MBS PhD student wins two international awards
Apr, 2009
A research paper by a Melbourne Business School (MBS) PhD candidate about the impact of workforce gender diversity on organizational performance has won two international awards.
After being submitted to the Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO) Division of the Academy of Management for its 2009 meeting in Chicago, the paper won two awards from the GDO Division: the Dorothy Harlow Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award.
The paper's author, Muhammad Ali is a PhD candidate at MBS under the supervision of Dr Isabel Metz (MBS) and Professor Carol Kulik (University of South Australia).
His paper titled "The Impact of Gender Diversity on Performance in Services and Manufacturing Organizations" investigates the impact of workforce gender diversity on performance in services and manufacturing organizations listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. The gender diversity-performance relationship was tested using archival quantitative data with time lags of two and five years. The results show that gender diversity affects organizational performance. And compared to manufacturing organizations, services organizations are better positioned to benefit from gender diversity.
The two awards are decided by separate committees and are completely independent. The Dorothy Harlow Best Paper Award is given annually to author(s) of the best paper submitted to the GDO Division of the Academy of Management. This award honors the late Dr. Dorothy Harlow, who pioneered the effort to establish the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division. The Best Student Paper Award, as the name suggests, is given to the best manuscript among all the papers submitted by students from all over the world.
Muhammad and his coauthors (Professor Kulik and Dr Metz) will each receive a plaque and a cash award at the GDO Division's Business meeting, which is scheduled for August 10, 2009 in the Sheraton Hotel, Chicago, USA.
