Networks
Click buttons to explore the ABDC's Networks and Awards
International Education Network
The ABDC International Network is a forum for sharing ideas and knowledge about what constitutes good practice in the areas of international recruitment, mobility, research and teaching and learning.
The network meets at least twice a year.
In the video below, the Chair, Professor Michaelia Rankin, describes the Network’s value, activities and challenges. (Apologies for sound quality)
The contribution of international education to Australia
Many international students go on to create businesses in Australia after they graduate.
In the videos below we profile a couple of success stories from International student entrepreneurs.
Job Makers
Digital Crew
Digital Crew, an international digital marketing agency, is part of the our series of business school international graduates who have created businesses and jobs in Australia.
Our International Graduates Create New Businesses
Mo Works and Hatchquarter
As part of the ABDC series about international graduates who have created businesses and jobs in Australia, is this profile of the international digital agency, Mo Works, and the incubator, Hatch Quarter.
Professional Managers’ Network
- Supporting ABDC’s advocacy in influencing higher education public policy and practice on network relevant issues affecting business education. This involves monitoring developments, drafting documents and providing advice to ABDC on issues, international trends, and best practice.
- Promoting professional capabilities development through sharing knowledge on current issues and best practice, and providing an engaged collegial network of support.
- Facilitating a national, collaborative and strategic approach to systemic change that pursues excellence in business faculties, colleges, and schools across Australia (in areas relevant to the network).
Videos:
Chair, Jayne Borensztajn on the role of the Professional Managers’ Network.
What are the challenges faced by professional managers?
Business Academic Research Directors’ Network (BARDsNet)
The Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) and the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM)jointly established the Business Academic Research Directors’ Network (BARDsNet).
In this turbulent time for research funding performance, training places, commercialisation and other research-related issues, BARDsNet exists to:
- Provide a learning platform for the people who have line responsibility for administering research in business faculties and schools.
- Enhance the research capacities of business faculties and schools through identifying and implementing new strategies and ideas.
- Act, where appropriate, to influence research policy, which enhances research infrastructure in Australia and New Zealand.
- Identify collaborative ways of working together as business academic research directors across Australia and New Zealand.
BARDsNet membership comprises business school or faculty research directors, deans or associate deans (research) in Australia and New Zealand. ABDC member deans must endorse Australian BARDsNet nominations and ANZAM coordinates New Zealand nominations. BARDsNet may also co-opt members for short periods to assist with specific tasks.
BARDsNet plays a key role in overseeing the development and review of the ABDC Journal Quality List that is used by business schools in Australia and overseas. The 2019 review of the list is currently underway.
BARDsNet members meet twice a year.
Professor Robert Faff
Chair, BARDsNet Executive Committee
The changing face of business research and the challenges of communicating its value.
Former BardsNet Chair, Professor Andrew O’Neil, on the role of the ABDC Business Academic Researchers’ Network (BARDsNet)
Teaching and Learning Network
The Learning and Teaching Network comprises associate deans, deputy deans, and coordinators who are responsible for learning and teaching in our member business schools.
Network functions and presentations provide opportunities for professional development and the sharing of resources and ideas about good learning and teaching practice.
Network members meet face-to-face twice each year. They have focused recently on academic standards; benchmarking; quality assurance; accreditation; and strategies for encouraging, measuring and rewarding good teaching. See events for more details.
Network members play a key strategic role in enabling a national, collaborative approach to systemic change, which will improve learning and teaching in Australian business higher education.
The Network leads ABDC responses to important learning and teaching pronouncements by major higher education regulatory bodies like the Higher Education Standards Panel, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and the Office for Learning and Teaching. Network members, who often collaborate on projects, have been particularly successful in receiving national grants and engaging professional employer bodies to work with them.
Since the Learning and Teaching Network was established in 2004, grants from the former Office for Learning and Teaching and its predecessor have supported initiatives, which have included a distinguished visiting scholars program and the development of academic standards across many business disciplines.
ABDC Network Awards
Apply
Applications for the 2023 ABDC Network Awards have now closed, with winners to be announced in November.
The ABDC Annual Network Awards recognise and reward innovation and excellence across all areas of activity within Business Schools – research, teaching and learning, international engagement, professional management, and climate action.
Applications will be judged by a panel comprising members of the relevant ABDC Network Executive Committee plus an additional external member endorsed by the ABDC Executive Committee. Similarly, the Award for Transformative Action and Innovative Approaches to Climate Change will be judged by a panel comprising the Climate Action Fellow, members of the ABDC Executive Committee and one external judge.
