Emerald and EFMD have awarded University of Twente alumna Dr. Desirée van Dun the prize for the best dissertation at their annual Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards ceremony. She received this highest annual award in the Operations and Production Management category. The excellent quality of her (cum laude) University of Twente dissertation entitled Improving Lean Team Performance: Leadership and Workfloor Dynamics set her entry apart from the many other international entries.
“It is a very great honour to be considered the best by leading scholars. In my Business Administration research, I combined various fields such as Organisational Behaviour, Leadership, Change and Lean Management. This has now been rewarded by the Operations Management professors,” says Dr. Van Dun.
At 11 December 2015, she received her Ph.D. from the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences at the University of Twente. In her mixed-methods dissertation, she researched—partly longitudinal—behaviour and values of effective Lean leaders and their teams on the workfloor. Dr. Van Dun: “I discovered a constellation of concrete behaviours and values of Lean managers at various organisational levels, by which team members continue to improve work and (Lean) performance on the workfloor in the long term. I used this to unravel the elements and preconditions for a culture of continuous improvement.”
Her supervisor, Prof. Celeste Wilderom, thinks the jury were impressed by the innovative video technology used in the research: “This research contains an analysis of organisational behaviour of managers and team members based on more than 70 hours of video combined with solid, valid performance indicators. This provides unique insights into the complex change tasks faced by every organisation today.”
Emerald and EFMD
This is the 10th year that Emerald and EFMD (the international management development network) jointly held this dissertation award ceremony. Emerald Group Publishing Limited publishes the biggest collection of international Business and Management journals in the world. EFMD is an international network organisation of more than 820 members in the worlds of science, business, consultancy and in the public sector in 83 countries and, among other things, is involved in the accreditation of Business Administration courses worldwide.
Desirée Van Dun
Dr. Van Dun is a researcher/tutor at the University of Twente and (Lean organisation specialist at House of Performance. She regularly publishes blogs on her research and also speaks at professional conferences. Her dissertation can be requested in PDF format and also viewed in five short YouTube videos via: https://desireevandun.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/lean-leiderschap-in-15-minuten/ (in Dutch). The research falls under the auspices of the Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies, at the University of Twente.
