Latest News
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Telfer alumni Kim Ades (MBA 1993) and Nichole Grenier (BCom 1990) discuss how job candidates can overcome this type of anxiety and instead use genuine, powerful strategies to create a positive impression during a job interview.
Kim Ades: Helping people tackle the fear of being evaluated in a job interview in three steps
Kim Ades, president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching, received a BA from the University of Ottawa with major in psychology and then decided to pursue an MBA. She was always interested in understanding what triggers anxiety and stress:
“Some of us can experience anxiety when we are preparing for a job interview, an important presentation at work, or a big event in our lives, and expect a negative outcome,” she says.
As an executive coach for nearly two decades, she takes people through a three-step process to overcome the anxiety created by their fears of winning and losing. The first step is to describe what it looks like to experience failure. “I ask people to imagine the worst possible scenario; one where they experience disastrous failure,” says Kim. She then asks them to express their feelings in journal entries that they share with their coach, a task that job candidates often find very difficult.
The second step is not to ignore the difficult feelings that many candidates might experience when preparing for a job interview. Instead, they should face the possibility of failure head on: “I ask people to imagine that they might fail a job interview, and then imagine what it looks like to recover from that failure,” says Kim. Envisioning recovery helps candidates build resilience and strength to handle any negative evaluation they might receive in a job interview.
The final step is to envision complete success. Job candidates are encouraged to imagine what it looks like to step into the interview, successfully answer the interviewers’ questions, and walk away thinking: “That was the best interview I ever had.”
Nichole Grenier: Preparation is the best strategy to show yourself in the best light
Nichole Grenier, founder of Grenier Executive & Business Coaching, graduated from Telfer with a major in accounting. She became a certified accountant and after many years’ working in the field, she was asked why she kept focusing on people instead of numbers. Her passion to work with people led to a career shift to human resources and to her becoming a certified coach.
Nichole believes that when studying the impact of anxiety on interview performance, coaches, and researchers should not only look at personality, but also on how culture, gender, and age affect how individuals cope with the fear of being evaluated. “The interview setting is very stressful, and people can react very differently to this specific situation.” For Nichole, there are many ways for individuals to position themselves as suitable candidates for the job, but the key to success is preparation and practice. This includes mock interviews with family, friends, or a coach:
“Preparing well is what allows you to show yourself in the best light,” she says.
Nichole asks candidates to do some research on the organization and its work culture: “What is the culture and how will I fit in? For example, should I be prepared to dress for an office environment that is more formal or more relaxed?”
She also advises candidates to carefully examine the job description and identify the key competencies required for the job. This can indicate what the employer is looking for and guide the employee in showing that they are capable, competent, and have experience in performing that type of work. “Even if you don’t have a specific example to illustrate that you developed a competency, you can think about transferable skills you developed in a previous job.”
Kim and Nichole share tips to help job candidates impress the interviewer with honesty
Kim and Nichole also commented on a new study coauthored by Silvia Bonaccio, a full professor at the Telfer School of Management. The research suggests that some anxious job candidates are more likely to use deceptive strategies to impress the interviewer. Both alumni offered valuable recommendations to help all candidates make a positive—and honest—impression during a job interview:
Back up exuberant statements with tangible facts
Kim believes that extroverts who wish to impress the interviewer do not need to “turn down” their extraversion when describing their success. However, she advises them to support their accomplishments with tangible, supportable facts, such as “I increased the company’s revenues by 50% last year.”
Show your credibility and impact
Nichole advises candidates to be prepared to tell stories based on past performance. Ideally, for every story, candidates should also provide a reference who can back up their story and prove to the interviewer that they have credibility and are suitable candidates for the job. Another way to leave a great first impression with the interviewer is to tell your most impactful stories. “Maybe you recently optimized the process of an entire company with 1,000 employees.”
Curiosity and interest go a long away
For those candidates who rank low on extraversion, Kim thinks that there is nothing wrong with being an introvert. “As an introvert, I think that sometimes curiosity and interest trump being outgoing.” When job candidates show they are honestly interested in the organization and their work, “employers will be able to evaluate their readiness, and their fit for the role, as opposed to whether or not they rank high on extraversion,” she adds.
Be confident
Nichole reinforces that introverts should show confidence during the interview. Candidates should recognize their ability to collaborate with teams and be inclusive when referring to team accomplishments, but it is equally important to use I statements to show how they contributed to the team. “The interviewer will want to know what you did to promote teamwork, so you can say we (the team) went for a mountain bike trip but use I did this if you were the person who planted the idea of the trip.” Downplaying these contributions can be too risky, especially if candidates are applying for a leadership position.
Make sure your actions reflect your vision
Kim often asks candidates how they would like to be seen and if their actions correspond with that vision. “A lot of times people behave in ways that clash with their desired outcomes; it is important to help job candidates understand that the action of stretching the truth doesn’t necessarily lead to the outcome they are looking for.” Nichole agrees that if anyone believes that they should stretch the truth to land the ideal job, then they should consider coaching to develop skills to resist the temptation to use deception. “Being manipulative or cunning can be a great skill if you are applying for a job as a bank robber,” she jokes.
You are also in a position of evaluating
Kim advises candidates to run their own mental interview with the company based on what they learn during the recruitment process. Nichole believes that if they do their research well, they will be prepared to ask the right questions and understand if this organization is the right fit for them.
Are you looking for a job but experience interview anxiety? Prepare, practice, and overcome your fears of being evaluated during an interview.
Kim Ades, of Frame of Mind Coaching, developed a coaching methodology to help executives and entrepreneurs become more effective leaders. Learn more about Kim
Nichole Grenier, of Grenier Executive & Business Coaching, offers customized coaching to groups, teams, and individuals to unlock potential, remove barriers, and maximize performance. Learn more about Nichole
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Originally published on LinkedIn on May 14, 2021
We are delighted to announce the release of the report, Entrepreneurship Policies through a Gender Lens by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD). This timely report contains a collection of 27 policy insight notes on long-running policy issues in women’s entrepreneurship support. OECD data and editorial insights reinforce the policy note findings. This report will be of interest to women entrepreneurs, policymakers, women’s enterprise advocates, and academics at a time when evidence-based sights are needed to drive post-pandemic recovery measures.
Background
This report is a collaboration between the OECD and the Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Policy Research Project (Global WEP), which is a network of established researchers from over 34 countries. The project was led by Jonathan Potter (Head of the Entrepreneurship Policy and Analysis Unit) of the OECD and Dr. Colette Henry, Chair of Global WEP - (Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland; Chair, Global WEP), Dr. Susan Coleman (University of Hartford, United States) and Dr. Barbara Orser (University of Ottawa, Canada). Excerpts from the Executive Summary follow.
What will you learn from this report?
Women’s enterprise issues have become even more relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to set women’s entrepreneurship back 20 years. The notes contained in this report cover a range of policy challenges – including in relation to formal and informal institutions, access to finance, access to skills and policy design – and policy instruments that can be used to address them. The notes underline core principles and good practices to follow in designing and implementing policies.