Eligibility
In determining their eligibility, potential applicants must note that:
- Individual and teams may apply for an award. A maximum of ten (10) people can be included on a team application, and need not be employed at the same institution;
- Only professional and academic staff employed in a permanent or fixed-term role at their Business School for 12 months or more may apply for an award. Casual staff are ineligible to apply; and
- Past winners are ineligible to apply for the same award for 3 years.
Application
Applicants are to provide the following information via the online form, noting that incomplete applications will be deemed ineligible for consideration:
- Their contact details;
- A short description of the initiative or research for which they are seeking an award (250 words max);
- An outline of how the initiative or research was implemented, including an explanation of how it met the award criteria (250 words max per criteria);
- Evidence of the measurable outcomes that have resulted from the initiative or research (250 words max); and
- A declaration that their PVC or Dean supports their application.
Network Award Categories
ABDC Award for Innovation and Excellence in International Engagement
This award is for initiatives that have enhanced outcomes or improved practice in inbound, outbound or collaborative international education and/or engagement. They may relate to student recruitment, student mobility and research collaborations or teaching and learning partnerships with institutions overseas.
Award criteria
The criteria for this award are:
- Innovation: How innovative is the initiative in terms of its objectives, design, approach, delivery and/or content?
- Sustainability/scalability: Can you demonstrate sustainability and/or scalability of the initiative?
- Institutional support: To what extent has your institution/business school demonstrated commitment to the initiative through the provision of support or recognition of its value?
- Value for money: Has the initiative led to efficiency gains on previous practice and provided a return on investment?
- Excellence: What evidence can be provided regarding the underlying excellence of the initiative?
- Impact: How has the initiative positively impacted stakeholders including students, staff and/or industry partners?
2022 Winner
Sagar Athota, Senior Lecturer, University of Notre Dame
Team member: Associate Professor Sean P. Kearney
For the India Immersion Program, an international service-learning immersion to Tenali, India, that over 100 students have participated in over nine years.
About the initiative
Dr Sagar Athota and Associate Professor Sean Kearney have led the India Immersion Program in Tenali, India. They and over 100 student volunteers, who have been part of eight immersions in nine years, have developed a charity that has built a government-approved residential school for at-risk and mostly orphaned children.
The program is based on the premise that social justice and educational opportunity can be drivers for reversing generational poverty and discrimination.
Immersion students have pre-departure classes, in-country debrief sessions, and post-immersion reflection classes, which provide the opportunity to learn from their experience, challenge their belief systems, help shape their worldview and sharpen their career goals.
Panel comment
The program goes beyond the standard immersion program by providing tangible work-integrated learning opportunities to students with a focus on service learning. Over an extended period, the program has provided benefits to the host community through an ACNC-registered charity and built a residential school that employs 20 people in the community. The charity is now an ongoing program partner.
Past winners
2021
Andrea Haefner, Senior Lecturer & Director of Griffith Asia Business Internship (GABI), Griffith University
For leading the Griffith Asia Business Internship, an interdisciplinary, global work integrated learning course, and pivoting to a remote offering in 2020-21.
ABDC Award for Innovation and Excellence in Scholarly and Applied Research (up to 4 awards)
These awards recognise excellence in scholarly and applied research undertaken in business, management, economics, and related fields of research.
Award criteria
Excellence in research will be judged and recognised separately for scholarly and applied work and, in each case, for emerging researchers (up to level C) and established researchers (level D and E). As a result, up to four awards will be made. Applications should clearly indicate the researcher’s level and whether the research that is the basis for their application is scholarly or applied in nature. Group applications will be assessed at the level of the most senior named academic.
The criteria for the research awards are:
- Innovation: How innovative is the research in terms of its aims, design, approach and the gap it fills?
- Excellence: What evidence can be provided regarding the underlying excellence of the research (e.g. the quality of the peer reviewed outlet, unsolicited feedback, testimonials, co-design with research partners, stakeholder feedback etc.)?
- Engagement: Is there evidence of communication of the research to a wide audience (e.g., presentation at conferences, media coverage, conversation articles, evidence of industry collaboration and/or funding, industry or policy briefings etc)?
- Impact: Using objective measures, how has the research positively impacted the field (e.g., significant citations and awards, contribution to the improvement of practices in the industry, government, or the NFP sector).
2022 Winner
Associate Professor Simon Angus, Department of Economics and SoDa Laboratories, Monash Business School
Team members:
- Klaus Ackermann
- Paul A Raschky
For the Monash IP Observatory – a unique data gathering virtual instrument that is able to passively, safely, remotely and scientifically measure the activity and quality of the internet anywhere on the planet.
