PhD Priority Research Areas and Specific Projects

Dr Huainan Zhao

Dr Huainan Zhao is an Associate Professor of Finance and Divisional Research Director of Finance and Accounting. His research interests are in Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Financial Markets.

For more information, please contact:
Accounting&Finance-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

Priority Research Areas

• Accounting & auditing
• Asset Pricing
• Corporate finance
• Corporate governance
• Derivatives, risk & mathematical finance
• Financial economics
• Financial markets
• Financial reporting
• Liquidity pricing models
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Real estate finance
• Venture capital & equity

Our faculty members regularly publish in top international journals including Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. The Division runs a weekly seminar series. Our seminar speakers come from the best institutions around the world, such as Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, NYU, Duke, LBS, LSE, Oxford, and Cambridge.

We offer a highly competitive PhD programme which is a combination of rigorous training and supervision by leading scholars in the field. Our doctoral students play a full and active part in the Division's research activities. Around five doctoral students are admitted into our PhD programme each year, and together we commit ourselves to the highest-quality research in Finance and Accounting.

Specific projects

• Competition and choice in the audit services market
• Derivatives pricing models (quadrature, finite difference, Monte Carlo, trees)
• Governance and accounting
• Liquidity modeling from two approaches, either data analysis or non Black Scholes Merton
• Lessons from financial history
• Mergers and value creation
• Taxation

Faculty in the Division have received substantial funding from various funding providers such as the ESRC, ACCA, CIMA, CIPFA, Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue and the National Audit Office. These grants have resulted in numerous publications in international peer-reviewed journals. Faculty contribute to both policy and practice and have close links with a number of international accounting firms, large corporates and investment banks.

Potential applicants are urged to study the up-to-date profiles of individual faculty members' research, via their personal pages.

Professor Giuliana Battisti

Giuliana Battisti is Professor of the Economic of Innovation and Divisional Research Director of Industrial Economics. Her research interests include the economics of technological change; the inter and intra-firm diffusion of innovations, adoption across households and/or countries; innovations and competitiveness; applied microeconometrics.

For more information, please contact:
IndustrialEconomics-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

Priority Research Areas

• Applied industrial organisation
• The economics of innovation (the diffusion of innovations, R&D patenting and IP rights, eco-innovations)
• Industrial policy and market regulation
• Behavioural economics and decision making
• Public policy (civil and criminal justice systems, taxation, gambling and betting)
• Public and private sector risk management
• Financial economics

We welcome Doctoral students in any of the above areas of Industrial Economics.

Members of the Industrial Economics division have held governmental advisory positions and have conducted research commissioned by national and international government departments, professional bodies, and the private sector. We publish in high level economics journals and in leading journals in a broad range of related disciplines. We have wide experience in producing world class empirical industrial economics and in applying industrial economics and innovation to Government and business policy at both national and international levels.

Potential applicants are encouraged to look at the profiles of individual faculty members' research, via their personal pages.

Students interested in perusing a PhD should contact the individual members of staff or the divisional research director.

Specific projects

• Innovation and firm competitiveness
• The generation and diffusion of green processes/products
• Micro econometric evaluations of labour market effects of mergers and acquisitions
• Individual differences and group compositions: A behavioural study
• Does financial structure matter for firm growth
• Economics of risk in teenage pregnancy
• Market efficiency in spread and fixed odds betting

Dr Andrew Smith

Dr Andrew Smith is an Associate Professor in the Marketing Division and the Divisional Research Director. His research is primarily concerned with consumer psychology and consumer behaviour. In particular he is interested in the psychology of ethical consumption and the analysis of behavioural datasets.

For more information, please contact:
Marketing-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

Priority Research Areas

• Innovation
• Co-creation of value & meaning
• Consumer protection, policy & empowerment
• Ethical & prosocial consumer behaviour

Specific Projects

• Customer participation & co-creation of value
• Learning and innovation within organisations and/or industry networks
• Charitable giving in the 21st Century
• Cognition and emotion in ethical consumer behaviour

Organisational Behaviour, Human Resource Management and Strategy

Dr Gerardo Patriotta

Gerardo Patriotta is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour. He received his PhD in Business Studies from the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests include organisational knowledge, organisational sensemaking, and institutional theories of organisations. He is the author of "Organizational knowledge in the making: how firms create, use, and institutionalize knowledge" published by Oxford University Press.

