Abstract
In this paper, a system of internal and external bench-marking is described. The bench-marking was developed to facilitate the tracking of change management programmes within a business school in an Australian university. The first change management programme was developed to modify faculty members’ attitudes towards research. It was necessary to bench-mark attitudes towards research with a comparable university which was also more research mature, thus providing a role model or goal. The bench-marking also allowed the tracking of the change management programme per se. Research attitude assessment was undertaken using social judgement theory in both the Australian business school and the ‘peer’ business school in the USA. The bench-marking was then performed using this data. However, while attitudes had been successfully modified, considerable change was still needed to bring about a significant increase in research activity and output, ie research behaviour. A second change management programme was devised and implemented. The impact of this second programme then needed to be tracked through observing the change that was being wrought on research activity via bench-marking.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Barbara Cargill
BARBARA CARGILL has been Head of the School of Business at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia for the past four years, and of the precursor School of Management for another three. Ms Cargill has had a career as a counsellor, organisational psychologist, and a consultant in organisational and management development before her fifteen years in academe. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Education from the University of Melbourne. Her teaching, consulting and research have combined her interests in eclectic theories of human resource management and organisation behaviour with a strong practitioner understanding of application and best practice, especially related to strategic change and the leadership of it. She has worked as an external and internal change agent, more lately concentrating on intensive culture and capability change within her current School. Ms Cargill has published on various matters related to organisational change and leadership. In recent years she has been involved in the development of a number of mixed-mode models which integrate ‘soft’ more intuitive approaches with ‘harder’ more structured models, exploring more integrated ‘best practice’ solutions to complex organisational and management problems.
Miles Nicholls
MILES NICHOLLS (Professor) has a Personal Chair in the School of Business at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Nicholls received his MEc and PhD degrees from Monash University in Melbourne specialising in econometrics and operations research. Currently, Nicholls is Director of Research and Director of the Centre for Business and Management Research in the School of Business (where he is also Research Leader in Mixed-Mode Modelling). Nicholls has published in excess of seventy refereed articles and conference papers primarily in the areas of production process modelling, and mixed mode modelling and is currently involved in use of mixed mode modelling in change management. Journals published in include, Journal of the Operational Research Society, European Journal of Operational Research, Operations Research, Journal of Global Optimization, Journal of Heuristics and Decision Sciences. In recent years, Nicholls has been actively involved in the Operational Research Society of the United Kingdom, The Decision Sciences Institute and the Western Decision Sciences Institute (where he is currently Vice President for Programmes-Elect).
Krishna Dhir
KRISHNA DHIR is a Professor and Dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College, Mount Berry, Georgia, USA. Dr Dhir holds a PhD in Management Science and Administrative Policy from the University of Colorado in Boulder, an MBA in Business Administration from the University of Hawaii; an MS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University, and a BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India. Dr Dhir has published in a number of journals, including Academia, Applied Mathematical Modelling, Business and Society, Cement Technology, Community College Frontiers; Community and Junior College Journal, Decision Sciences, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Indian Journal of Public Administration, International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Public Administration, Journal of Business and Management; International HR Journal, Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, Journal of Information and Optimization Sciences; Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Management International Review, Personnel Journal, and Telematics India: Journal of Communications, Computers and Networking. Dr Dhir is currently Vice President for Programs for the Western Decision Sciences Institute.