At COER, we research a wide range of topics relating to organisational excellence, benchmarking, and best practices and quality managment. Our research is characterised by its academic rigour and direct applicability to businesses so that research findings can be used to improve organisational performance and business results.

Click here for information about COER team’s publications or visit individual researchers’ pages to view staff members and research students’ areas of interest.

Opportunities for PhD Research

COER is always interested in hearing from graduates that have an interest in business excellence and PhD research. PhD students will have a unique opportunity to work on projects with NZ's leading organisations and make a real difference to business competitiveness in NZ. Projects typically provide a great opportunity to learn more about best practices in general and provide the student with experience to work in business consultancy or move into senior management roles.

Research topics / application process

Application form (Please return along with your CV and names and contact details of two referees to the address shown on the form)

Writing a research proposal

PhD scholarships at Massey

Information for International students

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Areas of possible research at COER

• Business Excellence – Projects may focus on:
• Identifying the most successful methods for promoting and increasing the uptake of business excellence within a region or country. This will involve
• studying regional / national approaches to business excellence. The findings could be used to increase the number of organisations using a business excellence approach within a particular region / country.
• Developing and testing an assessment tool to identity the maturity of a country’s approach to business excellence. Therefore a tool which considers the support services provided in a country to help organisations on the journey to business excellence.
• Assessing the impact of business excellence models in improving anation’s competitiveness. For example, what role has business excellence played in the social and economic success of countries like Singapore and the UAE.
• Identifying methods for effective action planning stemming from Business Excellence self-assessments or evaluations. At present little guidance is given on this critical part of an improvement cycle.
• Determining the relevance of the Baldrige Criteria for performance Excellence (CPE), and CPE self-assessment, to small organisations (with fewer than 20 employees).
• Benchmarking – Projects may focus on:
• National or Global Benchmarking Services. May involve researching the activities of Benchmarking Centres worldwide to help Benchmarking Centre’s become more effective in delivering a quality service to organisations.
• Research into the global use of benchmarking, the types of benchmarking, and the benefits obtained.
• Research into the benefits and pitfalls of Formal Approaches to benchmarking such as TRADE Best Practice Benchmarking. How can formal approaches be more effectively utilised?
• Research into Informal Benchmarking – therefore researching how organisations learn from each other in an informal way. Informal benchmarking is strongly related to knowledge management but focuses on the acquisition and sharing of knowledge that has been gleaned from other organisations.
• Determining the relevance of benchmarking to SMEs and/or how SMEs can apply benchmarking effectively.
• Researching the role and use of on-line resources in assisting knowledge and best practice transfer and /or developing methods to increase the effectiveness of an on-line resource (the Business Performance Improvement Resource (BPIR.com))
• Methods and approaches to process management and continuous improvement. This might encompass theoretical and conceptual developments in quality, or the application of specific tools and techniques such as ‘six sigma’, statistical process control, ‘lean enterprise’ etc.
• Identifying best practices in an area which will advance an organisation’s management or business capability. Previously students have related their topics to a Baldrige Item. Topics could be related to leadership, strategy, customer and market focus, human resource management, knowledge management, performance measurement and process management.

Information for Current Students

Writing a research proposal

Writing a PhD thesis

Useful referencing guidelines

Transfer process from provisional to full registration

Full registration form (DRC13-1) for doctoral candidates