Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources, will design an ethnographic study of the evolving workplace culture of the Ottawa Birth and Wellness Centre (OBWC). The research will examine midwives’ work lives and professional identity in this context while exploring aspects of interprofessional collaboration (among midwives, midwives and obstetricians/physicians, and midwives and birth centre aides). Professor Ivy Bourgeault of the Telfer School, Professor Cecilia Benoit of the University of Victoria, and a team of colleagues received a CIHR planning grant for the project.

Background:

The Canadian Association of Midwives has raised concerns about challenges facing Ontario midwives in being able to practice within the full scope of their profession. Recently, a provincial pilot project aided in the development of three free-standing birth centres (FSBCs) to provide low risk pregnant women with a greater range of birthing options. Birth centres represent a new workplace for Ontario midwives and introduce unchartered opportunities for interprofessional collaboration in a midwife-led environment alongside emerging health care support roles.

François Chiocchio is involved in two international projects that have recently received financing. In the first, titled “Reduce maternal and neonatal mortality across a region, an integrated approach to the management of pregnancy and childbirth,” his role will be to study interprofessional collaboration in a change management context. The principal investigators are Marie-Hélène Chomienne, University of Ottawa (as well as Jean Charles Moreau and  Samba Corr Sarr).

The second project, led by Valéry Ridde, University of Montreal, is titled “Results-based financing in maternal and child health.” In this project, professor Chiocchio will study the impact of results-based financing on motivation and teamwork.

Both projects received 1,000,000$ over 5 years and will take place in four West African countries: Sénégal, Bénin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. They are part of a group of 20 projects which recently received funding from Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, the International Development Research Centre, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

François Chiocchio is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management and member of the Montfort Hospital Research Institute. His research centres on projects, teamwork, and collaboration in various organizational environments, including health care organizations in Canada and Africa.

Professor Samia Chreim’s latest research investigates the leadership configurations that are possible following a merger. Her study, which has just been published in the journal Human Relations, adds to our understanding of transition during mergers and acquisitions (M&As) even as it questions “shared leadership.”

The findings make clear that mergers bringing together previously autonomous work teams have a lot of ambiguity and variation in terms of their leadership configurations. When two units are merged, roles and responsibilities may overlap, in effect creating a leadership ‘surplus.’ At the other end of the spectrum there can be ‘leadership deficits’ where individuals choose, for one reason or other, not to take the helm.

“There can be good intentions towards shared leadership, so called because it is distributed among a number of individuals from the acquiring and acquired firms,” explains Chreim. “But M&As tend to open up highly ambiguous leadership spaces, as I discovered in this paper.”

She conducted in-depth interviews with members of an acquiring firm and members of four acquired business units in the engineering sector. The participants had expectations for joint control post-merger.

But these expectations were realized in only one case in which a form of collaborative leadership emerged. In the three other scenarios, the configurations that emerged could be best characterized as: (1) a leadership vacuum; (2) an overcrowded leadership space, and (3) a one-sided arrangement characterized by take-over. 

Shared leadership might not be realized in the post-merger environment. Much will depend on pre-merger discussions, on the ability of personnel from the acquiring and acquired firms to collaborate on setting vision and strategy, on the relationships that develop between the parties, and on the ability of individuals from the acquired firm to exert influence.

The journal Human Relations has published a lengthy discussion of Dr. Chreim’s article by a renowned scholar in this area. Peter Gronn of Cambridge University writes that Dr. Chreim “is to be commended for an invaluable contribution and for advancing knowledge in this field.”

Professor Bijan Raahemi leads a data analysis project in collaboration with SensorSuite using a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). A post-doctoral fellow and two Ph.D students are working with Dr. Raahemi in the Knowledge Discovery and Data mining (KDD) research laboratory at the Telfer School.

Project Description

A Toronto-based company, SensorSuite produces wireless sensors and controllers for the HVAC industry with solutions that capture, process and deliver real-time information to property managers and building owners. The KDD lab will develop a customized solution for managing large volumes of data that cannot be processed using traditional techniques. Data from SensorSuite’s sensors positioned in different locations will be captured and analyzed using big data analytics for pattern recognition, prediction, and anomaly detection. The ultimate goal of the project is to achieve fewer inefficiencies, a reduction in operational risks, and cost savings. 

More about the KDD lab

Bijan Raahemi established the Knowledge Discovery and Data mining (KDD) lab at the University of Ottawa with grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). Supported by several research grants, including two NSERC discovery grants, the research in the KDD lab focuses on data analytics, information systems, and their applications in engineering and business. 

The research in the KDD lab undertaken by Post-Doctoral Fellows, Ph.D and M.Sc. students focuses on big data analytics, data summarization, and stream data mining. It includes the recent industry-funded project, “Brain-based Biomarkers for Depression Diagnoses” supported by IBM and Royal Ottawa Hospital. This work focused on development of predictive and descriptive models to diagnose depressed individuals based on the EEG monitoring of brain activities in three frequency bands. Data were analyzed through the use of various analytical methods including neural networks, decision trees, and k-means clustering. Undertaken with the cooperation of the Royal Ottawa Hospital, the project identified significant biomarkers in the EEG signals to support clinical decision making.