Summer Scholarships Scheme
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PLEASE NOTE: The FCA Summer Scholarship Scheme for 2011-2012 is now closed.
Summer Scholarship Scheme
Dear prospective Summer Scholars,
Welcome to the Faculty of Commerce and Administration's Summer Scholarship Scheme.
The Summer Scholars Scheme provides summer research scholarships that offer a unique opportunity for students to obtain experience in research. This opportunity provides insight into what studying for a research degree is all about. Each scholarship offers the student the experience of working with established researchers in an area of interest to them under the supervision of an academic staff member or a research team.
Before applying please read the Victoria Summer Scholars Scheme conditions to ensure you are eligible to apply. Applications are invited from students currently enrolled in an undergraduate degree (near completion), honours or first year masters degree at any New Zealand or Australian university who are intending to study at Victoria University in 2012. Students will be selected on the basis of academic merit, expertise in the research area, and recommendations from staff associated with the project. Browse the project titles below to select those that appeal to you, then click the link to find out further information about the project, the type of applicant being sought, and the contact details for the project manager to whom you should apply.
How to apply
Send an email to the contact person listed for the project you are interested in applying for.
The closing date for applications is Thursday 6 October.
2011-2012 Project Titles
Below is a list of the Summer Scholarship projects that are available in the Faculty of the summer of 2011-2012
IFRS update and Big 4 strategic analysis
This project has two parts; updating an SSRN publication called '100 Questions and Answers about 'IFRS'; and undertaking some advanced statistical/mathematical modelling based on Kaufman's concept of a fitness landscape for strategic positioning by the Big 4 accounting firms. Tasks that the student is expected to complete include; a literature search and review; writing research summaries; uploading financial data from accounting firms; mathematical and statistical analysis; writing up the analysis.
Key skills; internet search skills for Proquest, SSRN and Web of Science; English writing and proof reading skills; statistical/mathematical modelling skills plus good spreadsheeting skills on Excel. It is expected the successful applicant will already have passed a stage two paper in Statistics with a grade B or above.
Contact: Rachel Baskerville
Project on disaster recovery and building resilience
Natural disasters - earthquakes, floods, heat-waves, bushfires, etc. are relatively common and unavoidable. In recent years, there have been large-scale natural disasters in many countries - massive floods in Pakistan and Queensland, a major heat-wave and fires in Russia, and large earthquakes in Chile, Japan and NZ. This project will describe, evaluate and draw lessons from the disaster recovery processes undertaken with respect to three recent natural disasters in Australia and New Zealand: the Queensland floods (2011), the Victoria bushfires (2009), and the Canterbury earthquakes (2010-11). The Summer Scholar will be expected to; undertake a review of the international literature on the policy issues and options surrounding disaster recovery and the building of greater resilience to natural disasters; catalogue and compare the disaster recovery processes adopted in Queensland, Victoria and Canterbury; assist with an initial evaluation of these processes; and draft material for publication. Specific skills and expertise required include: a broad knowledge of public policy; sound research skills; and excellent writing skills. An interest in the policy issues posed by natural disasters, disaster management, adaptation to climate change and related matters would be helpful.
Contact: Jonathan Boston
A virtuious triangle?: Evaluating the impact of the rapid emergence of China on the economic relationship between China, New Zealand and Australia
China and other developing Asian economies have been the predominant sources of global economic growth in the last few decades. China in particular has become a major source of demand for Australian and NZ mineral and primary production and a source of supply of low priced manufactured products to these countries. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the economic influence of China on the growth performance and characteristics of Australia and NZ and evaluate how that influence may have also affected the economic relationship between Australia and NZ. The student tasks will include preparation of relevant time-series production, investment and trade data, and analysing how sector production and trade patterns have changed since the 1970s (the period of China's economic emergence); undertaking a shift in shares analysis of production sectors and trade patterns; identifying and interpreting historical, theoretical and econometric research that may be relevant to understanding the implications of this triangular relationship; preparation of a brief paper describing the insights from the research, including relevant charts and tables and analysis; preparation of a power-point presentation; preparation of a poster for the VUW Summer Scholar poster competition.Required skills and attributes in applicants will include: economics (and preferably also econometrics); an interest in economic development and history; data analysis and writing skills.
