Research

Business, Management and Finance research strengths

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UQ Business and Management researchers tackle a wide range of topics facing businesses in Australia and globally, with expertise spanning start-up and entrepreneurial firms, the challenges facing larger organisations around their strategy, efforts at building high performance work cultures, staying innovative, and competing successfully as international businesses. Finance, Investment and Banking researchers at UQ study the decisions of firms and individuals and their interrelationship with financial institutions. UQ has specific expertise in firm valuation, asset pricing and portfolio analysis.

The strength of these areas of research was recently recognised with the highest possible rating of well above world standard in the 2012 Excellence in Research for Australia exercise, placing UQ research amongst the very best.

Together Business, Government, Industry, Management and Finance researchers at UQ have a wide network of Government, industry and commercial partners that frequently commission research and industry consultancies through UQ Business School Commercial, an arm of the University’s commercialisation company, UniQuest Pty Ltd. Organisations also tap into the lessons learned from cutting-edge research by sending their managers to a wide range of Executive Education Programs conducted at UQ’s Central Plaza One facility in the Brisbane CBD. Business partners undertaking executive education activities include Laing O’Rourke, Thiess, Vale, Glencore Xstrata, Origin Energy, Bank of Queensland, Meat and Livestock Australia, Brisbane City Council and Queensland Health.

UQ’s Business, Management and Finance research is concentrated in the School of Business but also spans other schools based in the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, as well as the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The UQ Business School is located at UQ St Lucia and centrally in the Brisbane CBD. It offers Australia’s top ranked MBA program. It was the first business school in Australia to meet the high standards of the world’s most influential accrediting bodies – the US-based AACSB International and Europe’s EQUIS accreditation. 

UQ has particular expertise in the areas of: 

  • Firm Internationalisation and International Business
  • Innovation Strategy and Entrepreneurship
  • Sustainability Strategy
  • Leadership and Change Management
  • Human Resource Management and Organisational Development
  • Corporate Social Performance
  • Banking and Finance
  • Investment and Portfolio Analysis
  • Managerial Incentives and Corporate Governance 

Business, Management and Finance in brief

  • More than 75 full-time equivalent researchers
  • More than 150 PhD and MPhil students in 2014
  • More than 880 publications since 2008
  • More than $13.5 million in research funding since 2008
  • Banking, Finance and Investment and Business and Management research rated at the highest level – well above world standard – in the 2012 Excellence in Research for Australia exercise. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability and Marketing research rated above world standard.

Highlights of UQ Business, Management and Finance

Delivering research that is industry relevant 

UQ Business and Management researchers are led by a large group of internationally recognised Professors (including Neal Ashkanasy, Victor Callan, Mark Dodgson; all Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia). Research from this group has supported policy and program initiatives in Australian and State Governments around innovation, responses to skills shortages, support for small business and efforts to build upon the management and leadership skills of Australian public and private sector organisations. Their research projects have partners such as: Queensland Health; Brisbane City Council; Victoria State Emergency; QMI Solutions; Defence Materiel Organisation; BHP Billiton; Rio Tinto and Glencore Xstrata. Members of this group deliver several executive education programs including The Leadership Challenge, Leadership Styles and Practices, Leadership for Senior Executive Women, Leadership for the Non-Profit Sector, Leading People and Teams, and Effective Business Negotiation. 

Providing high-level advice to large firms

UQ’s Finance research is led by world-renowned Finance Professors Stephen Gray, Frank Finn, Robert Faff and Tom Smith. Professors Stephen Gray, Frank Finn and their team pinpointed the value of imputation tax credits, a matter of extreme policy importance. Professor Robert Faff is the most published Finance academic worldwide in the last 50 years and his work investigates a wide range of topics including rights issues, underwriting and liquidity. Professor Tom Smith is the most published Finance Professor in tier 1 journals in Australia and New Zealand over the same period. His work has provided an analytical and empirical methodology for discerning who wins and who loses in corporate takeovers.

UQ’s research provides vital, high-level advice to large firms in the areas of risk management, investment decisions, superannuation funding, share trading portfolio management and the financial factors influencing firm performance. Research from the group – with collaborating partners including banks, large superannuation firms, treasury departments, and consulting companies – has supported policy and program initiatives in Australian and State Governments. Members of the group deliver a wide range of programs about financial and risk management as part of the Business School’s Executive Education series, including Managing Risk and Quality, Finance and Accounting for Non-Finance Executives, and Business Productivity and Process Improvement.

Commercialising new business products and tools

Commercialisation products from research by the Business, Management and Finance group include new finance and research tools, policy advice to the business and public sector around cost of capital, debt markets, taxation, financial integrity and surviving financial crises, and network mapping tools to help firms identify who they are working with, and what links they might want to strengthen to further their partnerships and competitive advantage.

Developed in collaboration with Deloitte; Brisbane City Council; Queensland Government Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts (DSITIA); Regional Development Australia Brisbane; and Enterprise Connect, the Brisbane Innovation Scorecard has proved to be a popular tool to assist smaller businesses in promoting efforts at being more innovative, as do regular surveys to help firms – through UQ Business School Commercial – to identify employee and customer attitudes.