About the initiative
In 2018 a remarkable milestone was reached when more than 50% of humanity became connected to a single global technology, the internet. The internet is arguably the transformational technology of our time, and is impacting all aspects of business, social, and economic activity worldwide.
Studying its impact requires statistically accurate, consistently measured observations at high temporal- spatial granularity over vast scales.
In 2013, the Monash University team embarked on a multi-year project to join an extensive dataset on internet activity that had been collected by a group of network engineers over several years. The ground-breaking result joined internet activity and location datasets with over 1.6 trillion observations.
It taught the team what was needed to leverage at scale the applied empirical and causal tools to tackle major research questions at the intersection of modern communication, political mobilisation, digital human rights, and political economy,
In 2017, the team established the Monash IP Observatory – a unique data gathering virtual instrument that can passively, safely, remotely and scientifically measure the activity and quality of the internet anywhere on the planet.
Today, the Observatory operates from six continents, has been running continuously since Feb 2019, and has generated over 15 TB of uniquely granular geo-spatial data on the internet.
Panel comment
The panel is impressed with the utilisation of the Monash IP Observatory by government and multi-government agencies, the legal community and investigative journalists, including the application of the underlying technology in commercial applications. Positive testimonials from real-world users demonstrate the impact of this innovative dataset.
Past winners
2021 Overall winner
Professor Alexander Newman, Deakin University
Team members:
- Karen Dunwoodie
- Luke Macaulay
- Jo Ingold
For Centre for Refugee Employment, Advocacy, Training and Education (CREATE), which helps people from a refugee background rebuild their careers through access to education and meaningful employment.
2021 Highly commended
Associate Professor Michelle Evans, University of Melbourne
Team members:
- Cain Polidano
- Julie Moschion
- Marcia Langton
For I-BLADE (Indigenous Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment), a partnership between government, data custodians and researchers to measure the significant economic, social, and cultural contributions to Australia made by Indigenous businesses.
ABDC Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning
The ABDC Award for Teaching and Learning recognises Australia’s most outstanding university academics in business, management, law, and related fields who have demonstrated leadership through sustained commitment to L&T innovation, quality teaching, and sustained dedication to improve the student experience and learning outcomes in higher education.
Award criteria
The criteria for this award are:
- Innovation: How innovative is the initiative in terms of curricula and resources, evaluative practices and delivery that influence, motivate, and inspire students to learn?
- Excellence: What evidence can be provided regarding the underlying excellence of the initiative including scholarship activities and testimonials?
- Collaboration: Is there evidence of partnership with academics and non-academic stakeholders outside the individual’s institution including the industry and/or the community?
- Scalability: What evidence is there that the initiative can be deployed to other disciplines in the business school or university or across business schools?
2022 Winner
Katrina Mohamed, Senior Lecturer, Monash University
Team members:
- Robert Brooks
- Jacinta Elston
- Nick McGuigan
- Kathy Ilott
- Fiona Bertoli
- Karen McRae
- John Page
- Jamil Tye
For the Masters of Indigenous Business Leadership (MoIBL) program — Australia’s first Indigenous-led business master’s program, co-designed and led by Indigenous business leaders, Elders and business school academics
About the initiative
The Masters of Indigenous Business Leadership (MoIBL) program is Australia’s first Indigenous-led business master’s program, co-designed by Indigenous business leaders, Elders and business school academics.
MoIBL removes barriers that have traditionally prevented Indigenous students accessing and succeeding in tertiary education. It places Indigenous knowledge systems first and creates a culturally competent and engaging learning environment for Indigenous peoples. Students practice culture and ceremony, and participate without interrupting their jobs, family or communities for long periods of time.
The degree is delivered in face-to-face intensive mode with a cap of 25 students to ensure personalised learning experiences
MoIBL covers business environments, leadership and performance, organisational strategy, Indigenous design thinking and relationality, project management, accounting and finance for business, international law and global immersive Indigenous business experience through North America.
The offering, which directly addresses the diversity gap in senior-level corporate Australia, is transforming lives.
Panel comment
The panel notes the high calibre of submissions for this year’s award. In selecting the winner, the panel was impressed with the focus on Indigenous co-design and leadership in the MoIBL program. The program’s emphasis on personalised and immersive learning experiences led by Indigenous business leaders, Elders and academics demonstrates excellence and innovation in removing barriers to Indigenous students accessing business education.
Past winners
2021 Overall winner
James Wakefield, Senior Lecturer, UTS
Team members:
- Kristina Vojvoda
- Raechel Wight
For utilising technology to facilitate active, collaborative student learning in UTS’ compulsory, first-year accounting course.
