Management and marketing projects

Globalization of sport

Sports consumption is one of the most pervasive leisure roles in modern society. It pervades all aspects of human life and has worldwide appeal. Indeed, sport speaks to people of all ages across all culture and national boundaries. The global trends of increased personal wealth, more sedentary lifestyles, and increased mechanisation have resulted in an increased reliance and relevance of leisure activities in everyday life. Research in sports marketing is highly publishable and is an increasingly attractive context for researchers in consumer behaviour, marketing strategy, communications, international business, health marketing and social marketing.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. Define the role of sport in global communication and relations
2. Understand the impact of culture on global sport marketing practices
3. Investigate the role of cultural, political and economic factors on the transferability of the sport product
4. Assist in the development of better policies for  hosting international mega sporting events and post-event planning

Supervisor

Assoc Prof Jane Summers and Dr Melissa Johnson Morgan are authors of a text in Sports Marketing used throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia. They have supervised many PhD, Doctor of Business Administration and Honours students in the field of sports marketing and would welcome new PhD students committed to furthering the academic discourse in this field.

Sports consumption of generation Y

Sports consumption is one of the most pervasive leisure roles in modern society. It pervades all aspects of human life and has worldwide appeal. Indeed, sport speaks to people of all ages across all culture and national boundaries. The global trends of increased personal wealth, more sedentary lifestyles, and increased mechanisation have resulted in an increased reliance and relevance of leisure activities in everyday life. Research in sports marketing is highly publishable and is an increasingly attractive context for researchers in consumer behaviour, marketing strategy, communications, international business, health marketing and social marketing.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. To develop an understanding of sport participation and consumption preferences of generation Y
2. To investigate the impact of sporting subcultures among generation Y with their broader consumption decisions
3. To investigate the changing role of sport in the socialization of children
4. Develop an understanding of the applicability and relevance of sporting role models and heroes for today’s youth

Supervisor

Assoc Prof Jane Summers and Dr Melissa Johnson Morgan are authors of a text in Sports Marketing used throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia. They have supervised many PhD, Doctor of Business Administration and Honours students in the field of sports marketing and would welcome new PhD students committed to furthering the academic discourse in this field.

Experiential consumption of sport

Sports consumption is one of the most pervasive leisure roles in modern society. It pervades all aspects of human life and has worldwide appeal. Indeed, sport speaks to people of all ages across all culture and national boundaries. The global trends of increased personal wealth, more sedentary lifestyles, and increased mechanisation have resulted in an increased reliance and relevance of leisure activities in everyday life. Research in sports marketing is highly publishable and is an increasingly attractive context for researchers in consumer behaviour, marketing strategy, communications, international business, health marketing and social marketing.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. Further define the factors which impact on the construction of sporting experiences
2. Develop better measures of experiential consumption of sport and sporting events
3. To better understand the role of vicarious aggression seeking in sport spectators across cultures
4. To understand the contemporary sporting public and the role of sport fanaticism in sport construction and consumption 

Supervisor

Assoc Prof Jane Summers and Dr Melissa Johnson Morgan are authors of a text in Sports Marketing used throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia. They have supervised many PhD, Doctor of Business Administration and Honours students in the field of sports marketing and would welcome new PhD students committed to furthering the academic discourse in this field.

Sport and social marketing

Sports consumption is one of the most pervasive leisure roles in modern society. It pervades all aspects of human life and has worldwide appeal. Indeed, sport speaks to people of all ages across all culture and national boundaries. The global trends of increased personal wealth, more sedentary lifestyles, and increased mechanisation have resulted in an increased reliance and relevance of leisure activities in everyday life. Research in sports marketing is highly publishable and is an increasingly attractive context for researchers in consumer behaviour, marketing strategy, communications, international business, health marketing and social marketing.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. To understand the role of sport in motivating indigenous children to particapate more fully in academic programs
2. The role of sport in promoting social order and the prevention of crime
3. The role of sport in the assimilation of multi-cultural groups in Australia
4. Understanding the factors which motivate families to promote and participate in sport for health and physical activity

Supervisor

Assoc Prof Jane Summers and Dr Melissa Johnson Morgan are authors of a text in Sports Marketing used throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia. They have supervised many PhD, Doctor of Business Administration and Honours students in the field of sports marketing and would welcome new PhD students committed to furthering the academic discourse in this field.

Managerial leadership challenges in aged care services

This project is aimed at uncovering the drivers of superior performance of organisations that provide residential aged care services in Australia. This sector is diverse in many respects and it is expected that results will highlight key ‘best practices’ as well as ‘best fit’ strategies and practices for managing these organisations. This is an under-researched area and the findings will be valuable for enhancing the management and leadership capabilities of Australian residential aged care facilities, aimed at improving services and quality of care to residents, as well as the performance of these organisations.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. Identifying the managerial leadership challenges faced by a variety of different types of aged care home facilities in Australia, as well as the drivers hereof (contextual variables)
2. Uncovering the drivers of superior performance in residential aged care and the drivers behind ‘high performing’ Residential Aged Care Service Providers
3. Identifying the ways in which the managerial leadership challenges are handled and what ‘best practices’ and ‘best fit’ practices can be detected in specific settings, and
4. Explore the transferability of these practices, and to prioritise areas for action in order to be enhance the ‘performance’ of residential aged care service providers in Australia, as measured on various dimensions

Supervisors

In terms of management research, Prof Erwee supervised research of doctoral students in Singaporean telecommunications companies, Australian agribusiness and regional business networks. She has supervised studies on human resource management practices in German, Thai, Indonesian and Indian companies and has co-authored presented papers in international conferences and to professional societies.  She completed case studies on human resource and diversity management in Australian and South African organisations to improve organisational performance. This demonstrates her passion for research specific to aspects of management. In terms of consultancies in the field, she has extended practical experience in public and private sector organisations in Australia in the design of programs in leadership, human resource management or general management that could be applied in this innovative research.

