HRM&OB researcher Darja Carl of FEB wins best thesis proposal award

Darja Carl, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen, has won the 2010 Best Research Dissertation Proposal Award of ANZAM, the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management. She was awarded the prize last week at the ANZAM conference in Adelaide, Australia. Her research subject is ‘creative processes under pressure’.

The jury based the choice for Carl on soundness of theory, methodological rigor, and potential contribution to the field of management. Her proposal "shows the courage of using new or unusual ways to advance the management discipline". The jury consisted of Prof. Neal Ashkanasy and Prof Charmine Härtel from the University of Queensland, Prof. Ross Chapman (University of Western Sydney) and Robert Cavana (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ).

"Honoured"

Darja Carl: "At the ANZAM Best Dissertation Award Competition Finals in Adelaide the other finalists gave very impressive presentations and I did not expect to win the competition, I already felt very honoured to be part of it. Therefore I was very surprised and overwhelmed, when I heard my name. I am very thankful to the jury at ANZAM for giving me such a great opportunity and of course to my supervisors for all the great support I received."

In her PhD research on creativity under pressure, Carl emphasizes that creativity is the cornerstone of organizational success in today’s complex and globalized economy, especially in times of uncertainty and when work pressure and stress increase steadily. She develops and tests a new model of the effects of pressure on creativity. The model argues that pressure associates with either a challenge or a threat appraisal, and that this in turn influences employee creativity. She suggests that the pressure-creativity-relationship is moderated by leadership experienced by the employee. She verifies her model and tests her predictions in five experiments and a field study.

ANZAM

ANZAM is the primary professional body for management educators, researchers and practitioners in Australia and New Zealand, with about 750 individual members and 50 institutional members (representing most Australian and New Zealand universities) as well as members from other countries. The purpose of ANZAM is to advance management education, scholarship, research and practice.

Darja Carl

Darja Carl is a PhD candidate at the department of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour (HRM/OB) at the Faculty of Economics and Business. She is conducting research in cooperation with B.A. Nijstad and F. Walter. Before joining the HRM/OB Department she worked as a consultant in a design consultancy (California, USA) and business consultancy (Hamburg, Germany). She received her Diploma in Psychology with focus in Organizational Psychology from the Julius-Maximilians-Universitaet in Wuerzburg, Germany.