Our events

31 October 2019

Do managerial support perceptions influence employee wellbeing in high performance workplaces?

International Consortium for Research in Employment & Work (iCREW) Centre for Global Business, Monash Business School invites you to this seminar presented by Keith Whitfield, Cardiff University.

Using matched employer-employee data from the United Kingdom (UK) Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011, this seminar will examine the associations between high-performance HR (HP-HR) practices, perceived job demands, managerial support and employees’ health-related well-being.

Building on theory that challenges the assumption of beneficial effects of HP-HR practices for both organisations and employees, this seminar will explore whether such practices typically lead to heightened perceptions of work demands and work-related anxiety-depression amongst employees.

The seminar will also help attendees understand 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, it will examine estimated moderated-mediation relationships, in a multi-level setting, relating the interaction of job demands and managerial support to perceived levels of health-related well-being in individuals.

The findings suggest that positive relationships between employees and their line managers significantly lowers the detrimental effects of job demands on perceived work-related anxiety-depression, improving individuals’ health-related wellbeing at work.

The speaker

Keith Whitfield is Professor of Human Resource Management and Economics, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK and the and former Head of the Human Resource Management Group, Cardiff Business School.

His research interests include wellbeing at the workplace; the economic impact of human resource management policies and practices; education, training and skills shortages; the determinants of earnings inequality; research methodology of WERS and in in the economic and social sciences more generally. He was formerly at Warwick University and also at Sydney University.

Seminar co-hosts

Professors Greg J. Bamber and Fang Lee Cooke of iCREW and the Department of Management.

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.

12 April 2019

South Asia Research Network (SARN) of the Centre for Global Business (CGB) is co-hosting three seminars by Professor Naila Kabeer, one of the leading social economists of our time. She is Professor of Gender and Development at the Department of Gender Studies and Department of International Development  at London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE).

Naila Kabeer is Professor of Gender and Development at the Department of Gender Studies and Department of International Development at London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection and citizenship and much of her research is focused on South and South East Asia. Naila is currently involved in ERSC-DIFD Funded Research Projects on Gender and Labour Market dynamics in Bangladesh and India.

You can find out more about Naila here.

If you would like to attend the dinner on 12th April or meet Naila Kabeer during her visit (9-12 April), please email to Sakiba Tasneem: sakiba.tasneem@monash.edu.

11 April 2019

The International Consortium for Research in Employment and Work (iCREW) and Ethical Regulation Research Network (ERRN), Centre for Global Business, Monash Business School in collaboration with Australian HR Institute (AHRI) and School of Labor Relations and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, present a one-day international research symposium:

'Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence and Gig Jobs: Implications for The Future of Business, Employment, Regulation and Work, in a Global Economy'

This topical symposium will focus on the impact of digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI) and gig jobs on the future of employment, employability, industrial relations, work and labour regulation across different economic, industrial and occupational settings.

We will bring together leading researchers and practitioners in employment relations, HR and labour regulation from Australia, China, the United Kingdom and other countries. They will discuss the latest developments in the application of digital technology, AI and algorithmic decision-making by employers and how these impact skills, work, employment relations and labour regulation in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and beyond, including national regulations and practices, international influences, as well as global trends, challenges and lessons.

5 March 2019

The future of work was the topic of a Monash Business School seminar hosted by International Consortium for Research in Employment & Work (iCREW), Centre for Global Business (CGB).

Presented by Greg Vines, Deputy Director General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland, Work for a Brighter Future: A View from the ILO, was attended by prominent people in this field. These included: Ross Fotheringham, Monash alum. and former Minister (Special Labour Advisor) to the ILO; the Hon. Geoff Giudice AO, former President, of predecessors to the Fair Work Commission (FWC); the Hon. Joe Isaac AO, Emeritus Professor, Monash University and former Deputy President, of a predecessor to the FWC; other alumni; practitioners; academics and PhD students.

The ILO marks its centenary this year with the launch of the report of its Global Commission on the “Future of Work”. The Commission, co-chaired by South African President Ramaphosa and  Sweden’s Prime Minister Lofven, calls for a commitment to taking a human-centred approach for growth and development, one that places people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy making.

Monash Business School has contributed to the discussion through the Centre for Global Business and the work of several of its professors including Greg Bamber, Chongwoo Choe, Fang Lee Cooke and Richard Mitchell.

“The Global Commission on the Future of Work promotes social justice and must guide us when shaping the future of work. We need to look at it from the perspective of people not from the perspective of technology,” Mr Vines says.

The Global Commission focused on the conceptual framework and the issues they consider important – the effects of demographic market, the effects of technological change and the pressing need to put an end to gender inequality and allow women to fully participate in the labour market.

The ILO proposes a series of actions under the pillars of investing in people and their capabilities, investing in the institutors of work and investing in jobs of the future.

Greg Vines presented the report and what it means for the work of the ILO at a time of high levels of uncertainty about the future,

“We need to shape the future for decent work and social justice, in particular. Meaningful work is at the heart of the human life experience of each of us,” Mr Vines said.

The report lists three pillars of investment for human-centred development agenda for the future of work: increasing investment in people’s skill and capabilities so they can take advantages of the opportunities ahead. Secondly, increasing investments in the institutions of work and finally to increase investment in descent and sustainable work.

