Research & Scholarship at the Bissett School of Business
Faculty and students will pursue impactful scholarly research grounded in administrative sciences; generate and disseminate knowledge in order to expand theory and improve our communities; and advance the reputation of the Bissett School of Business.
At the Bissett School of Business, scholarly research will be based on the following values:
- Research activities that enrich the student experience.
- Research outcomes that emphasize quality over quantity.
- Research that is rigorous and supported by peer validation.
- Research that is impactful for scholars, professionals, industry and communities.
Strategic Priorities
The Bissett School of Business has identified five strategic research priorities designed to support the MRU research plan and the Bissett research mission statement. Each strategic priority is linked to priority activities to be implemented over a five year period. This includes the development of four areas of research focus to promote cross-disciplinary scholarly collaboration.
- Seek the establishment of an honours program in business administration.
- Encourage active researchers to include student participation in funding requests and engage undergrad students to work as research assistants.
- Design an optional research methods course and build research methods topics into Bissett curriculum.
- Foster the dissemination of undergraduate research outlets (e.g., conferences, undergraduate research journals).
- Encourage involvement in wider MRU Office of Research undergraduate research initiatives.
- Create a participant pool at Bissett for research involving students.
- Establish a Bissett research champion. The chair of the Bissett Research council should support the implementation of the Bissett research plan.
- Secure resources to support the implementation of the research plan. This may include but not be limited to:
- Seek research funding opportunities with industry and leverage our corporate relationships for independent funding for faculty at the Bissett School of Business.
- Encourage and support faculty to apply for tri-council funding.
- Seek additional professional development funds that would support faculty members who are presenting at peer-reviewed conferences.
- Secure funding for endowed research chairs or faculty exchanges in the administrative sciences (e.g., Canada Research Chair, industry sponsored endowed chairs).
- Secure funding for priority hardware and software to enable research success.
- Champion the expansion of workload flexibility for research engaged faculty (e.g. block teaching, semester flexibility).
- Faculty engaged in research and scholarship should establish annual development plans in collaboration with their department. Measures should align to Campus Alberta Quality Council (CAQC) scholarly activity commitments.
- Encourage faculty mentoring such as peer learning, collaboration and developing connections with senior scholars in the discipline.
- Promote workload flexibility for faculty who seek to engage in scholarly work including completing terminal degrees.
- Offer research and scholarship training seminars for faculty.
- Identify opportunities for visiting scholars.
- Support culture that emphasizes quality over quantity of research outputs.
- Support dissemination of scholarly research to a broad range of stakeholders including industry and community.
- Support the hiring of research capable faculty members with established research networks.
- Promote / publicize scholarly accomplishments (e.g. database of all research dissemination and publication by faculty).
- Continue our active commitment for sponsoring academic conferences, or conference specific events.
- Further promote scholarship colloquiums and seek the participation of other business schools.
- Foster collaborations between Bissett and other faculties on campus.
- Establish a recognition structure to encourage faculty to disseminate their work in high-quality venues.
Establish cross-disciplinary, strategic focus areas to encourage collaboration at Bissett and at MRU. These areas should identify the current core capabilities that may lead to synergic activities and look for the possibility of strengthening those capabilities.
Areas of Research
Establish cross-disciplinary, strategic focus areas to encourage collaboration at Bissett and at MRU. These areas identify the current core capabilities that may lead to synergic activities and look for the possibility of strengthening those capabilities.
The development of some key focus areas follows these tenets:
- Develop Recognition of Expertise: These major focus areas will enable more impactful recognition of past, present and future research excellence at Bissett. Recognition is essential to enable our success.
- Stimulate Collaboration: A central goal for the development of focus areas is to stimulate collaborative and interdisciplinary research amongst faculty at Bissett, MRU and with partners in our community.
- Enhance Funding Opportunities: Through the recognition of Bissett expertise and enhanced collaboration, these focus areas can enhance funding opportunities through private sector collaboration and public sectoring granting bodies.
- Inclusive & Evolving: These focus areas were designed to be broad and inclusive. Like all scholarly research, they are designed to be constantly evolving as Bissett's research expertise evolves. They are not intended to detract at all from any individual faculty member's research priorities but rather are intended to enhance and support individual faculty member's success.
The business education focus area includes the production of textbooks, scholarship of teaching and learning and educational research that are associated with: high impact learning, value added business education, and the scholarly investigation of educational materials and pedagogies (e.g. blended delivery, service learning and experiential learning). One of the main goals is to link educational research that would help connect knowledge to practice.
The business and communities focus area includes research related to business interface with all its stakeholders. Samples of research areas include: corporate social responsibility and business ethics, reputation, legitimacy and social license to operate, business and environmental sustainability, social diversity and inclusion, social innovation and the creation of social value, and community development and nonprofit management.
The innovation and entrepreneurship focus area includes investigating and disseminating scholarly work that fosters research on wealth and value creation through innovation in business and society alike. As such, design thinking, social innovation, new ventures, business modelling, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, and action research would be areas that exemplify this focus area.
The institution and markets focus area seeks to expand knowledge related to institutional development. The goal is to develop research in areas related to institutional legitimacy, governance and ethics, international business, capital markets of small and medium enterprises, and the understanding of local, global and sovereign markets. Research areas include: institutional development, governance and ethical practices, new-venture financing, risk assessments, political economy, country level risk assessments, and the financing of private and social enterprises.