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ERIM Impact Award

The ERIM Impact Award honours ERIM researchers who have successfully impacted management practice. The award can be given for a paper, report or article in the academic or in the applied press, describing the research and its impact. Award winning projects are selected by a committee consisting of highly regarded representatives of the business community.

Winners of the ERIM Impact Award

2011 David de Cremer was honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for his book When good people do bad things: Illustrations of the psychology behind the financial crisis . His book stresses that until very recently, people in the financial world seemed primarily motivated to maximize profit overnight. In fact, the pursuit of immediate profits indeed seemed to be the solve drivers of their motivation making that a longer-term perspective was completely lacking. How did such narrow-minded culture survive for such a long time? Where did the idea of unlimited economic growth come from? How is it possible that supposedly smart people make short-sighted decisions that ultimately lead to financial disasters? In his book, David De Cremer provides several illustrations of what went on during the financial crisis to show how human emotions and cognitive errors drove people to deceive themselves and put short-term thinking ahead of long-term thinking. Although the implementation of new rules and regulation systems may work in dealing with the aftermath of the financial crisis to some extent it is by no means “the” solution. It is more important to gather insights that help people develop their own moral compass in which intrinsic motivation and social responsibility become key aspects. To achieve this state of moral awareness, bankers and managers will have to arrive at a better understanding of why people do the things they do. For this reason a behavioural and psychological approach to the happenings in the financial crisis is much needed.

2010 Peter van Baalen , Frank Go , Eric van Heck , Jo van Nunen † , Nick van der Meulen, Marcel van Oosterhout , and Michaéla Schippers were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their work on Erasmus@Work. Erasmus@Work is a multi-year, multi-client, multi-departmental research programme at the RSM. The programme develops insight into the new ways of working and their contributions to the performance of individuals, teams, firms, and networks of firms. New ways of working include working together in teams with members all over the world using advanced video conferencing, working more flexibly in time and space thus reducing environmental footprints, and working in newly designed working spaces instead of traditional cubicles. Participating companies are De Unie, Essent, Microsoft, Rabobank, Sogeti, Haskoning, and TopForce. Many master students participated in the research project. ‘Erasmus@work’ generates new types of information on workplace innovation that leads to real changes in the management practices of companies. It has put the topic of workplace optimisation on the agenda with renowned companies. It is a tribute to this project that they have really gotten close to the businesses they are helping to change.

2009     Dirk Brounen , Professor of Finance and Real Estate, was honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for his research on foreclosure auction dynamics in the Dutch housing market. Brounen analysed a set of over 600 foreclosure sales at Dutch auctions and his results revealed an average price discount of over 37% compared to the fair market value. This discount can be explained by the informational asymmetries that associate these Dutch auctions. Brounen developed various proposals suggesting better ways to organise these auctions in order to have a better chance of generating a fair price. His research attracted massive media attention. What is more, the Dutch Parliament discussed his findings, leading to a change in legislation targeted at increasing the information symmetry. The project also had a significant impact in the corporate community and new sale platforms were launched in 2009 in which homes of financially distressed households are auctioned at well organised, large scale auctions, which incorporate all the virtues of the internet. Finally, in late 2009 the research was also under review at a top finance journal. Overall, the jury concluded that this is a fine piece of academic work that had immediate managerial impact.

2008 Leo Kroon , Lex Schrijver , Dennis Huisman , and Gábor Maróti were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their research on Netherlands Railways: The New Dutch Timetable—the OR Revolution. Leo Kroon, his PhD students and collaborators have produced an impressive stream of innovative research on train scheduling over the past 15 years. Moreover, Kroon has demonstrated how an organisation with practical questions, in this case the Netherlands Railways (NS), can benefit from fundamental academic research, and vice versa. In 2008, the team won the very prestigious INFORMS Franz Edelman Award recognising their outstanding operations research practice. They were the first Dutch team ever to win this award. In practice, at NS, the new and robust timetable led to: more efficient use of resources, resulting in major savings of 40 to 70 million euros per year; more satisfied employees; and more satisfied customers, since more trains run on time than ever before. All in all, our jury concluded that the research perfectly illustrates that the profession of operations research can have a major impact on the practice of management.

2007 Henk Volberda , Frans Van den Bosch and Justin Jansen were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their research on social innovation as exemplified in their study: Slim Managen en Innovatief Organiseren. According to the jury, their research on social innovation showed in a convincing way that successful innovation is a combination of content (R&D) and process (social innovation). It demonstrated that companies can achieve a sustainable strategic position by re-focusing on people, bringing “minds and hearts” back to the work floor. And this is what The Netherlands needed in order to become more creative and innovative again. Social innovation is all about “smart labour” as an answer to “cheap labour”. By providing many concrete examples and by proving the effectiveness of social innovation, this research stimulated companies to organise smartly.

2006 Cees van Riel and Charles Fombrun were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their book Fame & Fortune: How Successful Companies Build Winning Reputations (Financial Times / Pearson 2004). The jury was unanimous in their judgment: “This book presents the business case for having a solid corporate reputation. It has been widely acclaimed by CEOs of top companies around the world as a valid approach, and can be seen as a result of Van Riel’s Corporate Communication Centre and its research efforts, in combination with teaching and consultancy.”

2005 Dirk Brounen , Abe de Jong , Kees Koedijk and Peter Roosenboom were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their research project: “CFO Business Outlook Europe”. This research project aimed to investigate if and how concepts from financial management theory are used in practice. For this purpose, interviews and surveys were held among CFOs of large (European) financial firms. One of the conclusions from the analysis is that very often, simple “rules of thumb” are used instead of (at least theoretically) superior models. The impact of this research project has been extensive: it has resulted in publications in international academic journals; the results of the surveys (which now are held on a regular basis) have appeared in the (inter)national popular financial press and journals; and the focus of the research project was expanded, with the aim of comparing European firms with American and Asian companies.

Henk Volberda and Frans van den Bosch were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their Innovation Lecture entitled “Rethinking the Dutch Innovation Agenda: Management and Organization Matter Most”. The authors of the essay were invited by the Ministry of Economic Affairs to write the Innovation Essay 2004. The essay subsequently became one of the most downloaded documents on the ministry’s website and it played a major role in the innovation debate in The Hague on April 14th, 2004. It received wide recognition from the press and led to many requests for interviews in major daily newspapers, and for appearances in TV and radio programmes. Among practitioners in the government, in the SER, VNO-NCW, and in business, the essay contributed extensively to the view that the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University is a centre of expertise in “social” innovation.

2004 Gerard J.Tellis , Stefan Stremersch and Eden Yin were honoured with an ERIM Impact Award for their joint research on new product takeoff in Europe and the international diffusion of innovations. The jury judged their research as focused, very relevant and of wide scope as it included economic and cultural aspects. The results are applicable to a wide range of new product introductions. The research was published in the journal Marketing Science in 2003. Tellis, G.J., Stremersch, S., Yin, E. (2003) The International Takeoff of New Products: The Role of Economics, Culture, and Country Innovativeness. Marketing Science 22(2), 188-208.

2003 Henk Volberda and Frans van den Bosch for their focused and very relevant research on strategic renewal in the financial services sector, published in a focused theme-issue of the journal Long Range Planning

2002 Rommert Dekker for the Revlog Project whose results suggest ways for companies to achieve savings

 
 
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