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The Australian Research Council (ARC) has recently announced the successful Discovery Projects for 2020 and a number of academics from the ANU College of Business and Economics (CBE) have had their projects funded.
Older workers and psychological contracts
Professor Prashant Bordia from the Research School of Management (RSM) is lead Chief Investigator (CI) on a project awarded AU$310,200 to explore how the workplace psychological contracts of older employees change with their age.
This research will fill significant gaps in the understanding of older workers’ needs and orientation toward work. It will also identify the age related changes and organisational practices that motivate older workers to sustain their productive participation in the workforce. Prashant and his colleagues will use intensive, repeated in-depth interviews and a large-scale longitudinal panel study to track older workers.
“I am delighted that this project has been funded and look forward to contributing to an area that is of high topical importance for Australia,'' said Prashant.
Automation and income inequality
Professor Markus Brueckner from the Research School of Economics is lead CI on a project awarded AU$500,853 to explore effects of automation on income inequality, both in Australia and abroad.
“In an era of slowing economic growth, the transition to wider use of robotics and artificial intelligence greatly increases uncertainty about how economic activity is distributed around the world, and its implications for wages, employment and domestic income inequality,” explained Markus.
This project will help clarify the nature of these effects by applying new economic models at the global and national levels. Using the emerging insights, it aims to analyse economic policy responses in each region.
This new information will better equip the Australian government to address the implications of transitions in technology, by offering a vision of the future consequences of potential restorative changes to its fiscal, trade, financial and foreign policies.
Further success
Two other CBE academics are CIs on externally-led projects that the ARC funded. Dr Stephen Dann will work on a project led by the University of Technology Sydney to explore how 3D printed food could be used to improve the appeal of puree meals for those with a swallowing disability. Associate Professor Pierre van der Eng will work on a University of Wollongong administered project to deliver the first history of foreign multinational firms in twentieth-century Australia.
The recent announcements take the total number of ARC-funded projects underway in the College to 23. You can read more about other works in progress here.
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