The Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) recently showcased some of the research being done in different departments in the faculty at a research day hosted at STIAS.

Prof Stan du Plessis, Dean of the Faculty, was very excited about the development of a research culture in EMS.

"Our researchers are becoming recognised experts in their fields and we have a rising number of NRF-rated researchers," he said.

He was also pleased with the increased number of PhDs delivered by the faculty last year – 23 doctoral students graduated in December in 2015 or will graduate in March 2016.

"This is by far the most PhDs this faculty has ever delivered in one year. The number is usually around 8 to 12."

He mentioned the faculty's PhD school that should deliver its first PhD graduates by the end of this year.

Prof Du Plessis believes it is essential that the faculty should have a vibrant research culture as people have been grappling with questions in the field of economic and management sciences for centuries.

"If you look at old cuneiform tablets, they refer to issues like tax, beer rations, wages, etc. These questions have always been important and we are now grappling with them with greater intensity and depth."

According to Prof Christo Boshoff, Vice-dean: Research, the objectives of the day were to showcase research to the faculty, management and the Division for Research Development and to encourage interdisciplinary research.

"We can be proud of the research being done in this faculty," he concluded.

The topics were:

1. Agricultural minimum wages: understanding heterogeneity in disemployment and compliance (Dr Dieter von Fintel, Economics)
2. Significant risks related to enterprise mobile solutions at a mobile technology component level (Ms Lize-Marie Sahd, Accounting)
3. "I wish it were friday": Do analysts and investors get distracted at the end of the week? (Mr Rousseau Lötter, Business Management)
4. Doing transdisciplinary research in an African context: lessons from recent doctoral research at SU (Prof Mark Swilling, School for Public Leadership)
5. Efficiency and sustainability of Tanzanian saving and credit cooperatives (Mr Nyankomo Marwa, USB)
6. Catastrophe modelling: Deriving the 1-in-200 year mortality shock for a South African insurer's capital requirements under solvency assessment and management (Mr D Corubolo & Mr Rob Clover, Statistics & Actuarial Science);
7. Extracting travel behaviour patterns with smartphone apps (Prof S Krygsman, Logistics)
8. Development and empirical evaluation of a psychological well-being at work structural model (Dr Gina Görgens, Industrial Psychology).

Photo: Dr Dieter von Fintel (presenter), Prof Christo Boshoff (Vice-dean: Research in EMS), Prof Eugene Cloete (Vice-rector: Research at SU), Prof Stan du Plessis (Dean: EMS) and Dr Gina Görgens (presenter).