Assoc Prof Swanepoel has been intimately involved in the design, development and delivery of leadership and management development interventions since the early 1980’s. As full Professor and Director (Corporate Programmes) at the Graduate School of Leadership Development, University of South Africa, his portfolio has specifically been to work together with other private and public sector organisations to identify leadership and management training and development needs and capacity challenges in these organisations, to design and develop leadership and management development programmes that will develop the leadership capacity of these organisations, to accredit, evaluate and monitor the quality and standards of the delivery of these programmes on an ‘in-house’ basis. These competencies are invaluable in this research.

Prof Youngjoon Seo, Assoc Prof Jeffery Soar, Assoc Prof Trudy Yuginovich (Sci)

Expanding the organisational capacity of Australian universities.

Evidence suggests that leadership capacity-building in higher education is uneven across the sector, and that many academic leaders rely too much on learning on the job (Carrick Institute 2006). Academic leadership is a highly specialised and professional activity and that “high quality, multi-level leadership in higher education is now seen as fundamental to the promotion and advancement of learning and teaching “ (ibid p 2). We posit that research should not only focus on leadership in teaching and learning, but also on institutional capacity building as well as leadership in a broader sense (Crowther and Andrews 2005; Carrick Institute 2006).   In building organisational capacity, organisations can identify their core capabilities to ensure competitive advantage (Limerick, Cunnington & Crowther 1998) and that some of these organisational capabilities could be described as intangible knowledge assets. We argue that oganisational capability approaches and strategic human  resource management can be linked and propose that if human resource management, its systems and processes can be linked to the strategic planning process, it can contribute to shape the nature of the workforce and its knowledge assets which can contribute to an organisations competitive advantage

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. Different types of universities’ perspectives on organisational capacity building will be analysed 
2. Recommendations for the sector on  organisational capacity building in their institutions and core capabilities of the institutions will be developed,
3. Evaluation of their current performance management systems, and the context in which leaders and managers operate in a type of university. 

Supervisors

In terms of management research, Prof Erwee supervised research of doctoral students in Singaporean telecommunications companies, Australian agribusiness and regional business networks. She has supervised studies on human resource management practices in German, Thai, Indonesian and Indian companies and has co-authored presented papers in international conferences and to professional societies.  She completed case studies on human resource and diversity management in Australian and South African organisations to improve organisational performance. This demonstrates her passion for research specific to aspects of management. In terms of consultancies in the field, she has extended practical experience in public and private sector organisations in Australia in the design of programs in leadership, human resource management or general management that could be applied in this innovative research.

Assoc Prof Swanepoel has been intimately involved in the design, development and delivery of leadership and management development interventions since the early 1980’s. As full Professor and Director (Corporate Programmes) at the Graduate School of Leadership Development, University of South Africa, his portfolio has specifically been to work together with other private and public sector organisations to identify leadership and management training and development needs and capacity challenges in these organisations, to design and develop leadership and management development programmes that will develop the leadership capacity of these organisations, to accredit, evaluate and monitor the quality and standards of the delivery of these programmes on an ‘in-house’ basis. These competencies are invaluable in this research.

Leadership and management competencies in universities

We believe that our research can contribute to improve performance through leadership in the educational sector by first determining the core competences of selected universities and then define which individual leadership competencies are critical for strategic and operational success in these organisations. Having defined key competencies, the challenge is to ensure that the universities possess these competencies when and where required. This challenge may be met in part through recruitment processes but in most universities it is largely met by the use of human resource management strategies, such as performance management, which can be used to monitor and motivate the development of necessary competencies by existing staff (Erwee, Willcoxson, Smith & Pedersen 2002; Crowther & Andrews 2005). Some Australian universities have developed leadership and management competencies frameworks such as QUT, UWS and USQ (Erwee et al 2002). Recently a 360 degree feedback tool developed by QUT was used a basis for a leadership development seminar presented by the AVCC.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

1. Analyse Universities’ methodologies for evaluating the leadership and management competencies of senior staff and how it is incorporated into a university’s performance management system,  
2. Establish what university or sectoral training and developmental activities flow from the analysis of leadership and management competencies and the performance management system, and
3. Generating case studies of best practices in performance management, succession planning and training and development of leaders and managers in the sector. 

Supervisors

In terms of management research, Prof Erwee supervised research of doctoral students in Singaporean telecommunications companies, Australian agribusiness and regional business networks. She has supervised studies on human resource management practices in German, Thai, Indonesian and Indian companies and has co-authored presented papers in international conferences and to professional societies.  She completed case studies on human resource and diversity management in Australian and South African organisations to improve organisational performance. This demonstrates her passion for research specific to aspects of management. In terms of consultancies in the field, she has extended practical experience in public and private sector organisations in Australia in the design of programs in leadership, human resource management or general management that could be applied in this innovative research.

Assoc Prof Swanepoel has been intimately involved in the design, development and delivery of leadership and management development interventions since the early 1980’s. As full Professor and Director (Corporate Programmes) at the Graduate School of Leadership Development, University of South Africa, his portfolio has specifically been to work together with other private and public sector organisations to identify leadership and management training and development needs and capacity challenges in these organisations, to design and develop leadership and management development programmes that will develop the leadership capacity of these organisations, to accredit, evaluate and monitor the quality and standards of the delivery of these programmes on an ‘in-house’ basis. These competencies are invaluable in this research.