Researchers at the Edwards School of Business have been awarded 7 of the 15 grants in the latest competition from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), totalling about $363,000. This represents nearly half the $753,000 awarded to the U of S as a whole.

Dean Daphne Taras attributes the success to mentoring faculty with the right message. “We should encourage people who are ready and have the right CV to apply. 

Those who don’t have research output should use the summer months to publish,” she says.

Edwards Professor and Sutherland Scholar in International Business Gary Entwistle agrees. “My experience with SSHRC, both as a grant holder and as adjudicator, is that the Council likes to invest in faculty with strong research records. They also like projects which have already attracted some seed funding from other sources, or in which some up-front investment has been made, for example, the completion of a pilot study.” 

Depending on whether applicants are new or established scholars, 40-60 per cent of scoring is based on the CV with the remainder based on the strength of the research proposal.  Applications are peer-reviewed and a large committee of experts in the field then determines the ordering of grants from best and fundable to weak and not fundable.

Edwards School of Business researchers have also taken advantage of support from the Office of the Vice-President Research to improve their proposals’ chances at SSHRC.

“Fostering a strong culture of research means encouraging all of our faculty to take the initiative and pursue new knowledge, but it also means putting the resources in place to help them succeed,” says Karen Chad, vice-president research. “For example, four of the successful researchers at the Edwards School of Business have taken advantage of our internal review process for research grant proposals, which is intended to increase our success rate. I would like to congratulate them on these latest accomplishments.”

The Edwards School’s success rate for 2010/2011 was nearly 64 per cent, compared to a five-year national average of around 32 per cent and a University of Saskatchewan rate of around 25 per cent. “The process is arduous and there is no luck involved,” says Taras. “Only skill, intelligence and hard work.”

The following Edwards faculty were the Principal Investigators awarded grants:

• Dev Mishra (established scholar, with co-investigator):  Governance transfer and corporate risk-taking: evidence from U.S. and international mergers
• Aloysius Newenham-Kahindi (new scholar): Entrepreneurship initiatives in developing countries
• Barb Phillips (established scholar):  Visual brand identity and how companies build brand equity through pictures
• Dionne Pohler (new scholar): Unions and high involvement human resource management systems
• Monica Popa (new scholar, with co-investigator): Consumers' reactions to friendly/hostile treatment from service providers
• Scott Walsworth (new scholar, with co-investigator): The ways unions affect firm performance.
• David Zhang (new scholar, with co-investigator ): The synergy between business and social objectives

The ratio of new to established scholars indicates the recent renewal of staff at the Edwards School. “We hired faculty with demonstrated research productivity,” Taras says. “Selection matters. We hired the right people.”