Business School Researchers win $2 million in grants

Seven UNSW Business School researchers have won more than $2 million from the Australian Research Council (ARC), for projects starting from 2016, including almost a third of the national early career awards for business research.

DECRA (Discovery Early Career Awards) are ARC awards for the best and brightest young researchers across Australia.

It is highly competitive and of the 12 business-related DECRAs awarded, UNSW Business School received a third of them.

 "What is really striking is how well our early career researchers have done. Normally we would hope for one or two (DECRA), but we have four successful applicants, "said Professor James Morley, Associate Dean of Research.

The DECRA projects are:

• $371, 000 for research into persuasion mechanisms in real world situations – e.g. whether campaigns should target different consumers with different information ( Dr Anton Kolotilin from the School of Economics)
  
• $361,958 for research into the challenges of an increasing indigenous disability population, and how disability income support policies affect their socio-economic wellbeing (Dr Karen Soldatic from the Centre for Social Impact)
  
• $360,000 on improving corporate disclosure in Australia (Dr Wei Chen from the School of Accounting)
  
• $292,251 for research into a new model for tax deductibility of gifts (Associate Professor Fiona Martin from the School of Taxation & Business Law).
  

Also, business researchers were successful in three Discovery Project grants for 2016-2018:

Dr Will Felps (and Professor Dr Thomas Lee from the University of Washington) were awarded $173,596 to research whether organisations should employ over/underqualified individuals to achieve lower turnover rates and best performance.

Associate Professor Elisabetta Magnani from the School of Economics (with colleagues from other universities) was awarded $239,000 for research into how difficulties in accessing credit markets affect small and medium enterprise's decisions on employment and wages.

Professor Roger Simnett from the School of Accounting and Centre for Social Impact was awarded $265,000 for research into extended reporting and assurance for not-for-profit organisations.

Four UNSW Business academics were also successful via applications through other faculties in joint projects:

• Associate Professor Pauline Grosjean from School of Economics, with colleagues from School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Toulouse School of Economics was awarded $592,800 to research how intra-sexual competition and inter-sexual conflict interacts with economic circumstances to shape gendered behaviour.
  

• Professor Hazel Bateman from School of Risk & Actuarial Studies, with her colleague from School of Psychology was awarded $209,500 to identify reasons why some people fail to plan for retirement.
  

• Professor Gary Monroe and Dr Maria Balatbat from the School of Accounting, along with colleagues from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and other universities were awarded a LIEF Grant of $260,000 to enable researchers  to collaborate in an Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory.

 Full list of grant winners can be found on the ARC website.