| Feb 2008 | View back issues |
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| February 2008 | ||
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Click on any of the headlines to go to the story:
Excellent position for Strathclyde MBA in Financial Times rankings 
The Strathclyde MBA has been ranked 30th in the world in the top 100 full time MBA programmes in the world as compiled by the Financial Times and published January 28.Strathclyde's MBA programme was one of just 15 UK programmes to be ranked in the top 100 with Strathclyde taking joint 7th position in the UK and 13th in Europe. In addition, SBS' ranking means it is the top programme in Scotland according to this year's figures. The rankings showed that the Strathclyde MBA offers better value for money than at any other university in the world. Graduates from the MBA programme also showed the sixth-highest percentage increase in salary, with the average leaping 143% to $113,071, three years after graduation. The Financial Times survey measures a wide range of factors - surveying MBA alumni three years after graduation. It looks at their career progress, salary increase and, within the school, considers the diversity of the staff and student body, the MBA programme and research. There are some 1500 MBA programmes worldwide and in the UK alone there are over 100 business schools offering MBAs. Strathclyde Principal, Professor Andrew Hamnett, said, "These rankings reflect an excellent performance by everyone connected with the university's MBA course and they can all be justly proud of their achievements. "The survey confirms that Strathclyde has one of the leading business schools in the UK and Europe, as well as being one of only 27 worldwide to have accreditation from three of the world's main business school quality assessment bodies - AMBA, EQUIS and AACSB. "Our MBA students receive an excellent return for their money in the form of a high quality course in a competitive field." Back to top Trading Social Risk and Responsibility Workshop On January 23, a team of Strathclyde Business School academics led the first of three Bridging the Gap-funded workshops on the future of trading social risk and responsibility. The team comprised of Dr. Calvin Burns (Department of Human Resource Management), Dr. George Burt (Department of Management), Dr. Andrea Coulson (Department of Accounting & Finance) and Dr. John Quigley (Department of Management Science), and participants included representatives from Strathclyde Business School departments, as well as from the Faculty of Education, the Law School, and the Centre for Forensic Science. The workshop illustrated the Systems Modelling and Scenario Planning approaches to social risk and responsibility problems. Participants then analysed a live case study to produce recommendations from a multi-disciplinary perspective for both policy makers and researchers. A second and third workshop are planned which will involve members of the business community taking a scenario planning approach to identify their future social risks and responsibilities, and how these risks can be traded or mitigated. Details of these future workshops will be circulated nearer the date. Back to top Nuffield Award 
Dr Kirsty Newsome, department of Human Resource Management, has been awarded a research grant of £5,850 from the Nuffield Foundation. This award is to fund a research project entitled Supermarkets, Systematic Rationalisation and Work Restructuring in Grocery Distribution and Warehousing.The concern of the project is to explore how organisational restructuring in the supermarket supply chain impacts upon employment and workplace practices within distributors and warehousing. Back to top Final conference of the Women in Development project The project, Women in Development, drew to a close with the final project's conference held in Rome in January, involving representatives from the four case study countries - Italy, Malta, Spain and Scotland - the Italian Ministries for Equal Opportunities and Labour and other institutions. At the conference, Laura Polverari of EPRC presented the Scottish case study and Helen Wray of the Scottish Community Foundation (one of the projects of the Scottish case study) illustrated the Women's Funds for Scotland. More information on the conference and files of the presentations are available from the project's website Back to top New book for Marketing Professor 
Professor Alan Wilson's latest book was published on the 18th of February.Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across The Firm: First European Edition is written by Wilson with the following co-authors: Valarie Zeithaml, University of North Carolina, Mary Jo Bitner, Arizona State University, and Dwayne Gremler of Bowling Green State University. At the heart of this textbook is the recognition that services present unique challenges, and that building customer relationships through quality service is fundamental to marketing success in every organisation. Having completed this book, Wilson is now working on the third edition of his best-selling market research text: Marketing Research: An Integrated Approach. Back to top Professor Wilson sofa guest on 5.30pm show Professor Alan Wilson, Head, Department of Marketing, was spotted on the 5.30pm show 29th January on STV. Professor Wilson was asked to sit on their couch and comment on the results of the Office for National Statistics Family Expenditure Survey. As the survey is 50 years old this year, the programme was comparing