Contact: Bob Buckle
Fiscal sustainability and indexation of welfare benefits
The design of Government welfare benefits requires some form of indexation. In New Zealand, indexation methods vary across types of benefits. For example, domestic purposes, unemployment, invalid's, and sickness benefits are indexed to price changes. In contrast, New Zealand superannuation is indexed to either the change in the average net nominal wage or the price level, depending on which increases the most. NZ Treasury projections of Government fiscal balances indicate that the way welfare benefits, including superannuation benefits, are indexed has an important influence on future fiscal balances and public debt. The student tasks will include; analysing and documenting the welfare indexation practice for various welfare payments in New Zealand over the past 40 years; researching and documenting the indexation assumptions used in long-term fiscal reports for other countries; providing an analysis of different indexation practices and how these differences would affect distributional outcomes in New Zealand; preparation of a paper describing the insights from the research, including relevant charts and tables and analysis and present the key insights; preparation of a poster for the VUW Summer Scholar poster competition. The successful applicant will work at Treasury during the summer as part of the Treasury Macroeconomics team. The required skills and attributes in applicants will include; economics and an interest in public economics and finance, policy analysis and writing. An interest in public policy and politics would be beneficial.
Contact: Bob Buckle
Reclaiming New Zealand's digitised heritage
Over the last 10 years, many projects have digitised New Zealand heritage material, in order to improve access to important resources. Though a number of local projects have digitised small amounts of early New Zealand material, for example, the Early New Zealand Book project at the University of Auckland and the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, a much larger number of texts have been digitised overseas through the Google Book Search project and the Internet Archive's book digitisation project. New Zealanders have limited access to this material because of the conservative copyright policies of other countries. The main research goal of the project is to investigate the justifications for the practices of digital repositories, including those hosted overseas and in New Zealand, in restricting or permitting access to digital copies of early New Zealand publications on a jurisdictional basis. The student scholar will need to have basic searching skills, which will be supplemented with training in using advanced features, and will also need to have an interest in copyright. The position would suit an undergraduate or honours history or law student, or a first-year postgraduate information studies student.Contact: Brenda Chawner
Framing in IS Research
The objective of this project is to explore and apply Orlikowski's Technological Frames theory to the published literature. The goal is to use the theory to illuminate and enrich understanding of the nature, challenges, limitations and opportunities in IS research narrative, and in the relationship between technological framing in the literature and research paradigm. The student will conduct a search for literature relating to genre and narrative studies in information systems. The next step will be to analyse the papers in a pre-existing corpus, applying the three domains of technological frames - nature of technology, technology strategy and technology-in-use. The outcomes from this stage will guide subsequent identification of frames and iterative application to the dataset of IS papers. The student will be required to have an understanding of IS terminology and high level abstract concepts, and should have a high level of critical literacy skills. The student will develop the ability to conduct literature searches and to critically reflect on academic writing.
Contact: Jocelyn Cranefield
Introducing Competition into Accident Compensation in New Zealand
The Health Services Research Centre and the Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation at Victoria University are undertaking a project to examine the implications and impact of the 'Market and policy implications of introducing competition into the accident compensation insurance market in New Zealand'. We are seeking a summer student to work with Associate Professor Jacqueline Cumming and Bronwyn Howell to scope out the issues associated with competition in the accident compensation insurance market; search for and summarise New Zealand and international literature on the topic ; search for and summarise key New Zealand policy documents on the topic; devise a research plan for a larger project. Ideally the summer student will have knowledge of economics and public policy issues, experience in undertaking research assistant work, and excellent written and oral communication skills.
Contact: Jackie Cumming
Myth or reality? Is New Zealand as Innovative as we think?
Innovation is believed by many to be important to productivity growth, and on at least some international measures New Zealand performs fairly well on innovation while still performing poorly on almost all international measures of productivity growth. Why? The most common explanation is that New Zealand does a poor job of commercialising its innovations; however there is an alternative explanation that is worth exploring. That is that New Zealander's perceptions of what is truly innovative are, on average, not very accurate. The purpose of this project is to look into exactly how innovation is measured and how useful those measurements are in identifying and measuring the types of innovation that are likely to be productivity enhancing. The summer scholar will need to be able to carry out in-depth literature reviews regarding measures of innovation and collate secondary data from on line sources about the situation in New Zealand. The student will be co-supervised by Dr Mary Ellen Gordon of the NZ Productivity Commission and will be located for the summer at the Commission's Offices. Useful background subjects include management and economics.