For more information, please contact:
OB-HRM-IS-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

OB/HRM Priority Research Areas

• Human resource management and employment relations
• Organisational practices, culture and change
• The transformation of organisation and management in emerging societies
• Management and organisations in a globalised context
• Organisational knowledge
• Sensemaking in organisations

OB/HRM Specific Projects

• Human resource management in small and medium-sized enterprises
• The impact of equal opportunities legislation, policy and practice
• Managerial careers, work life balance and identity
• Managerial and entrepreneurial behaviour in its social, cultural and organisational context
• Culture and economy in a Chinese organisational context
• Legitimacy in management
• Industrial relations and partnership agreements
• Vocational education and training initiatives in the UK
• Multi-national companies: international joint ventures and alliances; cross-cultural management/international human resource management
• Local communities and networks and the socio-economic consequences of foreign direct investment
• Top management teams and organisational change

Strategy Priority Research Areas

• The creative industries
• Organisational learning
• The nature of early mover advantages
• Modes of international business
• Applications of the resource-based view in strategy and economics
• Performance consequences of control changes in firms
• Public Services Management

Strategy Specific Projects

• The role of leadership in public sector management
• Decision taking and the perception of risk
• Cognition and the resource-based view of the firm
• The future of the business school
• Entry, exit and pricing in shopbot-mediated markets
• Strategies for generating competitive advantage in electronic markets

Entrepreneurship

Dr. Mathew Hughes

Mathew Hughes is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Nottingham University Business School, Deputy Director of the Doctoral Programme and Director of the MSc Entrepreneurship Programme. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, as well as a PGCHE in Education, MSc(Econ) in Management and BSc(Econ) in Business Studies. He has published numerous papers in international journals on entrepreneurial management, entrepreneurial orientation, innovation ambidexterity, and social capital. He is a regular presenter at international business conferences and teaches highly rated undergraduate, postgraduate and executive courses on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial management and corporate entrepreneurship.

For more information, please contact: Entrepreneurship-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

Priority Research Areas

• Environmentally sustainable entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurial identity
• Family firms and succession
• Social entrepreneurship
• Public sector entrepreneurship
• Academic entrepreneurship and innovation
• Entrepreneurship education
• Corporate entrepreneurship
• Private equity and venture capital

Specific Projects

• Creativity in entrepreneurship
• Family firm innovation and succession
• Gaining organizational legitimacy in entrepreneurial contexts
• Individual identity and authenticity in driving entrepreneurial activity
• Career transitions into a range of entrepreneurship settings
• Management of strategic entrepreneurship
• The impact and effectiveness of entrepreneurship (and creativity) education
• The relationships among organizational design, strategy and creative behaviour

Professor Dave Wastell

For more information, please contact:
OperationsManagement-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

Priority Research Areas

• Supply chain and logistics management
• Reverse logistics and sustainability of supply chains
• Environmental issues in operations management including carbon neutral supply chains
• Design management and New Product Development (NPD)
• Customization and Mass Customization - concepts, systems and practice
• Operations planning, scheduling and control
• Quality management in the global supply chain
• Managing international operations,, including international supply chains and logistics
• Trade logistics and trade facilitation
• Risk, resilience and supply chain security
• Human factors and knowledge management in production planning and control
• Electronic government, including critical perspectives, methodologies, evidence-based policy making
• Alignment of IS/IT and business strategy, contextual models and firm performance
• On-line communities, including anti-social behaviour on the internet (cyber-bullying) and open innovation
• Inter-organizational networks: partnership working, theoretical perspectives (coordination and complexity theories)
• Interface design of complex human-machine systems, including decision-support and the effects of stress

Specific Projects

• The impact of outsourcing on lead-time and customer service
• Supply chain effectiveness, in particular quality/delivery interactions and supplier development in the context of international supply networks
• Impacts of environmental pressures on business performance
• Analysis of risks and uncertainties in supply chains
• Revenue management models in order management and order fulfilment
• Simulation modelling for operations strategy
• Readiness capability assessment for New Product Development
• Global Quick Response in different sectors
• Trade facilitation in international logistics
• Contextual models of IS/business alignment and firm performance
• Nanoweb - orchestrating supply chains using nano-scale processes
• Developing 'Business Model' theory from a process & value perspective
• 'Griefing' in virtual worlds - uses, casualties and coping strategies
• Professional decision-making in health and social care: reconciling conflicting imperatives in the New Public Management (NPM)
• Managing as designing: developing tools for the entrepreneurial public manager

www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/iccsr

For more information, please contact:
ICCSR-PhD@nottingham.ac.uk

Priority Research Areas

• Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and Global Governance
• Western and/or Chinese MNCs and Political CSR
• Consumption, Identity and Power
• Responsible Tourism (with an emphasis on discursive methods)
• Sustainability Accounting and Reporting
• Management Control for Sustainability Strategy
• Economic Approaches to Corporate Social Performance

www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/cris

For more information, please contact: Christopher.O'Brien@nottingham.ac.uk

The Centre for Risk and Insurance Studies is one of the leading university centres in the world for the teaching of and research in insurance and risk management.

The Centre staff publish research in leading academic journals, and also maintain close contacts with practitioners in the insurance industry and risk management sector.

Priority Research Areas

• Competition in insurance markets
• Insurance and asymmetric information
• Performance measurement of insurance companies
• Pricing of insurance contracts
• Insurance as a form of a risk management
• Individual and household saving behaviour
• Insurance and the legal services market