This report also offers an overview of the state of women’s entrepreneurship in OECD countries and beyond, using gender-disaggregated indicators on business creation, self-employment and barriers to business start-up, sustainability and growth. These indicators illustrate gender gaps in entrepreneurship, not only in activity rates but also in the proportion of entrepreneurs who create jobs for others. Persistent gender gaps call on public policy to continue to address gender inequalities in entrepreneurship.
Overall, this report provides an important source of new insights to assist policy makers and advocates seeking to strengthen holistic interventions in support of women’s entrepreneurship, and to encourage and facilitate peer learning across countries.
Report highlights
The policy insight notes in this report argue that mainstream entrepreneurship policies and programmes are not gender neutral. Explicit approaches are needed to address barriers to entrepreneurship that are experienced differentially by men and women, and to ensure that women have equal access to policy support aimed at entrepreneurs.
To an extent, this reality is recognised by the wide range of dedicated policy interventions for women’s entrepreneurship that have been put in place internationally across many contexts. The interventions address barriers in the areas of entrepreneurship culture, entrepreneurship skills, access to finance, entrepreneurship networks and ecosystems, and regulatory institutions, as well as approaches to designing and delivering policies to achieve gender equality. These approaches illustrate the dynamic nature of women’s entrepreneurship policy, as well as the gains that are being made as policy makers recognise the needs and contributions of women entrepreneurs.
However, women’s enterprise policy initiatives are often fragile – time-limited, small-scale, sparse, symptom-oriented – and not sufficiently underpinned by a genuine vision and framework for women’s entrepreneurship. To address these limitations, there is a need to increase awareness and knowledge about policies that engage and support women entrepreneurs within entrepreneurial ecosystems. Adherence to gender-blind entrepreneurship policies will be ineffective in achieving the benefits to be had from truly stimulating equal opportunities in entrepreneurship.
There are three main priorities for further policy development:
Overarching policy frameworks for women’s entrepreneurship need to be introduced
In some countries, policy frameworks for women’s entrepreneurship are well-developed and women’s entrepreneurship programmes work effectively towards the global objectives and priorities set out in these frameworks. However, in other countries, women’s entrepreneurship policies are incomplete or ineffective, often because the programmes are not consistent with global policy objectives. Governments should do more to strengthen policy frameworks for women’s entrepreneurship. They also need to dedicate greater resources to ensure that programmes are informed by frameworks and are sustainable in the long-term.
Women’s entrepreneurship policy interventions must reflect context
Governments need to ensure that policy interventions are appropriate for the institutional, cultural and social contexts. The policy insight notes describe vastly different contexts, ranging from developed economies where gender inequalities persist but are relatively subtle to developing economies with strong patriarchal systems. Women’s entrepreneurship policy can be effective in any context, but the objectives, instruments and delivery mechanisms must be selected accordingly.
More evaluation evidence is needed as a foundation for scaling policy initiatives
A wide variety of policy instruments and delivery approaches have been put in place in many countries. A key challenge is to assess the effectiveness of these approaches in different situations and different combinations and to scale and transfer the most effective approaches. More evidence is needed on the effectiveness of women’s entrepreneurship supports in different contexts. This includes, for example, the impacts of measures for training and mentoring, financing, and the role of measures that influence underlying institutional conditions. Information is also needed on the extent to which measures need to be applied as packages. The lack of evaluation evidence represents a lost opportunity to learn from high impact policy interventions and may lend to the vulnerability of women’s enterprise programme funding.
Download the Entrepreneurship Policies through a Gender Lens report
- Category: Health Systems Management
Written by Mirou Jaana, professor and director of the Masters in Health Administration program at Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. This article was originally published on Policy Options on May 5, 2021.
It is impossible to imagine our world today without internet, digital transactions, video conferencing or exchanges with family and colleagues via a computer or mobile device. Yet, we still live with the idea of our health care system lacking seamless electronic information exchange between health care organizations, providers and patients. Although some progress has been made on this front, this is a reality that persists to varying degrees today.
It has been a journey of a thousand miles. Health care has been closely accompanying the journey of digital connectivity but has kept shy from fully riding the wave. The reasons may vary depending on the perspectives of different stakeholders, but one constant stands: it is difficult to fully assess and understand the state of digital connectivity in our health care system today.
If we think of the health care system as a spider web, we can find parts of this web that are well constructed and connected, whereas other sections are still missing essential threads. In Canada, there are significant variations between and within provinces and territories in digital health connectivity and the inherently complex nature of the health care system further complicates the situation. This complexity is manifested by a dual provincial/territorial and federal jurisdiction with well institutionalized policies, funding and reimbursement structures; a digital divide across more than one dimension – rural vs. urban, older vs. younger generation, diverse social conditions; and a perplexing fragmentation of health services.
Following the early national IT efforts in Canada in late 1990’s, Canada Health Infoway (CHI), an independent not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government, was established in 2001 with a mandate to lead the national IT efforts. This included the development of an interoperable electronic health record for all Canadians. Since its inception, CHI received $2.45 billion in federal funding and played an active and important role as a strategic investor in health IT projects across provinces and territories, which contributed to improved digital connectivity. These investments evolved over time and expanded in scope from infrastructure-related projects to projects focusing on digital tools used by clinicians, as well as applications allowing patients themselves to collect, retrieve, and manage their health-related data.
We have come a long way as a society on the digital connectivity front in general. According to Statistics Canada, 88 per cent of Canadians and 60 per cent of those 65 years and over have a smartphone. Most Canadians (91 per cent) use the Internet and 75 per cent also use social networking websites and apps.
A recent study showed that around 40 per cent of Canadians track one or more aspect of their health using connected care technologies. This attests to the growing demand for digital connectivity in health care. In turn, health care organizations have been increasingly implementing new systems and technologies at the point of care that support digital connectivity. Around 85 per cent of medical practices are using electronic medical records (EMRs), and hospitals have accelerated the implementation of comprehensive EMRs that replace existing non-integrated systems. For instance, The Ottawa Hospital, in partnership with five other organizations in the Ottawa region, opted for the same EMR system, which will enable timely information sharing, and better connectivity and integration of care.
According to CHI, telehealth use has also grown over time reaching 1.5 million consultations a year, yet this still represents a relatively small portion of the overall health services. Since 2019, two initiatives emerged that aim at improving connectivity in relation to e-prescribing and supporting patients’ access to their health information through patient portals. These initiatives however remain in their early stages, with considerable variation in deployment between and within provinces.
Despite the progress made, considerable challenges and gaps persist. At the patient level, access to health information is limited. Unless receiving care from the same organization, or an integrated system or network of health care providers, a patient navigating the health care system often finds the onus is on them to communicate all relevant information related to their medical history, profile, and medications at each point of care. This is particularly challenging in the case of the elderly with chronic conditions who frequently interact with and move through the health care system.
A recent study on mobile health technology use among people 65 years and older compared to the general adult population reveals that the majority of Canadians using mobile applications and wearables, like smart watches and wristbands for health self-tracking, do not share the data with their health care providers. Enrollment in telehomecare programs for chronic conditions management also remains limited despite the wealth of research evidence demonstrating its effectiveness in reducing hospitalizations and mortality rates, and improving the clinical condition of patients. The success in the integration of pilot telehomecare programs in the standard care, similar to one at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, is minimal.
