Our research

Entrepreneurship and creativity are a new frontier of knowledge development and application, helping to drive social progress and radically altering established employment and career structures. This shift in focus to practical innovation is intertwined with the transition from the industrial to the entrepreneurial society.

This research area examines knowledge transfer between people and within organisations, and how knowledge is used through creative, entrepreneurial processes, such as starting new businesses or developing new products, services or improved practices.

Research in this area explores the flow of people, products and services to meet changing global business demands, and the strategic challenges and opportunities that arise from links and barriers that exist between national economies. It also aims to understand the diverse activities that comprise strategy and international business and its influence on the economic, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing of people globally.

Topics examined include:

• cross-border business activity by multinational businesses and SMEs
• top management teams and strategic decision-making
• procurement and operations management
• resource management processes in family firms.

Our department takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of organisations, work and society. Scholars in this area research private, public and not-for-profit organisations to interrogate, understand and improve how work, labour and employment are organised.

The Department of Management’s research in this area has contributed to government inquiries, policy initiatives, public discourse and industry best practices.

Core research topics include:

• business ethics
• corporate sustainability and responsibility
• equality and diversity
• the nature and regulation of employment
• labour and business history
• philosophies of management.

The rapidly changing employment landscape and shifting concepts of the modern workplace pose challenges for managers, employees and governments. Organisations are essentially shaped by human input but also have the potential to significantly impact workers’ lives and careers.

Our research in this area addresses the role of organisations in supporting health and wellbeing and the potential for worker participation, resilience, and growth across the lifespan.

Our research interests in this area encompass topics such as:

• work-family interface
• workplace health, wellbeing, and safety
• employee-employer exchange relationships
• employee performance and engagement
• career planning and management.

Francesco Chirico is a Professor of Strategy and Family Business at Macquarie Business School and founder and owner of ‘Francesco Chirico Consulting AB’ in Sweden.

Professor Chirico’s research focuses on the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship with a special focus on family-owned firms. His research explores resource management processes and acquisition and divestiture strategies that affect the realisation of competitive advantage, innovation and value creation in organisations.

Chirico’s research has been published in international journals such as:

• Journal of Management
• Journal of Management Studies
• Entrepreneurship, Theory & Practice
• Organization Studies
• Human Relations
• Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
• Small Business Economics
• Family Business Review.

How do firms manage difficult situations? Innovation, persistence and resilience

Chirico’s recent research work has examined how small and medium enterprises, and more specifically family firms, cope with difficult situations deriving from internal or external factors/environments.

For instance, in one study, Chirico found that “when the environment gets tough, the family gets going.” In turbulent or difficult times, family firms are more able to increase their efforts and energies towards innovation to sustain their business, which is, after all, their ‘baby’ – or more largely, their family.

In another study, Chirico found that family firms are more persistent and resilient than other organisations under financial distress and that the strong local network that family firms enjoy facilitates their growth.

Alison Pullen is Professor of Management and Organisation Studies in the Department of Management, Macquarie Business School, and is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Gender, Work and Organization.

Over the course of her career, Professor Pullen’s work has been concerned with analysing and intervening in the politics of work as it concerns gender discrimination, identity politics, and organisational injustice.

Pullen is Series Editor of the Routledge Focus Women Writers in Organization Theory series (with Robert McMurray, UK). She is also Associate Editor of Organization, and sits on the editorial boards of Organization Studies and International Journal of Management Reviews, among several other journals.

In 2018, Pullen was named Gender Studies Field Leader by The Australian.

ARC Discovery project: Leadership diversity through relational intersectionality in Australia

This project investigates the relationships between people in organisations and how they are affected by different forms of workplace diversity. The project examines the relationships between those who are defined as leaders (either by themselves or by the organisations in which they work) and those individuals with whom they work.

The project develops a politically relevant and theoretically informed approach to leadership as it is practised at the intersection of the racial, gender and class differences that characterise the relationships between leaders and followers.

This research is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP180100360).

Learn more on the project website.

Patrick Raymund James Garcia is Professor of Management and Organisational Behaviour in the Department of Management at Macquarie University.

Prior to joining Macquarie University, Professor Garcia worked at the Australian Catholic University and was an Assistant Professor in the Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont, USA. Garcia’s research interests include employee resilience and wellbeing, workplace aggression and deviance, and career persistence among adolescents and older workers.

Garcia’s work has been published in top-tier management journals such as:

• the Journal of Applied Psychology
• Leadership Quarterly
• Human Resource Management
• Journal of Organizational Behavior
• the Journal of Vocational Behavior.

ARC Discovery project: How personal and workplace experiences shape older workers’ psychological contracts

This project aims to track the trajectories of older workers’ psychological contracts that shape their give and take with the organisation.

Little is understood about how these psychological contracts change as older workers continue to pursue work through their fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth decades of life. This project tracks older workers over intensive, repeated in-depth interviews and a large-scale longitudinal panel study.

The outcomes fill significant gaps in our understanding of older workers’ needs and orientation toward work and identify the age-related changes and organisational practices that spur older workers to sustain a strong trajectory of productive participation in the workforce.