Researchers win all-Academy award

Two UQ Business School researchers won the Carolyn Dexter Best International Paper Award at this year's Academy of Management Conference in Anaheim. PhD candidate Martina Linnenluecke and Professor Andrew Griffiths won the prestigious award for their paper entitled "Organizational Adaptation and Resilience to Extreme Weather Events", along with co-author Monika Winn from the University of Victoria. The Carolyn Dexter Award is a prestigious all-Academy award given to the paper that best meets the objective of internationalizing the Academy of Management. According to the selection criteria for the award, it is essential that the paper "offers new insights, is rich in observation and employs creative methodologies". Andrew Griffiths said, "The paper combines work from Martina's thesis on organizational adaptation and resilience to extreme weather events along with insights from Monika and myself on climate change strategy and massive discontinuous change." "This is an extremely valuable award, and Martina is to be congratulated for the international significance of her research in sustainability." According to Martina, the paper takes up the debate on the influences of human-induced climate change and global warming on business organizations. Martina Linnenluecke said, "The paper examines the relationship between business activities and expected changes in climate and weather conditions." "Organizations in several areas such as agriculture, fishery, forestry, and tourism or infrastructure management, do not currently possess suitable resources, capabilities and competencies for ongoing climate change adaptation and resilience to extreme weather events, despite having significant competitive environment adaptive capabilities." "The paper develops a wider perspective of, and particular challenges associated with, the organizational impacts of the natural environment", she said. As winner of this year's Carolyn Dexter Best International Paper Award, Martina, Andrew and Monika have been invited to serve on the Carolyn Dexter Award Committee for the 2009 Academy of Management Meeting.