Contact: Sally Davenport
Changes over time in the components of New Zealand's Consumer Price Index (CPI)
The project will investigate changes over time in subgroups, such as Fresh Fruit and Vegetables, Groceries, etc. of the Food Group of the Consumers Price Index (CPI)? Changes in prices in both real and actual dollars and in the basket of goods that are priced each quarter will be investigated. If time permits other groups such as Housing or Alcohol and Tobacco may also be investigated. This work will form part of a chapter for a book on the History of New Zealand's CPI and the student will produce a written report of their analyses that will contribute to this. The project will be supervised by Adjunct Professor Sharleen Forbes of VUW's School of Government but much of the work will be done within the Prices Unit of Statistics New Zealand. It is expected that the successful student will have a background in statistics or economics and good written and oral communication skills. Applicants from a wide range of disciplines will be considered.
Contact: Sharleen Forbes
A Longitudinal Study of New Zealand SME Non-exporters and Exporters to China: Challenges for Market Entry and Performance
This project aims to develop theoretical understandings relating to export stimuli and export performance of NZ firms exporting to China, and develop questionnaires that will be used in the next stage of the research project. The summer scholarship holder will be required to conduct the following tasks; reviewing the export marketing and international business literature to identify key motivations and success factors for SMEs with regard to China; reviewing the literature to identify NZ-specific factors that may constrain and facilitate SMEs to enter and operate in China; applying theories including resource-based view, transaction cost economics, institutional theory and competitive advantage theory to develop research propositions/hypotheses for the study; developing questionnaires that will be used in an annual Export Operations China Surveys which will take place mid 2012. The applicant should have strong quantitative skills and a basic knowledge of export marketing and SME internationalisation. Good writing skills are also important as the key outputs of the summer research are conceptual research papers. Preferably, the applicant will have done research on exporting and/or China before. Familiarity with Qualtrics or other online survey tools is also desirable as the scholarship holder is expected to develop on-line questionnaires that are to be used in the next stage of the larger research project.
Contact: Hongzhi Gao
The economic Consequences of Mandatory IFRS adoption in New Zealand
This study examines the current debate about IFRS adoption by documenting the association between IFRS adoption and economic consequences (proxied by 'ex ante' cost of equity capital) in New Zealand listed companies. This study will be the first of its kind to provide direct evidence of the impact of the introduction of IFRS on the cost of equity on New Zealand companies. This study is motivated by the recent mixed evidence over the adoption of IFRS. Advocates of IFRS underline their higher quality and improved comparability; critics of IFRS question their superiority (Barthet al., 2008). The ideal candidate will be well versed in extracting and manipulating data from annual reports, and have knowledge of financial reporting. We are looking for someone who enjoys being busy, has a great sense of humour, and can maintain accuracy whilst remaining calm and focused.
Contact: Noor Houqe
Professional Accounting Education Project
This project involves analysis of a dataset on the professional development programme of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants.The dataset has anonymous data on approximately 4,000 subjects who have undertaken NZICA programs. The analysis will require assessment of post-tertiary performance in a range of disciplines, over a range of assessment methods, and analysis of the impact of a range of variables on performance in the professional development programme. Some preliminary work may be necessary to prepare the dataset for analysis. Applicants for this position will be required to undertake independent analysis of the data. The successful applicant will also be required to provide an accompanying written analysis, in draft form. Strong quantitative skills are essential, together with excellent written communication skills.
Contact: Lisa Marriott
Designing effective group assignments
Are you interested in effective university teaching, research, and product design? We are looking for a summer scholar who can develop effective group assignments that meet their learning goals and are easy for lecturers to use. We want to avoid group assignments that are unfair on hard working students, do not really involve collaboration between students, and are difficult for lecturers to use for assessment purposes. The summer scholar would conduct a brief literature review; analyse existing material including survey material and existing group assignments; research the views and experiences of lecturers and students; identify critical success factors, and develop options to meet them; develop a resource for staff, including some formative evaluation tools. We are looking for someone with a mix of skills and interests in qualitative research, teaching, writing and designing resources. This is a VUW commerce faculty project, but we are particularly interested in applications from students from other faculties and universities.
Contact: Geoff Plimmer
An investigation of law students' negotiation ethics
In this research the summer scholar and I will explore how law students in NZ and Austria rate the appropriateness of ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics. We will seek to identify the influence of ethics training and national culture on these perceptions and will cooperate with Associate Professoe Martin Risak at Vienna University's law school. The summer scholar will work with me on a literature review of law, business and psychology journals to develop hypotheses, definition of the sample and method including applying for ethics approval and the development/pilot testing of a questionnaire. We will also aim to collect data in NZ during the summer. The results of the study will be written up as a conference paper for submission to the International Association of Conflict Management 2012 conference due in February 2012. The summer student will ideally be pursuing an International Business and Law double major; have an interest in ethical decision making and national culture and be willing to assist with facilitating data collection within the Law department.
