Sydney Business School, University of Wollongong, Australia offers postgraduate courses that are based on strong links with industry, business, government and the not for profit sector. Our connections with practice together with our meaningful and rigorous research ensure our programs meet the ever changing needs of organisations around the globe.  As signatories to the UN Principles of Responsible Management, we do not just teach theory, we also ensure that our students take a holistic view of the impact of their decisions, consider the impact on all stakeholders, understand requirements for corporate governance and develop their skills as responsible leaders. Making our graduates ready to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

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Change your career with an MBA

Dean Dalla Valle enrolled in a Master of Business Administration at UOW with the aim of taking his career to the next level. Over the next four years, he studied part time, balancing his evening classes with his young family and his burgeoning career.

Read more: The ride of a lifetime Discover our MBA program

Take the next step with an Executive MBA

UOW’s Executive MBA alumnus, Blake Coates explains why he chose the course and how the experience helped him move into a senior executive role.

Learn about our EMBA Program

My name's Blake I studied the Executive MBA at Sydney Business School. 

I studied the EMBA at Sydney Business School for three key reasons. Firstly, I was looking for a point of difference and I was looking for a point of difference in the marketplace and I was looking for a point of difference that would support my technical skill set.

Secondly, I was looking for a program that offered real world content, but also mixed with real world learning. Experiences, and the diverse cohort that I was able to study with within the program really offered that. And then thirdly, it was a program that allowed the flexibility to balance my study commitments alongside my business commitments, and that was equally really important to me. My experience was fantastic studying the EMBA. 

Not only was it a program delivered in world class facilities, but the flexible nature with which the program was delivered was really beneficial and valuable to the cast of supporting professionals and individuals that helped complement the program through their diverse insights, perspectives and learnings was really valuable experience, and it's allowed go from a mid level role which arguably I was really comfortable within to then stretching well outside my comfort zone and taking on a senior exact role for a global business that's headquartered in Paris.

 

 

Ranked #1

UOW’s Sydney Business School ranked 1st in Australia for the Global Executive MBA Rankings.

CEO Magazine's Global MBA Ranking 2023

Tier One

UOW’s Sydney Business School ranked in Tier One globally for their Master of Business Administration.

CEO Magazine's Global MBA Ranking 2022
Discover more UOW Sydney Business School rankings

Business researcher insight

Associate Professor Martin O’Brien talks about the impact of penalty rate cuts on employment outcomes in the retail and hospitality sectors. Professor O'Brien is an economist and MBA Director in the Sydney Business School at UOW.

Hear from other Business researchers

My name's Martin O'Brien. I'm currently the MBA director in the Sydney Business School where the most high-profile research I've done lately is related to penalty rates in the retail and hospitality industries.

The reasons that the penalty rates were reduces the employers were making two main arguments.  So, the first one was that Sunday's were no longer significant or special. The  second major thing which is really what  I looked more at with the research as employers were saying look if we can reduce those public if we can reduce those penalty rates on Sundays and public holidays they'll be able to open  businesses, open them for longer hours or employ more people. We've come up with three potential explanations for why we haven't seen extra employment or more businesses open.

The first one I think is a little bit cheeky and it's saying that the evidence before the Fair Work Commission to begin with was. was indirect, it was a bit of a tangent to the main issues or it was straight-out biased and flawed. We've been able to do a longer-term study, looking at whether employment had increased after each of those penalty rate decreases and after the first two or three that we’ve analysed so far, we haven't found any evidence of any increase in employment.  So, no more businesses opening, they're not opening for longer hours and they’re not employing more people which were all of the main arguments that the Fair Work Commission thought were going to happen if they reduce the penalty rates.

But without these turning into an employer bashing exercise there's two other things that occurred at the same time. So, at the beginning we've got flawed evidence to the Fair Work Commission. But the fair work commission based their decision on economics. So, with economics, we’ve got a long history of making big assumptions in our analysis and we could say; wage costs go down so employment goes up ignoring everything else which is what the ceteris paribus condition means.

The problem with that is that we had a few other things happening at the same point which were really relevant and could have worked at odds to what the penalty rate reduction was, was meant to do.

The other problem that we've got is the, the low-income growth across the whole economy. So that's really been one of the, the big things that the Reserve Bank and Treasury and government have been talking about over the last few years, is the fact, that income across all wage earners, so as well as hospitality and retail across all industries, is relatively low.

On exactly the same date as the penalty rate reduction occurred there was an increase in the minimum wage rate. So, for a lot of businesses if they were to employ people on Sundays and public holidays, their wage costs would go down but every other day of the week their wage costs were going up. So, if they're looking at their costs over the whole week that minimum wage increase could have really cancelled out any effect a penalty rate reduction is going to have.

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