patterns of household expenditure today with the situation in 1957. Back to top Strathclyde recognises young, entrepreneurial Scots The University of Strathclyde Business School (SBS) is one of this year's main sponsors in the 2008 Sunday Mail and Lloyds TSB Young Scot Awards. Since the awards were launched in 2006, SBS has participated by sponsoring the award category "Enterprise", where aspiring entrepreneurs are recognised and rewarded for their attempts to realise or fulfil a business plan. Previous winners of this category include David Skea, a 20 year old from Ross-shire, whose shellfish business turned over £400K-plus in its first year of operation. The awards ceremony will take place at the Glasgow City Halls on Thursday March 20. Back to top MBA Student publishes project Congratulations to Hemant Anand who, with his supervisor Dr K.V. Pandya, has just published the results of his MBA Project in the International Journal of Business Innovation and Research. Hemand studied for his MBA in Zurich and was awarded his degree in June 2007. His project was concerned with the role of IT innovation in achieving business objectives. A detailed case study revealed the importance of strong leadership, optimal organisational structures and processes, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities in setting a strategic direction for IT and business collaboration. Back to top Hat trick for Head of Hunter Centre 
Professor Colin Mason, Academic Director, Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, has been appointed as an External academic member of the Research Advisory Group of the Enterprise Research Programme at the Economic Research Institute of Northern Ireland (ERINI). The role involves providing a quality control on the programme of work which is financed by the Northern Ireland Government, and to shape and steer the programme of research that is undertaken by the full-time team.Mason has also just been appointed as a Consulting Editor for the International Small Business Journal (Sage) - which is one of the longest established journals in the field and in 2007 had the highest impact factor of any non-US journal in the field. Finally, a paper co-authored by Mason, (Mason, C M and Stark, M (2004) 'What do investors look for in a business plan? A comparison of the investment criteria of bankers, venture capitalists and business angels', International Small Business Journal, 22, 227-248) has been selected to be published in a five volume collection of 100 key articles in small business and entrepreneurship: R Blackburn and C Brush (eds) Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Sage, 2008. Back to top Education Minister attends Bahraini MBA Graduation Twenty-five MBA students were recently awarded their Masters degrees at the Royal University for Women (RUW) campus in Riffa. The event was held under the patronage of Education Minister Dr Majid Al Nuaimi. It was attended by ministry Services and Resources Under-Secretary Shaikh Hisham bin Abdulaziz Al Khalifa, higher education general secretary Dr Alawi Hashim AL Hashimi, Strathclyde Business School International Division Director and Associate Dean Professor Colin Eden and UAE chief executive officer, Ron Bradfield. Back to top Joint Event 
The Policy Council of the UK Chapter of the System Dynamics Society, of which Dr Susan Howick is President, organised a 2-day joint event this month with the SD+ OR Society study group at London South Bank University. The theme of the event was SD+: the use of System Dynamics with other modelling methods.The event attracted approximately 70 participants. Invited speakers included Prof Colin Eden from Strathclyde Business School, Dr John Morecroft from London Business School, Prof Stewart Robinson form Warwick Business School and Prof Jim Lyneis from Worcester Polytechnic Institute & MIT. Two awards were presented at the event: a student prize for the best piece of student work in system dynamics in the previous year and the Steer Davies Gleave System Dynamics Prize for the best piece of work that applies System Dynamics to a problem of wide public interest in the UK. The event also included the first UK PhD colloquium for System Dynamics. Back to top New working papers for Management Science Management Science has launched a new range of working papers. They include:
Georg Cantor Lifetime Achievement Award 
Professor Val Belton has been awarded the Georg Cantor lifetime achievement award by the International Society for MCDM. The award, which is "bestowed upon a scholar who, over a distinguished career, has personified the spirit of independent inquiry and whose many innovative ideas and achievements are decidedly reflected in the theory, methodology and current practice of MCDM" was presented at the Society's conference held in Auckland in January 2008.Belton's acceptance speech at the conference dinner was very short as, unfortunately, she had completely lost her voice that day, but luckily it recovered sufficiently to be able to present a wide-ranging plenary talk the following day on "The Importance of Integration for MCDA". Belton stepped down from the Executive Committee of the Society at the conference after 20 years service, including a period as President from 2000-2004. Back to top Foundations of Risk Following its successful launch in November 2007, Foundations of Risk, an on-line CPD programme developed by the department of Management Science, will run again on 3 March through to 30 April 2008. Based on risk, reliability and