Contact: Cheryl Rivers
Event Volunteering Evaluation Project
Events of all sizes, from world cups to community festivals, are dependent on volunteers for their planning, management and delivery, and people choose to volunteer at events for a variety of reasons. The international Event Volunteering Evaluation (EVE) project is a comparative, cross-national study of volunteer motivation and satisfaction across different events, event types, and volunteering roles. Working with EVE Project leader Dr Karen Smith, you will assist with the development of the New Zealand phase of data collection. This includes: recruiting event and festival organisers to the project; modifying the existing research survey to the requirements of each event; using the Qualtrics online survey tool to distribute the survey to volunteers; undertaking analysis (using SPSS and Excel); writing summary reports for each event organiser; and contributing to the writing of a journal article. For students pursuing a career in events/tourism the research should provide opportunities to develop knowledge of and contacts within the sector. Ideally applicants should have an interest and enthusiasm for volunteering, some familiarity with the required software (Excel, SPSS, but knowledge of Qualtrics is not essential), report writing skills, and ability to liaise with event organisers in a professional manner.
Contact: Karen Smith
Women and Open Source Software
For years there has been considerable concern about the lack of women working in information technology, and despite a number of initiatives to address this issue the situation does not seem to be improving. In the open source sector this problem seems to be particularly acute. The Wellington open source community is keen to address this issue, and is taking a number of steps to encourage more young women to consider a career in open source. One initiative was the Open Source Academy, a two week course for Secondary School Students run by Catalyst in January 2011. The student's task will be to evaluate the success of such initiatives and to investigate the reasons why women are so underrepresented in the open source community. The researcher will carry out a literature review and conduct focus groups and interviews with male and female secondary school students. The research will be informed by discussions with members of the Wellington open source community. The preferred student should be interested in research methods and gender issues. The student should have good oral and written communication skills.
Contact: Janet Toland
Corporate Governance, Litigation Environment and Management Earnings Forecasts
There is some evidence that internal corporate governance appears to be more effective in monitoring management earnings forecast behaviour in jurisdictions where litigation cost is low. This research project extends this finding by directly comparing the impact of internal corporate governance mechanisms on management earnings forecast behaviour between two jurisdictions with unequal litigation costs - New Zealand and Australia. The findings from this research project would be useful in future cross-border capital market research. Tasks that the research student is expected to complete include: conduct a literature review of both public enforcement actions and class actions in relation to breaches of the continuous disclosure regimes in New Zealand and Australia; collect management earnings forecasts issued by companies listed on the New Zealand Exchange and Australian Securities Exchange as well as internal corporate governance information for the period 2002-2011. Expected skills of the research student include: research skills, including familiarity with empirical and legal databases and an ability to review and synthesise existing research; ability to work and think independently as well as work with others; strong organisational skills; academic knowledge appropriate for a senior accounting and finance and/or law student.
Contact: Thuphuong Truong
A Futurist's View on the Future of Music Festivals
A recent report by a futures think tank discussed the role of technological enhancement in music festivals in which 3D virtual pop stars such as Hatsune Miku become the new Beatles or Elvis. However, the future is about more than technology since populations age, new models of music and cultural appreciation emerge, sustainable practices become the norm and patterns of wealth change. The project would involve the collection of secondary data, drafting of manuscript outlines and proofing. At the end of the project the summer scholar would have developed skills in reviewing literature, connecting concepts, identifying implications, along with co-authoring a book chapter. So, if you think you have futuristic tendencies please contact...
Contact: Ian Yeoman
Innovativeness and New Zealand firms' international success
New Zealanders are well known of their 'kiwi ingenuity' and New Zealand firms are often regarded as highly innovative in their business operations. However, in the context of global economy, whether and how such innovativeness could contribute to the New Zealand firms' international success remains somewhat unclear, particularly when these firms enter and operate in foreign countries. The present research project is intended to address this issue. We are looking for a student who is willing to play an important role in the initial stage of the project and able to complete a list of tasks including reviewing the literature on innovation/innovativeness, and develop an understanding of a number of topics critical to firms business success. The student will also be required to draft a report summarising the literature and may be required to conduct some empirical research. The ideal candidates would have majored in International Business, Marketing or Management. The preferred student should be highly self-motivated, have good critical thinking skills, be responsible, and have good time management skills.
Contact: Yang Yu