According to the Canadian Medical Association, limited system interoperability and information integration across the spectrum of care persist. EMRs implementation progressed, but only a small proportion of Canadian medical practices support electronic communication with patients. For example, few medical practices provide electronic appointment requests or prescription refills. Communication of information between general practitioners and specialists, or hospitals and nursing homes, and the sharing of clinical summaries or test results is limited and inconsistent.
In addition, hospitals within the same city that may transfer or refer patients to one another may have EMRs systems that cannot communicate. Most importantly, digital connectivity in the context of long-term and senior care is minimal. The recent COVID-19 pandemic brought to light the dire challenges observed in these settings in relation to connecting the elderly to family, caregivers, and health care providers. It also highlighted existing issues in capturing and sharing timely relevant clinical information with other health care organizations.
The obvious question is where do we go from here? At this stage, regrouping and understanding our current state is instrumental in shaping the decisions that we make regarding the future state of digital connectivity in health care.
A wealth of experience and evidence from over 20 years of health IT projects across all provinces is available. It is our responsibility to leverage this knowledge to inform policy and practical changes, and to apply evidence-based management principles as we plan for the next steps. Federal leadership is critical to endorse a strategic planning exercise at the national level and enable the necessary policy and regulation changes to support it. The Canadian government can play an important role in advancing the digital health agenda through incentives and policies that can catalyze national changes to address the digital divide and current gaps.
In times of crises, we discover our limitations as well as our capabilities. The current pandemic demonstrated that the health care system can be agile and can adapt fast when needed. In response to COVID-19, health care delivery changed overnight in Canada. We broke the inertia and shifted to various forms of virtual care throughout the country that were considered unrealizable prior to the pandemic. Provincial health authorities implemented fee schedule codes to cover virtual health services in a timely response. It was a call for action and the health care system and health authorities responded. However, this crisis also revealed our health care system’s “Achilles heel” – long-term and senior community care, which would greatly benefit from digital connectivity.
It is time for health care to fully ride the digital connectivity wave. A pan-Canadian reform that formally integrates virtual care and connectivity in the discussion on the future of health care is merited. This is a journey of a thousand miles in health care, but we have already started it.
This article is part of the Digital Connectivity in the COVID Era and Beyond special feature.
This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
A new Telfer study, conducted in collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada, identifies action strategies to increase federal SME supplier diversity and inclusive innovation. Showcased at the Chatham House International Policy Forum in the UK, the report provides important benchmarks about the progress of women entrepreneurs in Canada, and sets a standard of reporting in examining gender of firm ownership, breadth and types of innovation and federal SME contracting.
The empirical report and action strategies will be of interest to policymakers, small business and innovation organizations, advocates, industry associations, and corporations that support supplier diversity. The research, for example, helped to inform a key Chatham House conference resolution, one that the W20 adopt entrepreneurship, procurement, and trade as one of its three policy priorities.
Telfer report recommendations include:
- Adopting sector-specific strategies to help achieve the Government of Canada's commitment to increase the participation of women business owners from 10 percent to 15 percent in federal contracting. Sector-specific strategies follow from the Telfer finding that gender differences in the likelihood of SMEs being federal contractors varied significantly by industry sector.
- Improving SME procurement data and analytics, including large samples and detailed analyses to move beyond anecdotal evidence and to increase SME contracting opportunities.
- Developing gender-sensitive procurement training in collaboration with industry organizations, such as Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC), WBE Canada, WEConnect International Canada, Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC), among others.
View the 'Action Strategies to Increase the Diversity of SME Suppliers to The Goverment of Canada` report.
View the full 'Benchmarking SME Suppliers to The Government of Canada' English report.
View Related Telfer Publications and Initiatives.
- Category: Business Analytics and Performance
Big-data analytics investments don’t necessarily mean big impact. Two of our researchers from Telfer are exploring how to get more value from big data.
Telfer Professors Ajax Persaud and Sandra Schillo want to know if small and medium-sized enterprises (SMES) are ready to take advantage of the deluge of data at their disposal, in new research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Mastery of big-data insights was supposed to enable SMEs to punch above their weight. By acquiring the right deep data and analytical skills, SMEs will be well in their way to making better decisions in the new digital landscape. That at least, was the chant small-business leaders were hearing for years. But with more than half of big data projects failing to achieve their objectives, what are Canadian SMEs to do?
“A lot SMEs are proceeding with caution on big-data analytics (BDA), and you can hardly blame them,” professor Schillo contends. The path to achieving value from BDA initiatives is far from clear. “It’s a big concern right now because Canada needs these organizations to stay current on BDA in order to remain globally competitive.”
Professor Persaud observes that “BDA is fast becoming a major focus for corporate executives with the main concern being how to extract maximum value from big data. It will transform corporate governance and decision-making” The transformation is so rapid that Canada’s Big Data Consortium has predicted a massive shortage of employees with the right mix of big data skills. “In a few short years, the ability to store, capture, process, analyze this information became of strategic importance to firms,” explained Persaud. “Every firm today wonders, how can I use it to my advantage?”
But he adds that BDA is still a gamble for most small businesses, even for companies with an appetite to chase big-data insights and resources to put behind the effort. “Capturing and mining the data does not automatically lead to value or better decisions – the right people with the right skills are needed to generate valuable insights and management needs to act strategically to harness the value of the insights.”
With their research, the Telfer researchers will use quantitative and qualitative methods to gauge the readiness of SMEs to leverage big data. Where most of the research in this area focuses on the technologies of big data, professors Persaud and Schillo are interested in BDA management processes, strategies and resources. Along the way, they’ll also contribute towards the development of frameworks, scales and indicators which, again, would illuminate the managerial aspect of big data. They expect to generate practical insights for Canadian SMEs, the academic management field, and the entrepreneurship public-policy community.
The researchers say that, as with any initiative designed to prepare SMEs to exploit big data for competitive advantage, their study will venture into uncertain terrain. But this much appears certain: given SMEs role in the economy, and considering the promise of big data, now is the time to help them unlock the value of big data. “One side, there’s a lot of euphoria about how SMEs might benefit from BDA, and on the other, there are those who say that only a wait-and-see approach will avoid business losses,” says professor Schillo. “But neither extreme is probably very realistic,” professor Persaud adds. “Our hope with this research is to make it a lot more realistic.”
- Category: Rising Stars
“From the staff to the exchange opportunities, the experience has been great. Take it from a student who has graduated twice from the School and just keeps coming back! I’ve really enjoyed my time here,” said Nicolas Legendre, a PhD candidate in Management with a field of study in Finance. Nicolas has shown true commitment to the Telfer family over the past 7 years, completing a Bachelor of Commerce with an option in Finance, a Master of Science in Management with an option in Finance and now a year into his PhD. He continued, “I wanted to continue my studies here because of all the great people I’ve met at Telfer and in other faculties at the University of Ottawa.”