To what extent does University research inform the work the ILO does? “Academics and universities are critical. We are a small organisation and we rely on the networks and the work that is done at places like Monash Business School.,” Mr Vines says “As we move into the global implementation of the report there will be a great deal more research that Monash and others will be involved with to improve the future of work,”

Prof. Chongwoo Choe, CGB (right); Greg Vines, ILO; Prof. Fang Lee Cooke, iCREW; Prof. Greg Bamber, iCREW

18-19 February 2019

Chandigarh, Punjab, India

The primary focus of this two-day workshop was on discussing how end-to-end food supply chains can be transformed through the adoption of advanced technologies and modern management practices, addressing the challenges being faced with respect to productivity improvement, integration and leadership by:

1. Farmers and their suppliers;
2. Aggregators, sorters, food processors and packers, as well as equipment suppliers;
3. Retailers; and
4. Warehousing and Logistics providers.

Mr Rod Hilton, Australian Deputy High Commissioner to India (based in New Delhi) who gave the opening address, opened the workshop. Ms Michelle Wade, South-Asia Commissioner for the Victorian Government, based in Benguluru (India), also gave a keynote address. Fifty invited participants took part in this workshop that included presentations and roundtable discussion sessions. The workshop:

• Highlighted the current status of food supply chains in terms of integration and management; and overall performance,
• Discussed the challenges and what can be achieved by effective supply chain integration and management, and
• Discussed what can be achieved in the short/medium-term and the long-term to improve food supply chains and propose solutions that could be considered for adoption.

This workshop was organised jointly by the Global Value Chains Research Network. The University of Lincoln (UK) and IFFCO (Punjab) sponsored it. Other supporting organisatons included Panjab University, Chandigarh; Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana; Austrade (Australian High Commission, Delhi) and Sangha Innovation Centre.

6 February 2019

Room H801, Building H, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Rd, Caulfield, Melbourne

Summary

Having voice at work is a primary means by which individuals influence matters that affect them. Prior work has focused generally on institutional-level factors and collective arrangements that give rise to voice.  Here, our focus is the employee. In partnership with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development UK, and drawing on a major cross-sectoral survey of nearly 3000 employees based in the UK, we distinguish between two forms of voice -- human voice and promotive voice -- starting from the premise that voice is important, not just for organizational effectiveness, but also by way of offering dignity and respect to workers. We are now analysing the data and, in this seminar, will share preliminary findings.

Helen Shipton is Professor of Human Resource Management and Co-Director of the Centre of People, Work and Organizational Practice, Nottingham Business School, having held academic posts at Aston Business School, Birmingham, United Kingdom.  Helen is interested in how employees perceive HRM, and the effect of their interpretations on outcomes such as innovation, well-being and commitment.  Helen has published in top journals including Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Journal, British Journal of Management and Journal of Organizational Behaviour. Helen is Vice-Chair (Capacity Building) of the British Academy of Management.

Learn more

Seminar co-hosts

Professors Helen De Cieri and Greg J. Bamber

Healthcare systems are under increasing pressures to provide high-quality care in the context of continuing improvements in medical diagnostics, ageing populations and constrained resources. As health service managers struggle to keep up in such contexts, many turn to management consultants for advice. In the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, one of the largest employers in the world, an average of £1.2million are spent annually on management consulting services in each NHS Trust, according to Professor Ian Kirkpatrick from Warwick Business School.

During a recent visit to Monash University, Professor Kirkpatrick, Monash Warwick Professor of Healthcare Improvement & Implementation Science, presented an interesting seminar, ‘Management Consultants & Public Sector Reform: The Case of the NHS’. It was hosted by the Australian Consortium for Research in Employment & Work (ACREW), Centre for Global Business, Monash Business School.

ACREW Co-Director Professor Greg Bamber (Department of Management) said ‘although Professor Kirkpatrick et al.’s research was conducted in the UK, we in Australia can also learn important lessons from their research. Kirkpatrick et al. show how astute researchers can open up seemingly inaccessible yet important areas of debate.’

Noting the ‘revolving door’ of management consultants in the NHS who seem to create their own demand - for example, by providing advice on outsourcing services, and those very outsourcing services - Kirkpatrick et al. ask whether NHS managers could be ‘addicted to consultants’, and thus whether there might be a case of consultant overuse in the NHS. Despite claims by management consultants that they yield a generous return on investment for money spent on their services, Kirkpatrick et al. found no rigorous evaluations of the value produced by management consulting services anywhere, in any sector. They set out to address this.

Using the available data on management consulting expenditure in the NHS, and analysing the relationship between this expenditure and hospital efficiency-related outcomes, Kirkpatrick et al. found that, in addition to the £1.2 million spent each year on management consulting services, each Trust loses more than a further £10,000 of value in terms of reduced efficiency.

PhD student Adamina Ivcovici (Department of Management) commented ‘This is a compelling finding that opens up the value of management consulting for investigation - something that has, until now, generally been brushed aside as too difficult to evaluate.’

Professor Kirkpatrick plans to visit Monash regularly to promote research collaboration through the Monash Warwick Alliance.

Back row: Greg Bamber (right), Trang Tran, Ian Kirkpatrick, Brian Cooper; Mitch Cunningham
Front row: Adamina Ivcovici (right), Tracy Robinson, Evelyn Suk Yi Looi

28-29 January 2019

IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India

Monash Business School’s Centre for Global Business and Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay co-organised the inaugural research workshop during January 28-29, 2019 at IIT-Bombay campus in Mumbai, India.

The key theme of the workshop was the importance of collaboration in research with a keynote delivered by Prof. Amartya Lahiri, Director of the Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning, Reserve Bank of India.  Other sessions focused on multidisciplinary dialogue across various disciplines in business school, computer science, and engineering. The workshop was attended by delegates from all seven departments at Monash Business School.