ERIM Awards Ceremony 2010: and the awards go to…

At the annual ERIM Awards Ceremony, ERIM honoured its best researchers of the joint institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics. The prizes are divided into different academic disciplines such as the Dissertation Award, the Book Award and the Impact Award.

<link people ale-smidts _self>Ale Smidts, Scientific Director of ERIM, opened the ceremony by looking back on this year’s milestones. He talked about ERIM’s Open PhD Projects kick off, and of course about the ERIM Review 2004-2009, comprised of a self-assessment report, and a peer review conducted by a group of renowned management scholars. From that peer review report, it clearly appears that ERIM has made tremendous progress over the past years and is now acknowledged as one of the premier research places in Europe. Based on that report, Ale moved on to the four key priorities for the 2011-2015 period. ERIM wants to further strengthen its academic performance; increase the quality and international appeal of its doctoral programme; invest in capabilities to broaden and increase research funding base; and strengthen the visibility and reputation in management practice in society.

He ended his presentation by officially handing out the first Honorary Fellowship to Emeritus Professor <link people berend-wierenga _self>Berend Wierenga, in recognition of his tremendous contribution over the years to ERIM.

He then invited Professor Henk Schmidt, Rector Magnificus of Erasmus University Rotterdam to present the ERIM Awards. He congratulated ERIM with its great achievements and recognised ERIM to be a top institute for management research, providing an excellent example of how to establish high quality research in a field that earlier on was dominated by practice. He also described ERIM as a top graduate school ‘where PhD students feel like fish in the water.” He concluded by saying: “ERIM is a very special place to be – in particular because of the strong internationalization in students and faculty” He continued by handing out the Awards to the following people:

The ERIM Book Award to <link people slawomir-magala _self>Slawek Magala, Professor of Cross-cultural Management at RSM, for his book The Management of Meaning in Organizations. The Jury says: “This book presents an inspiring and challenging essay on a somewhat out-of-the-mainstream topic within the domain of management: the process of how we give meaning to our work and our role in organisations, and especially how that creation of meaning is managed and which underlying (ideological) choices drive that management process. The book describes the historical change in the dominating influences in the management of meaning, going from an almost exclusively religious affair (“I believe what the priest says”) to also heavily relying on science (“I believe what the professor says”) until our current era with its strong post-modern tendencies (“I believe what the crowd says”). Magala is not seduced by simple solutions, such as an uncritical embracing of post-modernism. He stresses that sense making cannot be outsourced and calls for responsible and critical citizenship. That message does not only apply to individuals but also to institutions, including research institutes like ERIM.”

The ERIM Dissertation Award to Joost van Rosmalen for his dissertation entitled: Segmentation and Dimension Reduction: Exploratory and Model-Based Approaches. In the words of the Jury: “By combining clustering and multivariate visualization techniques, new models are developed that can summarise and explain the information in a complex data set in a simple way. These models are applied to study the big issue of response styles in cross-cultural research in an innovative way. The models allow managers new insights for segmentation and positioning. Three papers from the thesis have already been published in top journals. This is an excellent dissertation and very important work indeed.”

The ERIM Top Article Award to <link people yvonne-van-everdingen _self>Yvonne van Everdingen, Associate Professor of Marketing at RSM; <link people dennis-fok _self>Dennis Fok, Associate Professor at the Econometrics Institute, ESE, and <link people stefan-stremersch _self>Stefan Stremersch, Professor of Marketing at the ESE for their article: Modeling Global Spillover of New Product Takeoff, published in The Journal of Marketing Research. In the words of the Jury: “The “Global Spillover” paper addresses a new problem (will product success in Canada increase the likelihood of success in the US, as an example), it develops a new analytic model, has data on high-tech introductions across many countries in the world, and makes directly relevant recommendations to managers. On top of that, it is theoretically interesting. This is indeed outstanding work.

The ERIM Service Award to Reino de Boer, Controller and Head of the IT department at the Erasmus School of Economics. The jury says: ”Reino de Boer is a true service professional, always ready to help. Since the start of ERIM, Reino has supported ERIM with many initiatives around IT, organizational issues and financial controlling. His drive for transparency and practical solutions is strong. Reino has the gift to strip organisational puzzles to their bare essentials and act immediately to produce results that work. He is a silent force, and in combination with his great organizational memory he very effectively supports our business.”

The ERIM Award for Outstanding Performance by a Young Researcher goes to <link people stefano-puntoni _self>Stefano Puntoni Associate Professor at the Department of Marketing of RSM. According to the Jury, “Dr. Stefano Puntoni is a stellar researcher. He published already five outstanding articles in top journals since his PhD in 2005. Dr. Puntoni’s research can be classified into two main streams - one on social influence processes involving consumers, the other on language and globalisation in advertising. In this latter research, he demonstrates the greater emotional intensity of advertising appeals and measurement scale anchors presented in consumers’ native language. This has major practical implications for cross-cultural research. Stefano was already the recipient of both a Marie Curie grant and an EUR Fellowship, as well as a winner of the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award. Furthermore, Dr. Puntoni has played a tremendous role in supporting others’ research at ERIM. He founded both the paid and unpaid ERIM subject pools for the Erasmus Behavioural Lab and coordinated the ERIM Marketing Speaker Series in a very professional manner, always going the extra mile to make high-profile visiting speakers feel welcome. He is also actively involved in PhD supervision, publishing three articles with ERIM PhD students thus far. ERIM can be proud to have a winner like Dr. Puntoni as one of their members.”

Finally, the ERIM Impact Award for the Impact on Management Practice goes to the The research project team of Erasmus@Work: <link people peter-van-baalen _self>Peter van Baalen, <link people frank-go _self>Frank Go, <link people eric-van-heck _self>Eric van Heck, <link people jo-van-nunen-in-memoriam-12-5-2010 _self>Jo van Nunen †, Nick van der Meulen, <link people marcel-van-oosterhout _self>Marcel van Oosterhout, and <link people michaela-schippers _self>Michaéla Schippers. The Jury says: “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.”