Looking back on his experience as a Teaching Assistant for different statistics courses, completing his MSc, and now working on his PhD, Nicolas noted, “As PhD students, the relationship with faculty changes, becoming more collegial. With professors for example, the relationship is less student-teacher and more of a co-worker kind of relationship, where both parties bounce ideas off each other and learn from one another.”
Through hard work and dedication, Nicolas was the winner of the prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship. He said, “As a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, I was able to apply for the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement, which I was pleased to be granted. Through this scholarship, I am currently in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, investigating their loan guarantee program with Professor Jonathan Scott at Northumbria University. This gave me the opportunity to not only study abroad, but to research a topic that matters to me: as my PhD thesis investigates the Canadian loan guarantee program, this research period abroad is directly related to my PhD thesis. I’ve also had the opportunity to spend weekends traveling around Newcastle, visiting monuments such as Alnwick Castle from the Harry Potter films, and slowly learning the culture here in the Northeast of England. It has been quite the experience so far!”
Nicolas is also the recipient of the Lilian and Swee Chua Goh Doctoral Scholarship. Lilian and Swee Chua Goh will be recognized as Donors of the Year at the Telfer Gala of Excellence on October 21 2017.
Connect with Nicolas Legendre here: www.linkedin.com/in/legendrenicolas
Also – you can follow Telfer’s LinkedIn activities here!
- Category: Health Systems Management
A first-of-its-kind Canada-wide survey of seniors’ health technology-related behavior.
Project title
IT Innovation and the Elderly: Technology Acceptance and Use in the Community
Researcher
Mirou Jaana, Telfer School
Grant supporting this research
SSHRC Insight
Period
2017-2020
Professor Mirou Jaana has launched a new study, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which will provide national data on seniors’ attitudes and behaviors towards health information technology solutions.
Telemonitoring (aka telehomecare) technologies have been around for decades, but little is known empirically about the factors that lead to the acceptance and use of these solutions by seniors. Professor Mirou Jaana says having a better understanding of these factors would assist healthcare providers and policy-makers to develop guidelines that support the integration and optimal use of these solutions for the greatest benefit of patients.
In the first part of her study, she and her colleagues are conducting a Canada-wide survey of seniors that assesses their technology-related attitudes and behaviors. The survey will consider a variety of general e-health applications, as well as specific home-based technologies, that have gained increased attention in recent years, such as smart watches. In the second part of the study, professor Jaana and her team will investigate the factors that affect the acceptance and use of telemonitoring technologies by seniors.
While the features and convenience of these technologies continue to evolve, their basic telemonitoring functions actually haven’t changed all that much, says professor Jaana. “Their essential purpose is to connect a healthcare provider or case manager to a patient who lives in the community (e.g., at home or in a retirement home), and requires close attention and monitoring.” As an example, a patient being monitored for a heart failure condition may use telemonitoring to transmit information such as a change in her or his weight. The nurse could potentially consult with the patient’s physician, and adjust his/her medications accordingly. This early detection of deterioration in a patient’s condition presents important benefits by preventing risky complications and avoiding unnecessary time-consuming hospital visits. This is especially relevant in the case of elderly patients.
Professor Jaana’s new study, focusing on technology acceptance factors, will build on the findings of her previous research which revealed that telemonitoring had significant positive impacts on senior patients’ self-care skills and it benefited them in relation to their chronic disease management. “By focusing on acceptance factors related to these technologies, our research is uncovering potential barriers/facilitators that may enable more effective use of telemonitoring among senior patients with unstable conditions.’’ Identifying in their health status, which they often would not notice on their own, supports timely intervention before complications arise requiring a hospital visit.
“The field of telemonitoring is maturing, but what’s still missing is the empirical insight into how these technologies should be incorporated as part of care guidelines,” professor Jaana contends. “With the continuously growing population of elderly living in the community, it is our responsibility to understand their needs, and leverage existing tools and technologies, like telehomecare applications, to support them in the community.”
- Category: Latest News
When it comes to sustainable development, small and medium-sized enterprises innovate in many subtle ways, says Martine Spence. (Photo: Andrea Campbell / University of Ottawa)
Be it for food, fashion or services, today’s consumers are leaning more and more toward products that are organic, locally produced, reusable and responsibly sourced. Sustainable development is no longer an abstract concept; it has infiltrated every area of daily life.
Is this just another fad or a genuine awakening? In any case, companies can’t ignore it, notes Martine Spence, a professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.
For the past 10 years, Spence has studied the structure and analyzed the social engagement and sustainable-development practices of small and medium-sized entreprises (SMEs). “These companies contribute heavily to national economies, and they create the majority of jobs out there, so their impact on the environment and on society in general is significant,” she explains. “I grew up in the south of France, where there were many small entrepreneurs. When I studied business, large corporations seemed too abstract to me, and too political. But SMEs are led by individuals who have a true passion for their craft, and that’s always intrigued me.”
So how do SMEs implement sustainable-development practices? What prompts them to do so, and what obstacles must they overcome? Martine Spence examines their behaviour on three fronts: respect for the environment, respect for individuals and respect for the community.
“We observed that the level of involvement depends on the entrepreneur’s own conviction. Those who lend importance to these issues in their private lives are the ones who take their business’s social and environmental responsibility to the highest level,” she says.
In fact, SMEs readily adopt green practices, from shutting down computers at night and installing energy-saving thermostats to choosing active transportation and opting for energy-efficient technologies. “SMEs are particularly innovative and flexible; they don’t have shareholders and can quickly adjust their strategy,” says Spence.
She points out that investing doesn’t frighten them either, and that when SMEs buy in, they innovate a lot because they know it will lead to a good return. She adds that for most of these entrepreneurs, making money isn’t the primary goal; it’s more a question of being part of the community and of pursuing their passion.
What is the situation in other countries? Are the same challenges at play? As a member of the Observatoire international du développement durable en PME (Université de Montpellier) in France, Spence also studies the internationalization of SMEs, and she recently compared those in Canada, in Cameroon and in Tunisia. She found that “sustainable development isn’t yet ingrained in the mindset of the South, even if some Tunisian entrepreneurs see in it an opportunity, as it can help them do business with European nations.”
That said, SMEs are nonetheless engaged in their communities, remarks Spence, with some donating a sheep to the community at Eid, for instance, because social engagement is an intrinsic part of their lives, mostly driven by religion.
In the era of globalization, Spence’s findings show that the widespread adoption of sustainable development will be achieved only if sociocultural contexts are considered, and that inspiration for that ideal can come from everywhere—from the North and the South.
by Marine Corniou
- Category: Latest News
Women have been making steady gains in the traditionally male-dominated health care field. They make up over 50% of medical school students across Canada and over 80% of the health care workforce. Yet gender disparities remain. Women lead fewer than 20% of hospitals, and hold relatively few leadership positions overall.
On June 12, efforts to shatter the glass ceiling and empower women leaders in the health care sector received a major thumbs up. The Canadian College of Health Leaders and the Canadian Health Leadership Network, working with University of Ottawa Telfer School of Management professors Ivy Lynn Bourgeault and Barbara Orser, the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvements and the Centre for Research and Education on Women and Work, received $400,000 to advance gender equality in health care, health sciences and indigenous health. The funding was awarded by Status of Women Minister Maryam Monsef as part of the Canada 150 project grants.
