Jury-report NOBEM dissertation of the year prize 2005

It was a great honour for Onno Omta to be invited to the SOM PhD Conference to present the fifth NOBEM Dissertation of the Year Award that is presented each year to a Dutch PhD student for his or her outstanding achievement in business administration or business economics. It was with even more pleasure that Prof. Omta could announce that it was the first time that the Award will be presented to a PhD student from the University of Groningen. It was also special for Prof. Omta because he has a long history in Groningen. First, he studied biochemistry at the University of Groningen and after different management functions defended his PhD thesis on the critical success factors of biomedical and pharmaceutical innovation at the Department of Business Administration in Groningen. Prof. Omta was especially glad to present the Award at a PhD Conference because he is convinced that it is very important for you to know how the best-of-the-best PhD theses in business administration and business economics are written. It may come handy if you want to win this Award and 1,000 Euro in two or three years time.

He continued by explaining the adjudication procedure for this Award. Each faculty nominated the best PhD thesis of the year 2006, 7 dissertations were nominated in total. When the jury saw the nominated theses, they realized that their task would not be easy, for the overall quality was good. Therefore, they decided for a very rigid adjudication procedure. Each member of the jury would read all nominated PhD theses and they would then decide together in two rounds which thesis would be elected. I can assure you, reading the first thesis was really fun, the second was nice, the third was interesting and so on up to the 7th thesis. In November the jury came together to decide which three theses would be selected for the second round. The dissertations were judged on the following three criteria:

1.	Does the dissertation contribute to the core of business administration and/or business economics theory and/or practice?

2.	Does the dissertation contribute to refine current methodology or does it make a creative and knowledgeable use of current methodology?

3.	How is the dissertation structured, and how are the scientific conclusions presented, and how feasible are the recommendations for management practice.

After an intense jury discussion they decided that 3 PhD theses were especially good. In a second round they came to a final decision. It was not easy because of the exceptional high quality of these three theses; mentioned in the selected order:

·	In third place came the thesis of Klaas Jan van Calker of Wageningen University on ‘Sustainability of Dutch Dairy Farming. A Modeling Approach’, with prof. Huirne and dr Berentsen as supervisors.

·	Second became Justin Jansen of the Erasmus University Rotterdam with his thesis on Ambidextrous Organizations. A Multiple-level Study of Absorptive Capacity, Exploratory and Exploitative Innovation, and Performance, with as supervisors, prof. Van den Bosch and prof. Volberda.

But as you all know it was Ben Kuipers of The University of Goningen who has won the prestigious NOBEM Thesis of the Year Award 2005, with prof. Van der Zwaan and Dr. De Witte as supervisors with his thesis on Team Development and Team Performance. Responsibilities, Responsiveness and Results; a Longitudinal Study of Teamwork at Volvo Trucks Umeå. The thesis of Ben Kuipers is a very good example of a thoroughly described longitudinal methodology, very rigidly described and with very relevant conclusions for management practice.