Macquarie Business School academics win Recognition of Excellence award at AMA 2023

Professor Chris Baumann, Professor Fei Guo and Dr Doris Viengkham have been recognised by the American Marketing Association as co-authors of one of the top three Organizational Frontline Research papers, at the AMA conference held in Nashville, USA, in February.

The paper, produced with collaborators Professor Jagdip Singh, Case Western Reserve University, and Kirti Sharma, Management Development Institute, outlined the importance of empowering frontlines for resilience – bouncing back and regaining control – and resourcing them to overcome resistance – protecting against perceived threats – in the face of unfolding adversity.

Using novel data originally compiled from daily narratives of frontline health caregivers in Australia, the UK and the US during the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team defines resilience and resistance concepts in the context of pandemic frontlines while also examining influential factors such as temporal focus – how perceptions of the past can affect feelings of the present or future – and identity orientation, linguistic certainty, global affect, and response stringency. The paper provides, for the first time, a collective-level perspective of organisational frontlines, as opposed to past studies that take an individual or team-level approach.

“Frontline workers, especially in the health sector, experienced a once-in-a-lifetime crisis situation during the pandemic, and there was no research on such a novel situation before,” explains Baumann. “Understanding better that resistance can co-exist with resilience, or indeed contribute to resilience, will have implications for policy on frontline management and training of frontlines for such situations. Better understanding how resilience and resistance ‘tango’ will be the foundation for future research in other frontline situations of essential workers, such as teachers and retailing; essentially all workers that were holding the frontlines during the pandemic.”

Baumann presented the paper and accepted the award and prize money of US$1K – approximately AUD$1.4K – in person, together with Singh. The team has donated the prize money to St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, to support the hospital’s research of childhood cancers and paediatric diseases.

Commenting on the donation, Baumann said, “It seemed only fitting that we donated the money to a hospital that provides so much hope and support for its patients, given our project is focused on the health sector. Our donation to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which is located in the same state as this year’s AMA conference, will hopefully benefit the local community, in particular its patients and frontline workers.

“On a more personal note, my dad passed away from cancer early, thus I understand the impact of the illness, and if others affected benefit from our donation, regardless of how little it may be, then we are making a positive contribution.”

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