maintainability, Foundations of Risk was developed after the department recognised that there was a gap in the continuing professional development market for a quality foundation level course in these areas. Run entirely on-line, the course is tutored by highly qualified members of three different disciplines: a psychologist; statistician and sociologist. Hence, risk is looked at from three different angles, and each of these different perspectives are presented, discussed and critiqued. The course was devised and implemented by Dr John Quigley, Department of Management Science in conjunction with Dr Calvin Burns, Department of Human Resource Management and Dr Kevin Quigley of Dalhousie University, Canada. It is further supported by Howard Ramsay, Department of Management Science. The course is aimed at university graduates; and a grounding in maths or another numerate field would be helpful. However, applications from those with relevant work experience will also be considered. More information can be found at www.foundationsofrisk.org. Back to top EPRC presentations to the UK and Scottish Parliaments 
John Bachtler has made presentations of EPRC research on EU Cohesion policy to parliamentary committees at Westminster and Holyrood. On 29 January, he gave evidence to the House of Lords EU Select Committee (Sub-Committee A) Inquiry into the Future of European Structural Funds, focusing on the effectiveness of EU Cohesion policy and proposals for reform after 2013. This was followed by an appearance, on 5 February, before the Scottish Parliament European & External Relations Committee on the subject of the EU Budget Review; this covered the structure of the EU budget, the implications for Scotland and the options for parliamentary engagement. Taken together with the presentation to the European Parliament in November 2007, EPRC research on Cohesion policy has now been publicised to parliaments at European, UK and Scotland levels over the past four months.
Back to top Research award for Marketing Douglas Brownlie, University of Stirling and Paul Hewer, University of Strathclyde, have been awarded a teaching research and development grant from the Academy of Marketing (AM/BMAF) to further investigate "Reflective Practitioners through 'Postering': A critical evaluation of the evidence base" Back to top New Director of Research The Department of Human Resource Management has a new Director of Research. Professor Paul Stewart, who joined the University in October 2007, is a leading researcher on the international automobile industry and its lean labour processes. He is currently on the editorial boards of the Asia Pacific Business Review and Capital and Cass. Back to top Rolling News From time to time, some news stories fall victim to unfortunate deadlines and the fact we don't always run a Christmas edition! So here's a quick catch up on such news... Back to top Invited talk Dr Susan Howick was invited to give a seminar at the Centre for Operational Research and Applied Statistics at Salford University in December 07. The title of the talk was: Methods for Linking System Dynamics & Causal Mapping. Back to top Critical Labour Studies More than 50 academics, trade unionists and community activists from across the UK and beyond attended the 4th Critical Labour Studies (CLS) Conference on November 16-17, which was hosted by the Scottish Trade Union Congress. This was the largest and most successful of what is a unique event in the academic calendar which seeks to develop active collaboration between academic researchers and the labour movement. Diverse sessions included the threat to public services posed by privatisation, worker campaigns in Turkey and Sierra Leone, asbestosis and the ICL/Stockline factory disaster and stimulated wide-ranging debate. The conference organisers at the University of Strathclyde were Professors Phil Taylor and Paul Stewart of the Department of Human Resource Management, Professor Christine Cooper of the Department of Accounting and Finance and Dr. Patricia McCafferty of the Department of Geography and Sociology. The conference dinner and social was a tribute to the life of Peter Bain, previously of the Department of Human Resource Management, who died in March 2007. This was attended by over 150 colleagues, friends and family and included stirring contributions by Booker prize winning author James Kelman and renowned folk-singer Arthur Johnston. Back to top Royal DutchShell plc and Department HRM Several Strathclyde HRM graduates have been recruited by Shell in the past three years and overall managers have been most impressed with the quality of our graduates. Following links with our alumni and Shell's commitment to wanting to recruit the top talent for its global operations a seminar, organised by Aileen Watson, was held on 8th November 2007, this was attended by Honours and Postgraduate HRM students and staff. Mike Conway, Vice President Resourcing and Development, Royal Dutch Shell Plc gave an interesting presentation 'Talent Now and a Sustainable Future Supply'. He identified the importance of aligning strategy and talent, the challenges of managing competition for top talent and the importance of attraction and retention. To give students an insight into the recruitment and selection process colleague Sophie Witsenburg responsible for Commercial Graduate Recruiting and HR careers and Elaine Allison a graduate from the Department HRM shared their experiences with the students. Back to top |
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