Department: 

• Business Administration, Asper School of Business

Awards:

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
• Centre for Knowledge Transfer

Research Focus:
Deirdre’s primary area of research involves cognitive influences on public policy decision making with respect to healthcare policy and practices. The model investigates the manner in which a policy maker uses and processes information and the subsequent effect this has on the policy decision. Within the context of the increasing desire to engage in evidence based health policy, the cognitive information processing model suggests that the health policy process is influenced by non-rational decision factors. These factors are contrary to the tenets of evidenced based health care. Identified factors of influence in this model include: the subjective utility of the policy decision maker, government mandates, public opinion, media presentation of health issues, and research trends such as the evidence based health movement.  

With her advisor, Dr Sue Bruning, Deirdre is also investigating models of expatriate adjustment, the impact of employee diversity on organizational outcomes, and employee-organization value congruence. Deirdre has presented and published her work in the proceedings of numerous academic conferences in North America. She recently received the Best Paper by a Doctoral Student (healthcare management track) distinction for her sole-authored paper Fostering Research Utilization of the Effects of Framing on Public Healthcare Decision Making at the Southern Management Association’s annual conference in San Antonio, Texas (2004). Deirdre’s research was also selected as the Best Research Poster for Beyond Evidence Based Medicine: Recognizing Non-Traditional Influences on Treatment Decisions of Cancer Patients at the Centre for Knowledge Transfer’s Spring Institute in Edmonton, Alberta (2005).