The DeGroote School of Business Celebrates SSHRC Grant Success

The DeGroote School of Business is pleased to announce that 11 of its researchers have been awarded grants through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This year, these outstanding researchers from strategic management, health policy, information systems, finance and economics, human resources, and marketing have been awarded funding to support research and student training across a broad spectrum of societal issues.

SSHRC Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities, supporting long-term research initiatives that are central to advancing knowledge and addressing complex issues pertaining to individuals and societies, and to further our collective understanding.

Congratulations to the lead researchers, co-applicants, collaborators, and students involved in these exciting multidisciplinary and highly collaborative projects!

Researchers in the DeGroote School of Business attracted 12 awards:

Research team: Goran Calic, Strategic Management and Maryam Ghasemaghaei, Information Systems.
Project title: Strategic cascades for big data utilization.
Amount awarded: $76,978

This project will explore how big data strategies emerge within firms and which of those strategies is most likely to result in performance improvements.

Research team: James Gillett, Faculty of Social Sciences; Brian Detlor, Information Systems, DeGroote School of Business; and Nicole Dalmer and Meredith Griffin, Health, Aging & Society.
Project title: Toward the development of a framework for research collaboration between public libraries and universities.
Amount awarded: $24,055

This community-based research project to investigate the research needs, practices and components of successful research partnerships. Partnering with the Hamilton Public Library, the team is conducting in-depth interviews with library staff working in leadership roles to understand how public libraries use and engage in research.

Research team: Jenna Evans, Health Policy and Management, DeGroote School of Business and Gregory Richards, Tefler School of Management, University of Ottawa.
Collaborators: Jeremy Veillard (World Bank) and Sarah Wheeler (Ontario Health), both affiliated with the Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, University of Toronto.
Project title: The impact of system-level performance management on local improvement in healthcare: A behavioural lens.
Amount awarded: $79,902

This project will explore how provincial policies related to performance in healthcare influence local improvement, which will include in-depth case studies of ‘most improved’ and ‘least improved’ networks on four performance indicators.

Research team: Maryam Ghasemaghaei, Information Systems, DeGroote School of Business and Ofir Turel, Information Systems, California State University, Fullerton.
Project title: Does data utilization lead to enhancing employees’ cheating behaviour? The role of individual characteristics and goal setting.
Amount awarded: $99,984

This research program seeks to understand the specific unexpected and negative outcome of utilizing big data, namely workplace cheating behaviour.

Researcher: Rick Hackett, Human Resources and Management.
Project title: The emerging importance of leader and employee character.
Amount awarded: $156,734

This program will encompass a series of studies comparing moral models of leadership to more established approaches to determine the strength of their unique ties to a series of outcomes important to employees and/or employers.

Researcher: John Maheu, Finance and Business Economics.
Project title: New approaches to modelling time dependence in predictive distributions for economics and finance.
Amount awarded: $149,550

This award will support several projects that will improve econometric methodology and forecasting through the design and implementation of new modelling methods utilizing economic and financial data.

Researcher: Ekaterina Malinova, Finance and Business Economics.
Collaborators: Andreas Park, University of Toronto and Andriy Shkilko, Wilfrid Laurier University
Project title: The economics of decentralized finance and open platforms.
Amount awarded: $118,942

This project explores the implications of the digital transformation within the financial sector with insights relevant to various stakeholders from innovators, incumbents, regulators, and policy makers.

Research team: Sean O’Brady, Human Resources and Management, DeGroote School of Business and Virginia Doellgast, Cornell University. Collaborators: Nell Geiser, Communications Workers of America and Mike Yam, Unifor.
Project title: Job quality and the politics of technological change: A comparative analysis of contact centres in Canada, Germany, and the United States.
Amount awarded: $59,655

The research team will examine contact centres in the three referenced countries in response to investments in new technologies. Given the intensified pace of change it is important to understand how political factors influence the effects of new technologies on job quality.

Research team: Yang Pan, Marketing and Ruhai Wu, Marketing.
Project title: Multi-category analysis: reconciling habitual and situational shopping behaviour.
Amount awarded: $71,544

The research team will develop retail-based models that will facilitate managerial decision making related to multi-category management by incorporating factors that impact choices within shopping trips and the frequency of shopping trips.

Research team: Yang Pan, Marketing, DeGroote School of Business and Gary Russell, University of Iowa
Project title: A multivariate spatial model to predict demand for a new store without historical data.
Amount awarded: $34,356

The objective of this research is to develop a spatial market model that can be used to predict the demand (choices) of all categories of a new chain store prior to opening given the potential location and characteristics.

Researcher: Sash Vaid, Marketing, DeGroote School of Business.
Collaborators: Fred Feinberg, University of Michigan and Peggy Lindner, University of Houston.
Project title: Impact of multiple digital sellers on customer utility.
Amount awarded: $37,364

This research will focus on the value of more (vs. less) sellers in two¬sided B2B electronic markets; it aims to understand the specific influence of multiple digital sellers on customer utility.

Researcher: Kevin Veenstra, Accounting and Financial Management Services, DeGroote School of Business.
Collaborator: Zhuoyi Zhao, Wilfred Laurier University.
Project title: The impact of temporary workers on firm performance.
Amount awarded: $59,808

This research will address the comparative productivity of a mix of hourly wage and salaried workers (as compared to salaried workers or hourly wage workers alone), the role of performance transparency and the resulting level of innovation.

McMaster University awarded nearly $2.3 million from SSHRC

Sixteen McMaster University researchers have been awarded nearly $2.3 million from SSHRC. Their projects are as diverse as their disciplines – from Gateway Cities to big data to the social interactions of making music to union politics in the 21st Century.

A full list of the awards can be found on the SSHRC website.