The team’s project, Empowering Women Leaders in Health (eWoLIH), aims to transform the health care, health sciences and indigenous health system by increasing participation, visibility and advancement of women in leadership positions. “Our goal is to build a strong and supportive community of established and emerging women leaders, helping them transform the health care system by drawing on women’s unique leadership skills, experiences and contributions,” says Bourgeault, the project lead. “This network will support community outreach initiatives, build partnerships and work to bring down the systemic barriers that contribute to gender inequity in health care, health sciences and indigenous health.”
The project, which will begin in Ottawa, Toronto and London, will first identify the unique systemic barriers limiting women’s participation in leadership roles. Working with partners, the team will develop and put in practice a set of action tools and resources and promote measures to remove these barriers.
By the end of the project, the team plans to have implemented these activities and evaluated their effectiveness. “Women’s leadership in health sciences is critical to advance research on issues specific to women, encourage female scientists and generate new knowledge to improve health and health care. It will also help shape the next generation of health workers and the leaders of tomorrow,” adds Bourgeault.
- Category: Latest News
Apply today to participate in a 10-minute Thesis Competition organized by the Sprott School of Business, the Telfer School of Management, and the Université de Québec en Outaouais’s Département des sciences administratives! On September 29 at Sprott, you’ll have the opportunity to square off against your business-school peers for $6,000 in cash prizes.
To apply, write a one-page submission with your supervisor. Three submissions will be chosen by each institution to advance to the 10-minute Thesis Competition on September 29.
If your proposal does not make the shortlist, you are invited to use it to contribute to a poster session to be held just prior to the thesis competition.
Why a 10-minute Thesis Competition?
By this point in your academic career, you’re probably well acquainted with the traditional academic presentation structure: research problem, theoretical framework, methodology, results, and conclusions – in that order. That you would want to adhere to that structure for most presentations doesn’t surprise us. We get it. It’s a big part of your academic training.
But there’s another important skill for young researchers to have: communicating the impact and significance of their work right up front, and in plain language. So with the Telfer-Sprott-UQO 10-minute Thesis Competition, we’re asking presenters to abandon the traditional academic presentation structure. Instead, find an alternative way to present your project in a way that a lay person would understand. Explain what’s innovative about your project and the potential impact of the research. Tell a story. Look for creative ways to explain how and why your research matters.
Rules
Eligible students/programs
- PhD in Management - Sprott School
- Doctorat en administration, D.B.A. - gestion de projet, UQO
- Information Systems (IS) / Information Technology Management (ITM) students active in the Doctorat en sciences et technologies de l'information, UQO
- PhD in Management - Telfer School of Management
- PhD in Electronic Business Technologies, or EBT - Telfer School
- M.Sc. in Management, M.Sc. in Health Systems, M.Sc. in EBT - Telfer School
Students who presented at the May 2016 Telfer-Sprott-UQO forum are also eligible, provided they apply with a new submission/proposal.
How to apply
Prepare a one-page submission with your supervisor. Include the content that would typically be included in an academic-type presentation, but in a different format – one that highlights what’s innovative about your project and its potential impact. We’re looking for creative ways of explaining how and why the research matters.
Thesis competition - highlights
- Each institution will select 3 students for the presentation competition.
- Each presentation should be no more than 10 minutes in length.
- Presenters will be evaluated on their ability to convey the significance of their research with clarity and impact
- $6,000 in cash prizes will be awarded. 1st prize – $3,000; 2nd prize – $2,000$; 3rd prize – $1,000
Key dates
July 31 - Student submit their notice of intent to participate
August 18 - Due date for one-page submissions, jointly prepared by the student and his/her supervisor
Early September – Telfer School, Sprott School and UQO have each chosen their three presenters
September 29 – 10-minute Thesis Competition and poster session at the Sprott School of Business
- Category: Latest News
Professor Samir Saadi will represent the Telfer School on a team of top researchers examining merger-and-acquisition (M&A) practices at a Joint Israeli-Canadian Research Workshop. Interdisciplinary and inter-university, this workshop will focus on the necessary elements for the success of M&As in Canada and Israel at a moment when both nations are looking to derive more value from these and other forms of corporate reorganization. It will be funded by the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Professor Saadi, an Associate Professor of Finance, brings a background in research on M&A activities in the high-tech industry and on the role of CEO power on M&As. With this project, his expertise will contribute to a better understanding of the potential barriers to successful transactions within the Canadian and Israeli contexts. This initiative comes at a time when firms from both countries frequently find themselves as targets, and therefore, improving the outcomes associated with these deals has consequences for business productivity, for employees, and for the potential adoption of new technologies or expertise
- Category: Latest News
On March 13th, Professor Greg Richards spoke at the conference, “Smart cities: Imagining the future National Capital Region,” held at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Key figures from the academic, public and private sectors exchanged their views on the future of the National Capital Region at this unique event organized by LAC in collaboration with the University of Ottawa and Ottawa 2017, and in partnership with Invest Ottawa and the City of Gatineau.
Professor Richards took part in the opening panel discussion on the smart economy (“Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship, and Citizens’ Participation”). He commented that the National Capital Region, with its strong concentration of knowledge workers, high level of urbanization, and robust technology sector, was well-positioned to develop as a smart city and seize new opportunities to make life better for its citizens. Richards was joined on this panel by John Smit, Manager, Policy Development and Urban Design at the City of Ottawa; Martin Lajeunesse, City Councillor with the City of Gatineau; and Eme Onohua, Vice-President of Global Government Affairs, Xerox Canada.
- Category: Latest News
Ottawa stands poised to develop into an important player in healthcare innovation. And it can get closer to the goal by connecting the region’s clinical innovators to business acumen, and thereby drive better patient care.
That message was a key theme highlighted by Wojtek Michalowski, Vice-Dean of Research and professor of health informatics at the Telfer School of Management, in his presentation at the “I3” – Industry, Issues and Insights – lunchtime event at the Château Laurier on February 7.
Organized by the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce and the Ottawa Business Journal with support from the Telfer School, the event featured a keynote presentation by Ontario chief health innovation strategist William Charnetski, who spoke about efforts by his office to champion the province as a leading centre for new and innovative health technology.
Professor Michalowski took the podium first, and commented that with its large talent pool in healthcare, abundant resources and strong high-tech ecosystem, Ottawa has strong potential to become a national leader in healthcare innovation, provided that other elements are also in place.
One of those elements, he said, is the need for an intrapraneurial mindset. “Innovation in healthcare is like a start-up that is being developed inside the organization or the system. Thus, people who lead it must have knowledge about intrapreneurship, or how to be an entrepreneur on the inside. This means knowing what are the forces that will drive innovation, what are the forces that will kill it, what kind of skills does it require, what are the best practices and processes to follow.”
Another important element, Michalowski said, is greater coordination among healthcare practitioners and health systems researchers. He gave as an example the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange (THTEX), a meeting point for dialogue and learning for healthcare innovators and management and engineering faculties.
