Research

Managing People and Organisations

Researchers: Associate Professor Bart de Jong, Dr Sugumar Mariapannadar, Dr Trajce Cvetkovski

People are an organisation’s greatest asset.

Working with people to help them reach their potential in the workplace and ensuring organisations provide positive work environments, are essential to business and organisational success.

Within this theme, researchers explore the mobilising potential of communities to undertake transformational work in organisations and civil society, including developing work participation, resilience and growth, and worker dignity, health and well being. This research is particularly focussed on healthcare organisations, the education sector, and human services.

Developing work participation resilience and growth addresses the rapidly changing ‘ecosystem’ of work, as advances in information and wider technologies, market and economic uncertainties, and wider societal changes mediate and reconfigure relations between workers, organisations and society.

This research addresses the transformative potential of work for, by, and with some of society’s most marginalised and vulnerable people, who are often at the periphery of an organisations’ concerns. By illuminating aspects of organisational functioning rarely revealed to outsiders, we develop critical insights that offer a distinctive contribution to ACU’s mission of ‘Impact through Empathy’ amongst our students, with partner organisations, and wider stakeholders.

Managing Markets

Researchers: Dr Hormoz Ahmadi and Professor Susan Dann AM, Dr Thomas Kobinah

This theme explores the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and, marketing. Within this, distinct research streams explore key issues in entrepreneurship and in marketing.  

Entrepreneurship research looks into topics such as the internal (organisational) and external (environmental) factors that hinder or facilitate the commercialisation of new technology ventures (NTVs) given the short life cycle of technology-based products and intensive competition in the market.

Our research also explores the rise of female entrepreneurs in family owned businesses. Our focus is on the challenges that women uniquely face in start up businesses.

In addition, marketing-focused research examines the use of ethical and values based concepts – such as Catholic Social Thought – in social and behavioural change marketing and how these concepts can enhance brand creation in online settings.

Managing Money

Researchers: Dr Md Akhtaruzzaman, Dr Bulend Terzioglu, Associate Professor Dr Wendy James

Research in the finance domain explores a number of areas including how the Basel II and III bank capital requirements influence macroeconomic activities, how financial contagion is transmitted from one country to another via trade and financial linkages, and the determinants of socially responsible investments (SRI) in Australian superannuation funds.

One area of focus is education and understanding why many Australians are financially illiterate and why many investors find it difficult to master financial instruments. Lack of financial literacy has follow-on effects to health and wellbeing which ultimately affects the Australian economy.

Another area of research explores behavioural bias of financial planners and the effect this can have on the investment portfolios of their clients, including the construction of sub-optimal portfolios.

Additional accounting focussed projects investigate problems central to the financial market and the investing public, such as the financial reporting of assets such as derivatives and intangibles and what role changes in legislation and accounting standards have on these.

Researchers: Associate Professor Haifeng Shen, Dr Alireza Amrollahi, Dr Kamanashis Biswas, Dr Sr Thuy-linh Nguyen, and Dr Bhavani-Sridharan

Modern information and communication technologies represented by artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, Internet of Things, smart devices, and cloud computing are dramatically transforming the way we work and live. Today's technology is not only pervasive but intelligent and moving towards autonomy. The convergence of these technologies leads to challenges with interpersonal communication and human-machine interaction, which can impact our society both sociologically and economically.

Our research team is positioned at the intersection of technology and business, with specialties in human computer interaction; software engineering (especially DevOps and software evolution); social and collaborative computing; organisational use and social impacts of information systems; cybersecurity; cryptography; blockchain; wireless sensor networks; biologically inspired systems; and ICT and business education.

Our research is closely linked with industries, especially defence science and technology, CRC care, and software industry and communities. Our work has been produced and published for top ranked (A*/A) international journals and conferences, such as ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction; Journal of Computer and System Sciences; Information and Management; ACM Transactions on Internet Technology; IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics; Journal of Network and Computer Applications; Future Generation Computer Systems; Information Technology and People; Communications of the Association for Information Systems; the European Conference on Information Systems; the American Conference on Information Systems; the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems; the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work; the ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interface; British Human-Computer Interaction Conference; the Automated Software Engineering Conference; Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences; International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing; the IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless; Mobile and Multimedia Networks; and the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networks and Services.