The ongoing artificial intelligence upheaval and the challenges of climate change loom large in university business school research projects, and Monash University has taken on both. Ranked the best business school for Research in the 2026 Financial Review Best Business Schools, Monash increasingly co-designs research projects with stakeholders from the bottom up, ensuring research is tailored for maximum relevance.
Russell Smyth, Monash Business School deputy dean (research), says the school now deliberately avoids the once traditional path of research projects, which had the ultimate goal of producing papers worthy of publication in prestigious journals. While publication is still important, engagement with government, industry and other interested parties is paramount, he says. Stakeholders are engaged right from the start, asked about their priorities and asked which research questions they need addressed, Smyth says.
This approach is evident in the business school’s Pacific Action for Climate Transitions (PACT) collaborative research centre, established with Fiji National University, designed to improve economic health and community well-being in the face of climate change in the South Pacific.
“For the Pacific Island countries, it’s very much about responding to what’s happening and building resilience,” Smyth says. This includes issues of labour and migration, clean energy, health and economic fundamentals. All require policy responses. Economics and business academics can help formulate research angles and assist with delivering useful responses.
“It’s not about us going to the governments and saying, ‘let’s do this’,” he says. “It’s ‘tell us about the different policies that you’re thinking about to deal with this particular issue, and tell us what you want to know and what you’re thinking about – we think we can help you make that decision’.”
“I think sometimes people see the label ‘business school’ and imagine that all of our students and all the knowledge we produce is only relevant to private sector, but that’s far from true,” he says. “In fact, the knowledge we produce is relevant to managing private sector organisations, public sector organisations, and civil society organisations and NGOs.”
Gender equality research
The Sydney University school ranked joint second on Research (with the University of Melbourne) in this year’s Financial Review Best Business Schools, and conducts both blue-sky research and practical, applied research projects, usually contracted by clients.
Maguire cites the school’s Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion at Work as a leader in Australian gender research, generating practical insights into how to build fair and equitable workplaces that contribute to productivity by making it easier for women to fully participate in the workforce. “They have a stream of work looking at the experience of women in male-dominated industries, such as the construction industry, and what organisations can do to make those experiences more positive and to increase the participation of women,” he says.
For instance, the school’s researchers recently recommended establishing an industry-funded parental leave scheme to boost the retention of women in construction – a field where women make up 13.6 per cent of the workforce and 3 per cent of trades workers. Their research found pregnancy and parental leave transitions were career-breaking, that the sector’s strong health and safety culture did not extend to pregnant workers and that stigma and discrimination persisted.
The business school’s Institute of Transport and Logistic Studies is a world-leading research centre, Maguire says, conducting substantial work on sustainable transportation systems and the measures that can be taken to reduce the ecological footprint of moving people and products around the globe. An essay published in August, titled “Your Shipping Isn’t Free” shows how freight runs on “diesel, congestion and wishful thinking”.
Maguire also points to the current supply chain destabilisation caused by increasing global unrest. “With the reconfiguration of supply chains based on current geopolitical tensions, there’s a lot of work being done on building resilience into supply chains,” he says.
Recent supply chain work by the institute includes research projects titled “Conceptual frameworks on behaviour operations in sustainable supply chain management”, and “Generative AI opportunities and resilience research agenda”.
At the University of Queensland Business School, ranked fourth in this pillar, research is used to improve decisions and advance the ability of business, organisations and government to perform effectively and productively in a changing environment, says director of research Marta Indulska.
“Whether we’re studying financial markets, consumer behaviour, or artificial intelligence, the goal is really to generate evidence that helps organisations perform better and contribute more effectively to society,” she says. “We’re looking at how organisations can use AI effectively. AI is transforming how organisations operate, it’s no longer really a case of whether organisations use AI, but how they use AI and how they use it responsibly and in a way that creates value.”
The business school is working closely with industry and organisations to create frameworks for responsible use, Indulska adds. “For example, we help organisations design agentic AI processes, to redesign their workflows to responsibly incorporate AI. So we’re definitely seeing that impact, and we’re working closely with industry to make sure the research gets uptake.”
A UQ business school academic, Richard Buning, is an expert on micro-mobility and his work has informed the e-bike and e-scooter debate, Indulska says. Benefits include reduced congestion and better commuter health, and there are conclusions to be drawn on how shared e-bike and e-scooter schemes affect cities, public transport and local economies.
The business school’s Centre for the Business and Economics of Health is home to a mix of clinical, business and econometrics scholars, working on healthcare workforce optimisation, workforce shortages and new models of care, with the aim of improving health policy and outcomes. This includes work on telehealth and the connection with voluntary assisted dying; a project looking at how culturally sensitive community pharmacists can boost the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by helping to prevent medication misuse; and a paper questioning the relevance of wealth to overall wellbeing.
Indulska says the business school has many ongoing partnerships with industry and with government that ensure the research is always policy-relevant.
“One of our strengths is creating a culture that supports collaboration, but also intellectual curiosity,” she says, “where people can work on things that they’re really interested in, because I think that’s where the best work comes out.”