The purpose of the proposed research is to identify the factors and indicators that enable, or block community actors from taking ownership of a solution previously led by a social leader or government actor. The project will allow our partner and the communities they work with to gain a better understanding of factors that enable […]

Small businesses account for 89.6% of the total private labour force in Canada and, despite the vital role they play in the Canadian economy, fewer than half of small businesses will survive 10 years. One of the most commonly cited causes of small business failure is the inability to raise capital to finance its operations. […]

The VEC, under its Economic Transformation Lab and in partnership with SFU and MITACS, seeks to research, design, and publish an affordability dashboard that consolidates all important metrics/statistics on affordability, relevant to Vancouver businesses and talent. The Dashboard will not only focus on affordability of office, retail, and industrial space, as well as other pertinent […]

This proposed study is an unprecedented attempt by a North American municipality to proactively identify and strengthen the components of its local value chain to inform a comprehensive strategy dedicated to growing opportunities in local advanced manufacturing, targeting increasingly interwoven value chains. Surrey has the space and existing capabilities to become an advanced manufacturing hub […]

Yirun Ryan Li will be closely working with Dr. Shen, on his project that aims to observe, through empirical data, how IPO affects the Chinese market and how this effect is changing as IPO regulations evolve over time. Under Dr. Shen’s guidance, Ryan will study literature in the history of Chinese IPO regulations and identify […]

This project will explore how organizations with global operations implement change initiatives for greater environmental and social sustainability over time. Specifically, we are interested in how employees from various global sites make sense of these change and enact initiatives and whether there are different patterns of sensemaking and enactment among the company’s global subsidiaries. When […]

This research will investigate needs that women entrepreneurs in York Region and Simcoe County have that, if addressed, could strengthen the success of these businesses, with a particular focus on smaller companies. We will examine cultural, industry, sociological and competency factors that influence the performance of women-owned businesses and self-employed women from an economic standpoint, […]

This research project in intended to explore the personal health and safety factors that indicate risk in the oil and gas sector and whether there are any early-warning risk factors that exist. In this industry, organizations typically measure risk by analyzing the personal safety of its workers. Currently, personal health and safety is measured using […]

The proposed research project will examine the relationship between firms and the culture of lawfulness of the environment in which they are embedded. Specifically, the societal and cultural features that undermine the rule of law by promoting the normalcy of rule-breaking will be studied in terms of both how firms understand and are affected by […]

The research project aims to develop a systematic methodology to link safety policy in terms of security and privacy considerations to the realization of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which encourages users to use their own mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablet PCs, to access various services to support a workflow in a […]

The objective of this research is to understand the concept of consumer aspirations in terms of its life cycle, formation and manifestation during rites of passage events such as weddings in a particular culture. The focus is mainly on social class mobility based on consumer aspirations and on the process of transfer of these aspirations […]

Although beta distribution models are a well-known tool for evaluating the recovery risk of credit instruments, concerns are raised regarding tractability its analysis and simulation. The project attempts to address such concerns by incorporating a mixture beta distribution model. The project will compare the efficiency of the proposed model with the commonly used beta distribution […]