| Feb 2009 | View back issues |
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| February 2009 | ||
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Management Development Programme prize Students in year 3 of the SBS compulsory class Management Development Programme (MDP) are required to research the increasingly important issues of ethical, social and sustainability in organisations. Operating as internal consultants and working in interdisciplinary teams they are required to focus on an issue and produce a business report, making recommendations for action. This year, from the 510 students taking part, three teams were selected to present their reports and recommendations at Ernst Young's Glasgow office on February 4. Ernst Young were very impressed with the high quality of research, presentation skills and the professionalism and enthusiasm demonstrated by all team members, and highlighted the importance of these skills and their contribution to graduate employability. The winning team – Grant Davidson, Kyle Kearns, John Laird, Lucy McIntyre, Cairine MacLean and Viktorija Telipailo - researched 'Nike and Child Labour' and were awarded the £300 first prize. Further information on MDP is available from MDP manager Aileen Watson; email a.c.watson@strath.ac.uk or go to www.strathmdp.com 
From left to right:(Back row) Kyle Kearns, John Laird, Grant Davidson (Front row) Laura Edwards (EY), Cairine MacLean, Lucy McIntyre and Viktorija Telipailo Back to top Virtual Campus, Real Learning Dr Susan Howick (Management Science) gave an invited talk at an event on 'Complexity' organised by Inno.com in Brussels. The other speakers were Professor Jean Paul Van Bendegem (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Dr John Morecroft (London Business School) and Professor Peter Checkland (Lancaster University). Back to top Knowledge Transfer Partnership  A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project involving SBS has seen Scottish company Campbell & Kennedy improve and grow its business.
Management science research student Hasib Kosgi was selected for this two year project after the company secured the KTP project. The objective was to ensure that business processes aligned well with ongoing growth. Campbell & Kennedy has grown from a small domestic television and satellite servicing and repair company with no formal structure to become an established market sector leader in the field of digital TV and satellite systems.Working closely with managing director Gerry Kennedy, Hasib has been driving improvement across the business focussing on those areas that are Hasib Kosgistrategic to business. Changes made are expected to result in potential savings of thousands of £s each year. Gerry Kennedy said, "Hasib has undertaken a wide research and foresight into potential markets that could suit our core skills...and perhaps even completely new areas such as domestic wind power and solar energy sectors." Management Science lecturer Dr Jill MacBryde added, "Having been involved with nine KTP projects I'm a great advocate. KTP helps companies to become more competitive by tapping into the knowledge and skills within universities and colleges. And it's not just the companies that gain from KTP - it's a great opportunity for academics to build new relationships with industry, to get access to real industry problems and to increase the business relevance of our teaching and research." Back to top Working paper on Human Reliability 
Professor Tim Bedford of Management Science has written a study of the human reliability analysis method CREAM (Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method) together with Clare Bayley of the University of Manchester. Their paper compares the two variants of CREAM - a screening method and the full method - and shows that they are very consistent. They go on to show how screening methods can be designed to achieve a guaranteed level of predictive accuracy for the full method. This kind of problem occurs frequently in business, where "short cut" analysis tools are used without a thorough understanding of the level of risk involved in not following a more ProfessorTim Bedford complete analysis. The paper was written as part of an EPSRC sponsored project on Human Reliability that involved Strathclyde, Manchester, Lancaster, Cardiff, Nottingham, Cranfield and LSE. Back to top Insurance Risks Professor Tim Bedford (Management Science) gave an invited presentation at Lloyds on 22 October, on the subject of Bayesian decision analysis methods for assessing insurance risks. This was part of a Lighthill Risk Network event on the uses of Bayesian networks in the (re-)insurance industry. Back to top Paper award A paper written by Professor Lesley Walls and Dr John Quigley of the department of Management Science, together with colleagues Kenneth Hutchison and Mohammed Raza from Alstom Power, Switzerland, won a paper award at the Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM 2008) conference held in Singapore in December 2008. The paper was called an "Empirical Bayes Methodology for Estimating Equipment Failure Rates with Application to Power Generation Plants" and described the theory and implementation of a new method for pooling data to provide estimates of high reliability systems. 
Lesley and Kenneth getting their certificateBack to top Insolvency in Scottish football presentation Professor Christine Cooper (accounting and finance) presented her joint research (with Yvonne Joyce) on insolvency in Scottish football at the International Crossroads Congress at the university of TELECOM & Management SudParis (IT-Sudparis), on January 29 2009. IT-Sudparis is a member of the Conférence des grandes écoles and also belongs to the Institut TELECOM. The congress attracts researchers from around the world and involves making presentations to academics and postgraduate students. Back to top Experiment workshop Dr John Quigley of the department of Management Science organised a cross-university workshop for research students on the design and analysis of experiments. This was a collaborative effort with Professor Halling from Chemistry, Dr Greenhalgh and Prof Mao from STAMS, Dr Yue from EEE, Professor Mutrie from Sport, Culture and the Arts, Dr Sefcik from Chemical and Process Engineering, and Dr Clark from Geography and Sociology. The workshop consisted of presentations from students from each faculty on the use of experiments within their research area. Shona Blair from Management Science gave a presentation on applying experimental design to discrete event simulation. The event, funded by the Roberts fund, was a great success, with its aim of enhancing the transferable skills of the participants through developing communication between different fields of study. Back to top Paper selected for award Congratulations go to Ian Thomson of the Department of Accounting and Finance who has had a paper selected for the award of Outstanding Paper 2008 by the Mary Parker Pollett Awards. The paper was co-authored with Georgios Georgakopoulos and entitled, 'Social Reporting, Engagement, Controversies and Conflict in an Arena Context', published in Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (vol 21, 2008). Back to top Television appearance Professor Sharon Bolton's research on 'Best' companies was featured in the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on February 9. Sharon (department of Management) appeared on the programme discussing the youth cultures of many of the companies hailed as 'best places to work', where the average age of employees in the Times Top 100 Best Companies list is just 34, with a minority of workers over 55. The exclusionary nature of such cultures was debated on the programme with two older women, Ivy and Annabel, who are struggling to find work. 
Back to top Entrepreneurship keynote address Professor Sara Carter of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship gave a keynote address at the 6th Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship Research Conference, Adelaide, on February 5. The title of the talk was 'Entrepreneurial Incomes, Wealth and Economic Well-Being'. Back to top SBS - regulars at the BBC! Professor Alan Wilson, department of Marketing, made an appearance on Reporting Scotland on 17 February, commenting on the soaring pre-tax profits of the Scottish-based company, Devro. The following evening, Professor Susan Hart, Dean, SBS, provided commentary on both Reporting Scotland and Newsnight, on to what extent the demise of Scottish banks had had on Scotland's reputation. The following week, Professor Brian Ashcroft, Fraser of Allander Institute, was interviewed on BBC2 Scotland, over the Institute's estimations that economic recession and GDP would fall by more than 3% in Scotland. The report was picked up the following day by BBC Radio Scotland's, Good Morning Scotland programme. Back to top |
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