Carlene Boucher

I have been an active researcher since the 1990's, mainly in the areas of leadership, diversity in organisations and health services management. In my PhD I explored how Australian women socially construct leadership by exploring their childhood experiences of leadership and working collaboratively with them to identify common themes. Since then, I have been involved in many projects that have used qualitative data generation processes, action research, action learning, ethnography, mixed methods and narrative research. My own research has focussed on:
• The retention of early career nurses (Australian Research Council and industry funded),
• The use of reflective practice as a management development tool in the health industry (industry funded),
• The reasons for patient non-attendance at outpatient appointments,
• The lived experience of leaders with disability,
• The use of emotional labour by nurse managers,
• Career choices of health professionals, and
• Research supervision practices.

I am a Past President of the Association for Qualitative Research and former Editor of the Qualitative Research and the Creative Research Journals. I currently review for several journals including Action Learning Action research, The Qualitative Report, Management Learning, Gender, Work and Organisation and Journal of Healthcare Management.

I joined AIB as a staff member this year, after a 30-year career at RMIT University in Melbourne where I was Associate Professor in Health Services Management in the School of Management and Research Student Coordinator.

I am currently supervising several Candidates. Their topics include:

• What makes coaching successful for Sales staff
• How do older women make a career change into real estate
• How to improve patient attendance at hospital appointments
• What makes a psychologically safe workplace
• How do businesses support older workers

Past research student theses

I have had the pleasure of supervising more than 20 DBA and PhD candidates and examined more than 40 theses from Australia and overseas. Some of the thesis titles have been: 

• An Examination of Public Sector Environments in Canada and the Intersection of COVID-19 and Collective Bargaining Agreements
• The Ethics of Australia’s Sub-Prime Scandal
• Innovation implementation in healthcare: A resource-based view
• A study of entrepreneurial orientation and leadership in Malaysian SMEs
• Engaging Doctors in decision-making in Hospitals
• Using maps as a strategic thinking tool
• Lavoretti per bimbi: Playful Triggers as keys to foster collaborative practices and workspaces where people learn, wonder and play
• An exploration of the relationship between spiritual expression and health and well-being in the workplace
• Doing, Knowing, and Being: Bringing Athena out of the shadows to guide mentoring practice
• An Exploratory Study into the Use of Participative Practices in Addressing Problem Gambling in Western Sydney: An Action Learning Approach
• Foot in the Air: An exploration of the experience of transition in organisational life
• A map for getting lost: Developing managers
• The Dance of Compliance: Performance Management Systems in Australian Universities
• Rural Managers: Multiple Roles and Identities in a Cascading Change Context
• Retention strategies for early career nurses
• The dynamics of the consulting relationship
• What members want from a voluntary membership organisation
• A competency model for HRM Managers