Diverse ABS PhD Projects

Avondale Business School has at present a diverse range of student research topics at the Doctorate of Philosophy post graduate study programs. Below are details of three students currently undertaking research supervised by ABS staff Associate Professor Lisa Barnes, Dr Warrick Long and Dr Peter Williams. Given the projects diversity, we have also collaborated with colleagues outside of the school such as Associate Professor Peter Kilgour from Education, and even University President Kevin Petrie. This gives the students a range of ideas and opinions to keep their research on track. Here is a small summary of these current research projects.

Currently at the data collection phase is a project entitled “An investigation into spiritual wellbeing development and spiritual practices, in the leadership of Australian Christian schools”. This project is a passion of student Cass Pendlebury, currently Executive Officer NSW/ACT for Christian Schooling Australia and former human resources management consultant. The role of Principal in Christian schools as opposed to non-faith-based independent schools, has added expectations of spiritual leadership along with the operational and educational oversight of the school. The catalyst for this study was a perceived increase in ‘burnout’ in the leadership of Australian Christian schools and the desire to investigate possible Spiritual Wellbeing and interventions that may help sustain principals.

Also in the data collection phase is a project by student Median Melhim entitled “Corporate Governance Impact on Firm Value via Risk Disclosure in an Emerging Capital Market”. This study focuses on Jordan as an emerging equity market in the Middle East, the dataset includes 84 Jordanian companies, which includes services and industrial listed companies currently traded on the Amman stock exchange (ASE). Data will be collected from the annual reports of the companies for five years covering the time period from 2015 to 2019. The results of this research could provide implications for regulatory bodies to reinforce corporate governance elements that promote better corporate risk disclosure in Jordan.

Just receiving ethics clearance from the Avondale Human Research Ethics Committee is a project by student Paul Campey entitled “Seeking God’s will: The role of Christian Spiritual Discernment in Christian School Boards” In undertaking the role of governing an organisation, boards are required to deal with an ever increasing compliance load and make a multitude of decisions and choices utilising their skills, knowledge and experience. As the board of a Christian organisation, board members are also called on to make such decisions framed by seeking to follow God’s will for the organisation they have governance over. The intention of this mixed method research is to examine key practices that Christian School boards use in relation to Christian Spiritual Discernment in decision making. Phase one will be a large-scale survey of Board Chairs, Board Members and Principals of Christian Schools in Australia and New Zealand. Phase two will be a series of subsequent qualitative interviews of a number of selected survey respondents to gain further insights on Christian Spiritual Discernment and what role it plays in decision making in Christian School boards.