Jury-report NOBEM dissertation of the year prize 2003

Nobem Dissertation of the year prize - 2003
Jury Report

The below mentioned lines are selected parts of the jury-report of the NOBEM dissertation of the year prize - 2003. The price has been handed out during the PREBEM conference that took place on 26th January in Amersfoort.
(For more information on this conference see http://www.prebem.nl/)
The price itself consists of an award including a cheque of an amount of € 500,00 that is to be paid to the private bank account of the author. It has been handed out for the third time.

"Each Faculty (Nobem member) nominated its best dissertation of 2003 in the field of business administration and business economics in close cooperation with the respective graduate schools. When we saw the 9 nominated theses, the jury soon realized that its task would not be easy, for the overall quality was very good. Therefore we decided for a very rigid adjudication procedure. We would not divide the theses among the members of the jury so that each thesis was read by 2 jury members as was the procedure in previous years, this time each member of the jury would read all nominated dissertations.

We selected the best theses in the first judging round in September. Then we went back to our faculties, to consult experts in the specific research fields, and methodological experts. In November we came together for the final decision. But then a real problem arrived. Two theses came clearly to the front as the most outstanding ones, but the jury could not come to a unanimous decision, while both theses had their specific merits. After an extensive discussion the jury decided to present the NOBEM-dissertation-of-the-year-award 2003 to both nominees.

The first price winning thesis is: "Flexible but committed" of Nicole Torka of the University of Twente. This thesis impressed the jury, because of its daring hypotheses, and the fine intertwinement of a qualitative and a quantitative approach to the research problem.
The second awarded thesis is: "One for All, All for the Customer" of Ad de Jong of the University of Maastricht. The jury was especially impressed by the very rigid methodological approach, and the high response rate, which is often difficult to achieve."