Samir Saadi has been awarded the Telfer Young Researcher of the Year Award
Each year the Telfer School of Management has the pleasure to nominate one of its professors for the Telfer Young Researcher of the Year Award. This award is given to a faculty member who has made exceptional contributions to research.
This year, the members of the Faculty Teaching Personnel Committee chose Professor Samir Saadi as the recipient of the Telfer School of Management Young Researcher of the Year Award for 2015.
His research interests include behavioral finance, mergers and acquisitions, payout policy, corporate governance, and initial public offerings. His work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals and presented at several important finance conferences and seminars.
Congratulations to Samir on this well-deserved achievement.
Downturn puts study on loan guarantee schemes in the spotlight
Market uncertainty has given added urgency to professor Miwako Nitani’s research on the efficacy of credit guarantee schemes in Canada.
Also known as loan guarantee programs, these programs grew in popularity to support business creation and growth in challenging economic times. But their actual effect on mitigating the effects of financial crises on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Canada has not been studied empirically.
“The OECD calls them governments’ ‘intervention of choice,’ insulating SMEs from liquidity shock,” explains professor Nitani, of the finance section at the Telfer School. She will use a grant from SSHRC to study loan guarantee schemes – in direct collaboration with federal policy makers.
A favoured tool of almost 100 countries to promote access to finance for SMEs, they can make substantial contributions to economic stability and growth, says Nitani, whose doctoral work examined the structure of the Canadian venture capital market and its impact on the performance of market players.
But, she adds, there’s an important caveat: “They come at a substantive contingent cost for the government guarantors.”
Canada has a national credit guarantee scheme called the Canada Small Business Finance program. The federal government expanded the program after the 2007-08 global financial crisis such that the amount of commercial loans guaranteed by the program increased by $100 million from fiscal year April 2008-March 2009 to 2010-11, to reach $1 billion.
“A slowdown tends to push up demand for the support provided – particularly among young firms that contribute to economic wellbeing and job creation,” she explains. “But downturns also make it even more critical that the money is effectively utilized.”
With the current economic slowdown and greater conservatism among lenders putting such programs under increased public scrutiny, it is essential to understand better their costs and benefits. “Taxpayers bear the costs of honoring the defaults of guaranteed loans,” says professor Nitani.
“The stakes are certainly high, but there’s a window of opportunity now to contribute to Canadian practice and policy on credit loan schemes and also to transfer knowledge to other countries that use them.”
Gender Diversity in the Boardroom Furthers Sustainability Initiatives
A study by the CPA Canada-Accounting and Governance Research Centre (CPA-AGRC) concludes that female representation in the boardroom makes it more likely for a firm to disclose climate-change related risks.
Walid Ben Amar, a professor of accounting and the Executive Director of the CPA-AGRC at the Telfer School of Management, Millicent Chang of the University of Western Australia and Philip McIlkenny, Telfer School examined the influence of board gender diversity on the firm’s decision to respond voluntarily to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire using a sample of Canadian firms over the period 2008-2014.
The result supports other research showing a positive effect of board gender diversity on the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices as well as financial reporting quality. Gender diversityenhanced board effectiveness in stakeholder management and promoted the adoption of sustainability initiatives, the researchers report in the Journal of Business Ethics.
The CPA-AGRC study provides Canadian evidence that female boardroom participation is positively related to the voluntary disclosure of climate change information, after board attributes and firm factors are taken into consideration. The data also reinforces the idea that board gender diversity needs to reach a ‘critical mass’ of at least two women directors before this impact becomes present.
Overall, the findings back recent changes introduced by the OSC aiming to increase female participation on boards and in senior management positions, noted Ben Amar. It will be holding a roundtable on September 29 to discuss progress on the representation of women on boards
“The OSC in 2014 introduced a ‘comply or explain’ rule with regard to women representation on boards of publicly traded firms, similar to the approach used in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and the evidence from our study was clear: women directors enhance corporate disclosure transparency with regard to climate change-related risks.”
Mirou Jaana a Co-Investigator in SSHRC-Funded Research
Researchers from HEC, the Telfer School, and Université Laval will study the diffusion of IT innovation in healthcare from a socio-cognitive perspective with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Guy Paré of HEC Montréal, Mirou Jaana of Telfer and Josianne Marsan of Laval are exploring why some innovations become highly popular and others do not. The public discourse surrounding three core health IT innovations which are at different stages in the institutionalization process will be examined, taking into account vendors and other groups of entrepreneurs.
The socio-cognitive perspective stipulates that an IT innovation not only takes place in adopter organizations, but also exists in a collective environment where institutional entrepreneurs are interested in developing the innovation as a concept. The present study builds on the idea that every IT innovation concept comes with an organizational vision that explains what the innovation is about, why organizations should adopt it and how. Two functions of the organizing vision will be investigated: legitimation and interpretation. While it is recognized that different stakeholders build legitimacy for health IT innovations, how this process unfolds or the impact of different legitimation strategies on IT diffusion outcomes has not been studied.
There is considerable variation in Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) adoption in clinical practices and the present study investigates the relationship between physicians’ perceptions of the organizing vision of EMRs and the assimilation of this innovation into their practices. The results will inform better decision-making among healthcare organizations that must choose whether or not to adopt health IT innovations and offer a deeper understanding of innovation diffusion and the role of IT vendors and institutional entrepreneurs.
Telfer Health Transformation Exchange is Making Progress
On June 22, the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange (THTEX) held its second meeting, which was well attended by both Telfer professors and physicians leaders alike. The group is keen on expanding joint work on transforming healthcare in the region through research and education.
At the meeting, updates were provided on the progress to date and research collaborations coming to fruition. One such example is the collaboration between Pavel Andreev of the Telfer School and Dr. James Chan of The Ottawa Hospital, who completed a systematic review of mobile technology in healthcare and how it has impacted the way physicians work and interact with their patients, and vice versa.
The group brainstormed a number of opportunities for working together, with an eye on establishing new research partnerships between Telfer professors and clinicians. More events are in the works and various communication channels for the group and general public are being explored.
Stay tuned for more developments from THTEX and if you have any questions regarding the Exchange, please contact Kathy Cunningham, Coordinator, at
