SFU Business Faculty Reap Almost $500,000 in SSHRC/NSERC Grants

SFU Business research projects have garnered almost $500,000 in research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

• How are ‘boundaryless’ careers affecting Canada’s international competitiveness? “Immigration is vital to Canada’s ability to acquire a pool of human capital that will sustain our international competitiveness,” says SFU Business Professor Dr. Rosalie Tung, who received a standard research grant from SSHRC to study this issue. “Yet studies on immigrants from Hong Kong have shown that, in general, the more productive individuals leave after obtaining Canadian citizenship.

• It’s a popular misconception that the monetary authorities control all interest rates. “In fact,” says assistant SFU Business Professor Dr. Christophe Pérignon, “central banks only control the most short-term interest rate.” Since intermediate and long-term rates determine the actual costs of borrowing for both individuals and firms, Pérignon and assistant business professor Daniel Smith will use a SSHRC standard research grant to improve our understanding of interest rate behaviour in Canada.

• Are product development teams working at the intersection of two or more diverse technology streams, such as nanotechnology and biotechnology, more likely to contribute to radical innovation and new industry creation? SFU Business Assistant Professor Dr. Elicia Maine will use a SSHRC standard research grant to study current and historical examples of this kind of research and hopes to formulate managerial and policy recommendations that can help technology firms make better strategic and organizational decisions related to research and development.

• How are public innovations like the Vancouver safe injection site for intravenous drug users diffused throughout society? “Public innovations require the cooperation of multiple independent parties and their benefits extend beyond the boundaries of the innovators,” says Dr. Tom Lawrence, Weyerhaeuser Professor of Change Management and director of the CMA Centre for Strategic Change and Performance Measurement. Further safe injection sites are on the public agenda in cities across the country and Lawrence hopes his research, funded with a SSHRC standard research grant, will help to understand the social processes that contribute to spreading such innovations.

• How effective are current programs that encourage industries to reduce emissions and limit environmental damage from their products and production processes? A five-year grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council will help Dr. Sudheer Gupta, assistant professor of technology and operations management, to examine such programs around the world and see whether they’re achieving their purpose. He’ll also examine what kinds of strategies firms are employing to accommodate these new programs.

• Dr. Ernie Love, former Dean of SFU Business, will use an NSERC grant to examine the hard-to-quantify impact of repairs to failed systems. “Operators can say the system is ‘running like new’ or ‘it seems to be running a bit better’, or ‘it is not better than it was before it failed’,” says Love. “If one can translate these loose descriptors into the ‘expected duration before another failure’ then the system could be better managed.”

Visiting Faculty

Dr. Cynthia Hardy, Professor of Management at University of Melbourne is guest lecturer at the new CMA Centre for Strategic Change and Performance Measurement at Segal. With Dr. Tom Lawrence, Director of the Centre, Hardy presented a compelling presentation on frameworks for international collaboration to a breakfast meeting of CMA and SFU Business guests. Hardy is co-director of the International Centre for Research on Organizational Discourse, Strategy & Change, Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester; and International Visiting Fellow with the Advanced Institute of Management Studies in the UK.