“I really believe that Ottawa is in a unique position, with the right size in terms of human capital and scope and a really innovative and talented workforce. There is a lot of enthusiasm on the part of multiple players to innovate, but there is not always coordination, and our hope with the THTEX is to contribute to that coordination.”
An interview with Michalowski following the event was live streamed on the Chamber of Commerce’s Facebook page. You can watch the interview here: https://www.facebook.com/ottawachamberofcommerce/
- Category: Latest News
by Gregory Richards
In 1990, the three biggest companies in the US employed 1.2 million employees to generate a combined revenue of $250 million. In 2014, the 3 biggest companies in the US generated revenues of $247 billion with 137,000 employees[1]. These 3 companies, all from Silicon Valley in San Francisco, generate approximately the same amount of revenue as the 1990 companies with 1,163,000 fewer employees. In case you hadn’t already guessed, the three biggest companies in 1990 were all in automotive manufacturing. While manufacturing will always be a significant part of the economy for both Canada and the US, with more technology being used to enhance human production, the types of skills needed by organizations will shift significantly in the future. Which jobs will grow and which will shrink? More importantly, what are educational institutions doing to prepare managers for the workplace of the future?
The World Economic Forum 2015 global survey of 371 Chief Human Resource Officers concluded that jobs in the following categories are likely to grow:
- management
- finance
- computers
- mathematics
- engineering
- architecture
- sales
- education and training.
By contrast, jobs in manufacturing, construction, extraction, administration, entertainment, and legal services are likely to shrink. Many of the jobs that are likely to grow, however, will still need to be rethought. This rethinking must consider the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Artificial intelligence algorithms for example, can process financial analysis faster and more accurately than most humans. Software advances for computer-aided design allow for virtual experimentation and simulation, thus reducing the time and effort needed for the design.
The good news is that this theme of technology substituting human labour is not new; therefore we should be able to anticipate the managerial skills needed in the future. For example, throughout history, new technologies have driven changes in the supply of labour. As Carl Frey and Michael Osborne[2] point out, deskilling was in fact the outcome of early inventions such as the assembly line and interchangeable parts. In other words, a production task that used be done by one craftsman could be done faster and more effectively by many workers each doing a small part of the job of the craftsman. Job specialization therefore required more workers with lower levels of skills.
The introduction of electricity, however, reversed the deskilling trend. Electricity permitted automation of some operations. Instead of many lower-skilled workers, fewer more highly-skilled workers were needed to ensure that the new machines did what they were supposed to do. This trend has continued with the growth of the digital economy. In fact, many see digitization as the “new electricity” because it is a general purpose asset that can be applied to many different types of tasks in an organization.
What happens to displaced workers? Well, in the past they would re-skill to fit into the new world of work. The same is happening now. But in addition, new jobs were created as technological shifts led to the creation of completely new businesses. Consider that companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft, were not possible before the computer age and the introduction of the Internet. With ongoing digitization, a similar process will occur: reskilling of labour and the growth of previously impossible new businesses.
The challenge for educational institutions is to anticipate and start to build skills now that will be needed in the future. MBA programs in particular, need to continually adjust courses to prepare managers for the digitized workplace of the future. What do these new managerial skills look like?
Consider leading the digital organization. What should a manager know about the use of data, machine learning and artificial intelligence? How should planning processes change to embrace a rapidly changing economy? How should a manager interact with employees who have “grown up digital”? What does the level of connectivity brought about by smartphones and social media channels mean for communication in organizations? What new opportunities for entrepreneurship exist given the mass connectivity of people and machines? While the basic functions of management (planning, leading, organizing) won’t change much in a digital world, the questions mentioned above suggest that the way in which many of the functions are carried out could change dramatically. The Telfer MBA program is aware of these changes and is continually adjusted to reflect this new world of work.
Telfer MBA Program
The Telfer MBA program is designed to connect you to course content that matters to employers in today’s competitive work environments. You can also personalize your learning to explore topics that matter uniquely to you. In addition, we share with you the close connections we’ve forged with the business community to help you build the networks you need to grow your career. Our out-of-class experiences hone the skills you’ve learned in class while creating lasting relationships with colleagues on whom you can count.
- Category: Latest News
Professor Ivy Lynn Bourgeault of the Telfer School of Management, holder of the CIHR Chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources, has won the 2016-2017 Award for Excellence in Research from the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO).
Policy-relevant and impactful research
Her research fosters a better understanding of the sociology of health professions. Her work has a particular focus on the impact of gender on work and the types of tasks assigned to different health professionals. Related to this, she also examines the need to modernize healthcare “scopes of practice” to support new models of care.
She studies the mobility of healthcare workers and the issue of regional workforce planning. Her studies in this area provide insight into the migration of health professionals to and from different countries, including Canada.
She also established a strong reputation for her research on women's health services. Her studies have delved into the healthcare provided to women in rural and remote locations; regional differences in maternity care systems; and the role of midwifery in the provision of primary maternity care.
Professor Bourgeault is an internationally recognized leader and champion in these areas and particularly in health human resources. Her innovative studies put Canada at the forefront of this relatively new field that has developed rapidly in response to critical health workforce challenges.
Leadership in health policy research
Professor Bourgeault has had considerable success working at the research – policy – practice interface. She has been a consultant to various provincial Ministries of Health, Health Canada, the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization. She also brings exemplary leadership to influential communities of practice such as the Ontario Health Human Resource Research Network and the Pan Canadian Health Human Resources Network.
Professor Bourgeault is a sought-after mentor and educator. She has supervised a large number of graduate and postdoctoral students and also mentored a number of younger colleagues, demonstrating a strong commitment to creating the next generation of academic health policy and health systems leaders.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Samia Chreim has been named the Ian Telfer Professor in Health Organization Studies. Her research provides new insights into the dynamics of organizational change, integration across organizations, and collaboration among professionals. Professor Chreim recently sat down to discuss the evolution of healthcare organizations and noted that transformation will increasingly require coalitions of professionals, with complementary skills and resources.
What sets healthcare organizations apart from other types of organizations?
SC: The healthcare system is currently under a lot of pressure to perform better. Healthcare professionals are frequently asked to adjust or modify the way they work in order to provide better care to patients. But healthcare professionals need to meet different professional goals; they have different roles, cultures and interests. Conflicts are inevitable.
Suppose a health authority grants one group responsibility for a particular procedure, and it was previously the sole responsibility of another group. Any side that perceives a loss of autonomy or authority is likely to strongly resist the change.
But other kinds of changes may encounter opposition simply because they disrupt the normal and accepted way of performing a given task. Take the example of incident reporting for patient safety. If the primary care unit in a hospital has implemented an effective incident reporting system, the hospital might wish to have another unit, for example the mental-health team, adopt that system. However, differences in the culture and professional practices may be incompatible with the new reporting system and prevent its adoption by the mental-health team.
What can managers do to ensure that the required change can be implemented?