2021 Highly commended
Nicolas Pontes, Lecturer, The University of Queensland
James Wakefield, Senior Lecturer, UTS
For Newish Communications, the first student-run and 100% student managed communications agency in Australia.
ABDC Award for Innovation and Excellence in Professional Management
This award recognises initiatives that demonstrably improve the management of ABDC member business schools.
Award criteria
The criteria for this award are:
- Innovation: How innovative is the initiative in its aims, design and implementation?
- Scalability: Can this initiative be deployed in other areas of the university or at other institutions? For example, beyond the business school there may be evidence of broader institutional support for the initiative.
- Impact: How has this initiative improved management practices in your school? This could be through delivery of cost savings, removing frictions in processes, or contributing to staff and student experience.
2022 Winner
Lauren Richardson, Librarian, Sydney Business School University of Wollongong
For developing a librarianship skills program for Executive MBA (EMBA) students to develop and sustain study, time management and academic skills.
About the initiative
The Executive MBA (EMBA) course has a high number of domestic mature-age students, many of whom have never, or have not recently, studied at a university. A gap analysis of study skills identified that many students are unfamiliar with academic research and need inbuilt flexibility to cope with their studies.
To assist students in developing the necessary academic skills and increase their student experience, the business school librarian has continuously developed a librarianship skills program that ensures students have access to high-level support when they need it.
The program includes workshops that continuously develop and sustain study and time-management skills; a self-paced Academic Skills Module; a student-centered approach to student support with one dedicated librarian coaching and mentoring; a blended approach that ensures all supports fit students’ lives; and collaboration with learning development academics.
Panel comment
The panel is impressed that the multipronged program Lauren has established firmly meets the criteria of having a measurable impact within the University of Wollongong. It enhances something that is currently in use and adapts it to the current needs of MBA students. The fact that it has now been utilised in industry is exceptional and shows its scalability to the wider university community.
Past winners
2021 Overall winner
Kym Davis, Manager, Operations, College of Business, Law and Governance, James Cook University
Team members:
- Angela Mehigan (Project Lead)
- Rachel Knight (Project Administration)
For the design and implementation of a trimester teaching timetable across JCU Australia tropical campuses and partner locations in Singapore and Brisbane.
2021 Highly commended
Colin Picker, Executive Dean, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Wollongong
Team members:
- Sue Mathews
- Erin Snape
- Michael Grainger
For two COVID-19 response initiatives for international students: Food+ with Care, and RUOK call campaign.
ABDC Award for Transformative Action and Innovative Approaches to Climate Change
The ABDC is committed to assisting business schools to educate the next generation of business leaders about the importance of a net zero future for Australia and to advance research on business responses to climate change. This award recognises transformative initiatives led by business schools with high potential for climate positive and sustainability impacts.
Award criteria
The criteria for this award are:
- Innovation: How innovative is the initiative in terms of its aims, design, approach, and delivery?
- Scalability/Replicability: What potential does the initiative have to be scaled up or replicated in other contexts?
- Engagement and/or Collaboration: Is there evidence of engagement and/or collaboration with academic and non-academic stakeholders?
- Transformative Action: How has the initiative had or is expected to have demonstrable positive impacts on climate and society?
2022 Winner
Associate Professor Jean Canil, Adelaide Business School, University of Adelaide
Additional team members:
- Professor Ralf Zurbrugg
- Dr George Mihaylov
For promoting mechanisms for effective climate-change planning among Australian crop farmers, involving developing a framework for multi-cover derivative insurance for agribusiness.
About the initiative
Suitable insurance products for agribusiness do not currently exist but this research provides a foundation for multi-cover insurance that incentivises climate-friendly behaviours and minimises negative intergenerational effects on climate change.
The team aims to equip Australian crop farmers with the knowledge to enable them to reduce overhead costs and manage volatile domestic growing conditions through new mechanisms for effective climate-change planning.
The research, funded by a grant from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), includes interviews and surveys with the main insurers in Australia and a wide range of crop farmers. That has been supplemented with secondary data to evaluate how a range of agricultural insurance policies align with climate-friendly behaviours.
Researchers intend to scale up the project, with the support of DAFF, to trial the development and pilot the release of tailored structured weather derivative products to a limited number of farmers. This will help them to understand the factors that will drive up-take of the product and how well the product will be received.
Panel comment
This team demonstrates the role of finance and financial products in climate resilience in partnership with other disciplines, industry and government. The outcomes present the potential to transform the role of finance and the development of financial products to enable climate resilience in the agricultural sector. The method and approach could be replicated in other sectors. The panel commends how the learnings have been disseminated in public and policy forums. This encourages translation into higher education that could further advance climate capabilities of finance professionals.