therefore generate higher output for a firm. We find that workers who are given a charismatic speech increase their output on average by about 17 per cent relative to the workers who listen to the standard speech. This effect  is statistically significant and comparable in size to the positive effect of high-powered financial incentives. We then investigate the effect of charisma in a series of laboratory experiments in which subjects are exposed to motivational speeches before playing a repeated public goods game. Our results  reveal that a higher number of charismatic elements in the speech can increase contributions by up to 19%. However, our data also reveal that the size of the charisma effect importantly depends on the social context in which the speech is delivered.