SC: One of my studies concerned a collaboration across healthcare organizations in a primary care context. The study showed that to be successful in implementing the change, managers needed to build a winning coalition of professionals and staff who have complementary skills and resources. But to build such a coalition, time needs to be invested in finding common ground across professionals and staff, in putting together trust between professionals and staff involved, and in building the credibility of the change process.
Therefore, there needs to be somebody whose job is to manage the change process. That approach is ultimately going to bring more success than asking busy healthcare practitioners to take on additional change-management tasks. When you don’t have a person that owns and manages the change process, you are likely to see a dilution of change focus and a loss of momentum.
What type of management style or approach should be encouraged, given the need for professionals and staff to coalesce around significant change?
SC: The research provides evidence about the benefits of having a small number of individuals (e.g., managers, professionals) with complementary competencies and resources in bringing important organizational changes to fruition. But this approach might create a lack of clarity. There might be ambiguity about who is responsible for what, which can lead to duplication of efforts or to one or more tasks falling through the cracks. I have also studied situations in which intractable conflicts developed among the members of a management group, and the teams working under them deteriorated as a result.
The risks of these scenarios are at the heart of a big debate about how leadership should be organized. In particular, when and how to share or distribute leadership. Shared leadership happens at different levels, for example, within teams, organizations, and inter-organizational collaborations. Change-management processes, such as the need for integration between healthcare teams, sometimes point to the need for shared leadership. On the other hand, for the reasons I mentioned, shared leadership isn’t necessarily a panacea. Without doubt, understanding when and how leadership can be shared, and what type of collective leadership is appropriate in different change-management settings, will continue to be a hot topic for any healthcare organization for the foreseeable future.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Congratulations to professors Craig Kuziemsky, Morad Benyoucef and Pavel Andreev who have been shortlisted for the American Medical Informatics Association’s “distinguished paper award” at its annual conference in Chicago, November 12-16. Their paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the connectivity challenges involved in the design of social information systems in healthcare. This is the second time in three years that a Telfer School paper made the list of 10 top papers at AMIA, chosen from among 400 papers presented.
From the article: “Social information systems (SISs) will play a key role in healthcare systems’ transformation into collaborative patient-centered systems that support care delivery across the entire continuum of care." Read the full article abstract
The research was undertaken by Professor Kuziemsky, who holds the University Research Chair in Healthcare Innovation, Pavel Andreev, Telfer School, Morad Benyoucef, Telfer School, Tracey O'Sullivan, University of Ottawa, and Syam Jamaly, University of Ottawa.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School welcomes professor Mohamed Chelli as a new professor in accounting. His teaching areas include financial accounting and his research interests include topics related to socio-environmental performance indicators. He obtained his PhD in accounting from Université Laval and Université Paris-Dauphine and he was previously a professor of accounting at Toulouse Business School in France.
Professor Chelli said governments, policy-makers, stakeholders, and companies are keeping close watch on the development of socio-environmental performance indicators. CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, has operated for the past 15 years, while more recently the Financial Stability Board (FSB), chaired by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), Chelli noted. Led by Michael Bloomberg, the task force is working on developing more effective climate-related financial disclosures for use by companies; the group’s members include the head of sustainable investing at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In a separate step, France last year introduced mandatory climate change-related reporting for institutional investors, a move which ESG Magazine called “one of the world’s most comprehensive shifts to public sustainable finance data.”
Professor Chelli noted: “There are many efforts underway to improve and standardize climate change and environmental disclosures, and my particular focus is on the legitimization practices of socio-environmental performance measurement bodies that oversee corporations. My work also provides analysis of the way the measurements produced exercise a certain pressure both over the corporations under scrutiny and the stakeholders.”
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The University’s Co-operative Education Programs and the Entrepreneurship Hub have teamed up with RBC Royal Bank to launch an innovative CO-OP program designed to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Read the complete article in the Gazette »
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Congratulations to Ivy Lynn Bourgeault on becoming a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS). Fellows elected to the academy are recognized by their peers nationally and internationally for their contributions to the promotion of health science. They demonstrate leadership, creativity, distinctive competencies and a commitment to advance academic health science. Professor Bourgeault and 35 other Canadian researchers were welcomed as CAHS Fellows at the induction ceremony in Montreal on September 15, 2016.
Ivy Lynn Bourgeault is a Professor at the Telfer School of Management and is the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources. She has been a consultant to various provincial Ministries of Health in Canada, to Health Canada and to the World Health Organization. Her recent research focuses on the migration of health professionals and their integration into the Canadian healthcare system.
Professor Bourgeault is the Scientific Director of the Ontario Population Health Improvement Research Network and the Ontario Health Human Resource Research Network, both housed at the University of Ottawa with funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care. Professor Bourgeault also leads the Canadian Health Human Resources Network (CHHRN) with funding from Health Canada and the CIHR.
The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS)
CAHS provides timely, informed and unbiased assessments of urgent issues affecting the health of Canadians. These assessments, which are based on evidence reviews and leading expert opinion, provide conclusions and recommendations in the name of CAHS. More about CAHS
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Professor Samia Chreim’s research area is Organizational Theory, which she applies to a variety of fields. Her publications are making an impact in the field of health care management and business management. Two of her articles, published in A-journals, are ranked in the top 10 for the year 2015.
The first article, entitled Fix and forget or fix and report: a qualitative study of tensions at the front line of incident reporting, was published in the BMJ Quality and Safety journal, an international peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the quality and safety of healthcare. The article reports on a study led by Tanya Anne Hewitt, Professor Chreim’s former Ph.D. student in Population Health at the University of Ottawa. In a case study, the research explores how safety problems that health practitioners encounter are being addressed. The study reveals that most practitioners, when faced with a safety problem that they can resolve themselves, tend not to report it. Hewitt and Chreim argue that reporting of hazards and safety problems is important, as it helps establish a more preventive approach.
The second article is entitled The (non) distribution of leadership roles: Considering leadership practices and configurations. Published in Human Relations, a highly regarded peer-reviewed journal, it contributes towards a deeper understanding of leadership and social relationships at and around work. In particular, Professor Chreim’s study investigates the leadership configurations that are possible following mergers and acquisitions. The findings show that mergers and acquisitions bringing together previously autonomous work teams have a lot of ambiguity and variation in terms of their leadership configurations.
The journal Human Relations has published a lengthy discussion of Professor Chreim’s article by a renowned scholar in this area. Peter Gronn of Cambridge University writes that Professor Chreim ‘‘is to be commended for an invaluable contribution and for advancing knowledge in this field.’’
- Category: Latest News
Why do good people do bad things?
This is the question posed by Robert Prentice at a recent conference where he talked about Behavioural Ethics. The interesting point is that some studies have shown that business education increases rather than decreases unethical behaviour. Why might this be?
Behavioural ethics suggests that even the most well-meaning people can behave unethically in certain situations. This happens, according to Prentice, because of a few cognitive biases that include the following:
- Over-confidence bias - “I always behave ethically”;
- Conformity bias -“Everyone else is doing it”; and
- Respect for authority - “The boss says I have to”.
