Five students from the Department of Management Studies have represented UWI St Augustine at the Academy of Latin American Business and Sustainability Studies (ALBUS) conference and come home with awards.
This is the hybrid (held both in-person and online) conference’s first year. Created to promote Latin American research, it is organised by researchers from diverse countries to share knowledge and research findings, and to formulate networks and strategies.
Satesh Sookhai, PhD student and winner of the best student paper award; Denise Julien, PhD student and winner of the best presentation award; and MSc students Daniel Floyd and Kalitri Dwarika presented their research at the conference in the Dominican Republic. Jenna-Leigh Metivier presented online. “We see that the depth of the quality of the work spans our MSc programme to our PhD programme,” notes Dr Shellyanne Wilson, Head of the Department of Management Studies (DMS).
Julien’s research explores the use of service quality factors to identify strategies for improving customer satisfaction for generational segments.
“It’s very relevant to what's happening in the financial industry,” said Dr Meena Rambocas, Senior Lecturer in the DMS. “It's ensuring that there is a level of customer satisfaction, level of customer service orientation.” She added, “[Julien] also had samples from different generational cohorts, which really added a new dimension to the discussions of customer satisfaction.”
Satesh Sookhai’s award winning paper focuses on the relationship between rewards and employee motivation in small business.
Dr Rambocas explained, “He’s taking the conversation of rewards and motivation to a next level.”
Dr Rambocas and Dr Wilson praised the students’ work which impressed the ALBUS committees.
“What really stood out for us is the kind of scientific rigour that our students exercised in their research,” said Dr Rambocas, noting that they addressed problems currently faced by business.
“They came up with contributions that really promoted the academic discourse in the area,” she added.
Julien expressed satisfaction with the opportunity to collaborate with her Latin American peers. “One of the key takeaways for me is to be open to discussing and receiving feedback on research from other peers,” she commented.
Sookhai said he feels his achievement fired his curiosity and motivation for research.
“I’ve learned never to [have] self-doubt,” he said. “I strongly recommend attending international conferences to observe and learn from other researchers.”
Dr Wilson commended Dr Rambocas as an excellent mentor and as the driving force behind attending the conference. They both worked closely with the students, coaching them and evaluating research designs.
“The department really wants to keep cultivating academic culture, research culture, and having the students exposed to that,” said Dr Wilson. She stressed, “It's so important for a university to keep building and growing and fostering that culture of academic rigour, and discovery and research.”
