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Staples wins New Researcher Award
December 05, 2001
2001-12-05 - Telecommuting and virtual teams. Wireless technologies and collaborative tools. These innovations are changing the landscape of business at a rapid pace. At the forefront of this field of study is Assistant Professor Sandy Staples - this year's recipient of the Queen's School of Business New Researcher Award. This award honours faculty who have made outstanding contributions to their chosen research field within seven years of receiving their PhD.
Dr. Staples' research focuses on how technology is changing the way organizations work. Building on the concept of telecommuting, he investigates the nature of work in geographically dispersed environments. How is the relationship between employee and employer affected when they are working in different locations? How can teamwork be created when team members work remotely? How does one measure productivity and evaluate performance when employees are out of sight? Dr. Staples focuses on finding the answers to these and related questions that will guide the way people work in years to come. "Particularly in a business school, we need to research relevant topics," Staples says. "Learning how technology can make organizations more effective, and how people adapt to these new technologies are topics of relevance to managers and workers alike."
A graduate of the University of Guelph and University of Western Ontario, Dr. Staples joined Queen's School of Business after a two-year stint as a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia. His papers have appeared in such journals as Organization Science and The Journal of Strategic Information Systems and he is a regular contributor to international conferences. Much of his research has been conducted in collaboration with colleagues in Canada, Australia and the United States and he is a recent recipient of a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Dr. Staples also continues to be active in the business school's research program funded by the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund.
Dr. Staples believes in bringing the complexities of his research into his undergraduate and graduate classrooms. "We're in the business of acquiring knowledge at Queen's but it would be rather pointless if the process ended there," Dr. Staples explains. "The transfer of that knowledge to students is a very important part of the job." From the use of telecommunications in business for second year Commerce students, to the complexities of knowledge management theory at the graduate level, Dr. Staples practices what he preaches.