Business education might encourage unethical behaviour if the emphasis is placed on profitability above all. In other words, the MBA program might stimulate some of the biases mentioned above. Most MBA programs nowadays focus on a balance of results: people, profit and planet. In addition, many have introduced courses on ethics. The Telfer 2009 MBA grads went one step further to create an MBA Oath that outlines a set of values for how our MBAs will conduct themselves in the workplace.
All Telfer MBA grads sign off on the Oath prior to graduation, and many years later, Telfer MBA alumni can recall the ceremony that surrounds the signing and the commitment they made to ethical conduct. Harley Finkelstein, a member of the 2009 graduating class and a key proponent of the Oath points out that “other such Oaths were created in a number of American universities after the 2008 financial meltdown, but we wanted to create an Oath that would reflect Canadian values”. The focus is on “doing good” of course, but also on realizing that good people can do bad things if they are put in situations in which the ethical aspects are perhaps nebulous. Attaching one’s signature to a set of values instills a framework for making ethical decisions when faced with ambiguous situations.
MBA Director Greg Richards notes: “With the rapid changes in organizations these days, the proliferation of data, Internet of Things, and continual global connectivity, most of us now work in pretty fast-moving, complex environments. Sometimes, it’s not easy to maintain a focus on values in these situations. I think talking about ethics and values regularly and providing a framework, such as the MBA Oath, to help people focus their decision-making is a useful approach.”
Daina Mazutis, author of a number of papers on Ethical Decision Making and Endowed Professor of Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability at the Telfer School of Management adds: “Many research studies have shown that making a public commitment to an issue can have a profound effect on individual behaviour. On top of anticipating, practicing and scripting responses in advance to the ethical dilemmas future managers are bound to face in the work place, the MBA Oath can serve as a sort of trip-wire that augments the moral intensity of the situation at the time a decision has to be made, especially if a visible reminder of the Oath is kept nearby.”
For more information on ethics in business, take a look at some of Professor Mazutis’s work in the Journal of Business Ethics or in Academy of Management Learning & Education.
Robert Prince and his colleagues at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin have created a series of videos and other educational resources at Ethics Unwrapped.
- Category: Latest News
Jonathan Calof, professor of International Business and Strategy at the Telfer School of Management, has been appointed as Leading Research Fellow of the Research Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies at the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics and Knowledge (ISSEK) at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. This is a continuation of his involvement with HSE which started with his appointment on their International Advisory Board.
Ranked as one of Russia’s top universities, the Higher School of Economics is a leader in Russian education and one of the top economics and social sciences universities in eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Professor Calof was also named Extraordinary Professor at the North-West University in South Africa, in their School of Business and Governance, to work on an African research program in competitive intelligence.
North-West University is one of South Africa's biggest universities, with three campuses in two provinces. It upholds the promotion of multilingualism as a core practice, with key innovations in place to meet the needs of its diverse student body.
More information about North-West University
- Category: Latest News
Part-time Professor Paula Sauveur has recently published a new book entitled Ethics and Professional Deontology: Laws and Regulations in Engineering (Thomson Reuters).
Ethics and deontology are the heart of the concerns of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec and the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario. Their public protection mandate forces them to require a behavior that meets the highest ethical standards and codes of deontology applicable to the practice of engineering by their members.
This book is intended primarily for engineers who wish to know the ethical requirements and other standards that affect and govern their professional activities. It also aims at helping students in their admission process to Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec and/or the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario. It lists the official, bilingual versions of laws and regulations in strengths in Quebec, Ontario and Canada pertaining to ethics and professional conduct in the practice of the profession of engineers. The laws and regulations are presented intuitively in a format easy to navigate.
Paula Sauveur, C.Med, LL.M-ADR, LL.M, J.D., LL.B., MBA, MEng, BSc, is a lawyer, mediator and arbitrator with a bi-juridical legal education (civil law and common law). She teaches the course Engineering Law at University of Ottawa where she is a part time professor at the Faculty of Law (Civil Law Section, Common Law Section), Faculty of Engineering and at Telfer School of Management. She is also a PhD candidate in Law at the Law Faculty of Université de Montréal as well a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at the Computer Vision and Systems Laboratory of Laval University.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
While the media are considered to play an influential role in business, very little research has been done on the relationship between firm-specific media coverage and corporate decision making. The Telfer School’s Shantanu Dutta is helping to change that with a new study on how business reporting shapes firms’ merger and acquisition decisions.
“Our preliminary evidence suggests that the media do influence deal outcomes, independently of the market’s response to a given M&A play,” notes Dutta, an associate professor of finance at the Telfer School. “In particular, the press has something of a ‘corporate governance’ role, one that has not been explored much empirically.”
Dutta and his team seek to understand better how reporting in reputable newspapers might affect the probability of making a deal – and the degree to which negative coverage has a restraining effect. But they are also looking into the impact of coverage on other strategic decisions in M&A, “such as the acquiring firm’s payment method, and the impact on future acquisitions.”
The 2008-2009 global financial crisis sparked interest among finance researchers in the role of the press. After the financial crisis, traditional measures of firm performance no longer appeared adequate. In response, some finance researchers began to examine how verbal information contained in media reports provides information over and above the traditional performance measures.
The findings from the study will encourage a better understanding about the linkages between media coverage and M&A decision making processes among investors and managers, says Dutta.
“We recognize that business reporting is not the only factor that influences major corporate decisions, but it certainly has the potential to play a significant role in shaping managers' and investors' perceptions.”
- Category: Latest News
Dr. Michael Fung-Kee-Fung received the Provincial Leadership Award for Public Service from the Government Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC).
Dr. Fung-Kee-Fung is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Department of Surgery at the University of Ottawa, cross-appointed to the Telfer School of Management.
The award recognizes his exceptional contributions as Chief of Cancer Transformation and Strategy at the Ottawa Hospital.
- Category: Latest News
Cheryl McWatters, the Father Edgar Thivierge Chair in Business History, received the Journal of Operations Management’s Associate Editor Service Award for outstanding service from 2010-2014. McWatters, in addition to serving as associate editor of the JOM, is Editor of the Accounting History Review and Associate Editor of Accounting Perspectives.
An award-winning author and editor, Professor McWatters has published widely in accounting, operations management, and accounting and management history. Her most recent publication, with Jerold Zimmerman, Management Accounting in a Dynamic Environment (Routledge), will be published in October.
- Category: Latest News
Caitlin Champion, candidate in the M.Sc. Health Systems Program, was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) – Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her thesis research will apply systems analysis to understand the health system interrelationships impacting colorectal cancer screening access in the NWT. A primary aim of the study is to build a foundation for future health system modeling to guide cost effective colorectal cancer screening initiatives with the goal of optimizing access to care.
Caitlin Champion completed a BSc (Honours) in Environmental Science from Acadia University and her MD at the University of Toronto in 2012. She is currently a resident physician in General Surgery at the University of Ottawa, and is pursuing graduate studies though the General Surgery Surgeon Scientist Program (SSP) and University of Ottawa Clinician Investigator Program (CIP).
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Student Voices
The following article was written by a member of our student community. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Telfer School of Management. For more information or to flag inappropriate content, please