Our longer term plans are to make this communication a monthly occurrence, so we look forward to receiving your news and updates on a regular basis (any items for the newsletter or podcast can be sent to online@gsb.strath.ac.uk). This issue is an extended one, providing an overview of what’s been happening across the Business faculty over the summer months – quite a lot, apparently!

A cross–faculty project team have secured substantial research council funding (circa £500K) for a three year project to stimulate collaboration across the full range of Engineering, CIS and Mathematics, Statistics and Management Science Departments at Strathclyde.
The multi–disciplinary project team is chaired by Tim Bedford (Management Science) and comprises Tony Mulholland (Maths), Andrew McGettrick (CIS), Stephen McArthur (EEE), Osman Turan (NAME), and Chris Huxham (Management).
Starting in January 2007, the theme of the project is System risks in information–rich environments: monitoring for safe and cost–effective operation.
It aims to offer opportunities for new collaborations across these disciplines and adds new dimensions to existing collaborations, for example those that already exist between Industrial Mathematics and EEE. To do this, the team plan to build on Strathclyde’s strength as a "place of useful learning" and utilise its wide range of industrial and business contacts to provide context–based real–world problems.

A new BA Degree in International Business and new Principal Subjects in Management, Business Technology and Business Enterprise were launched at the Undergraduate Open Days on 4 – 5 September 2006, in readiness for their first intakes in autumn 2007.
Over 6500 people visited the John Anderson Campus over the two days, slightly up on the previous year’s event, and business faculty stands and workshops, were on the whole, very well attended.

The new Department of Management formally came into existence, on 1 August 2006.
Comprising academic staff and programmes from the existing Graduate School of Business and Strathclyde International Business Unit, this department’s main focus will be on general management and will introduce new undergraduate programmes in international business and management during 2007.
Alongside this new development, SBS will pay particular attention to its overseas activities with the creation of a new International Division, headed up by Associate Dean, Professor Colin Eden. At present, the MBA is delivered in 10 centres across Europe, South East Asia and the Gulf. In addition, other specialist MSc programmes are offered overseas. The intention is to develop these overseas activities strategically.
To meet the academic demands of such ventures, two new Prof. Eden appointments to the Department of Management have been made and further interviews at Professorial level are already in process.
Until a Head of Department is appointed, Professor Charles Harvey, Dean, will chair an Executive committee to deal with the management of the department.

The Financial Times has featured the Strathclyde MSc in Business and Management (MBM) for the second year running in its top 35 European Masters in Management programmes 2006. Published on 11 September 2006, the listing was heavily dominated by French business schools, and Strathclyde was one of only seven UK business schools to actually make the top 35 ranking. Positioned at 33rd, Strathclyde had been ranked slightly higher at 25th place during the inaugural ranking of 2005.
The Strathclyde MBM has been running since 1994, and is one of the first programmes in the world to be recommended for PEMM (Pre–experience Masters Degree in General Management) accreditation by the Association of MBAs (AMBA), during March 2005.

Dr Sharon Bolton has accepted a chair with the Department of Management, and joins SBS during 2007. Currently, Dr Bolton is a Reader in Organisational Analysis at Lancaster University Management School.
Dr Shenxue Li joins the Department of Management from Lancaster Management School as a Lecturer in Strategy⁄International Business on 1 October 2006.
Similarly, Dr Tim Andrews joins the Department in Management from Bristol Business School as a Senior Lecturer in International Business on 1 October 2006.
Ronnie McMillan, Senior Lecturer, Operations and Operation Management retires after 34 years with the University. Originally, an Engineer with Rolls Royce, Mr McMillan joined DMEM in 1972, before moving to the Graduate School of Business in 1992.
Professor Gerry Johnson has been offered, and accepted, a chair at the Lancaster University Management School, and starts his new role during October. This is a funded chair with the primary role of helping to establish Strategy as a subject and research area within Lancaster, which currently lacks such a focus.
Professor Nic Beech has taken a new role at St Andrews University, and joins them as a Chair in Management this month.
Professor Robert Macintosh has accepted a Chair in Strategic Management at Glasgow University Business School, and leaves at the end of November. Robert will continue ongoing research with colleagues, Peter Keenan, Peter McInnes and Paul Hibbert and continue contributions to range of ongoing health board research projects.
Sheida Mahdavi, Strathclyde MBA Administrator, HCT–CERT, leaves the Strathclyde MBA Office in Dubai, after 6 years of helping to establish this programme in the UAE.
Annie Muss, Student Exchange Officer, retired during August, after 16 years with SBS. Annie graduated from the Business School with a BA Marketing in 1985 and stayed on for a year as a Research Assistant. After a few years teaching in England, she returned to the Business School in 1990 to take up a lectureship in the Dept of Marketing. In 1994 she was appointed as the Faculty Exchange Officer and has held this post ever since, taking on additional responsibilities as an Advisor of Studies in 2003.

As of August 1, 2006 The Scottish Hotel School officially became known as the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management. This represents an exciting time in its evolution as the Department enters its 63rd year of existence and results from a formal review of the University’s Business School (one of five faculties) undertaken by the Dean in 2005. It recognised that over the years, the Department has developed considerable strength and breadth in its academic and professional activities that now operate across the areas of Hospitality and Tourism at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As such, the name of ‘The Scottish Hotel School’ no longer accurately reflected what the Department is all about in the 21st Century, and in fact masked the wealth of research and career opportunities that exist. That said, the name of ‘The Scottish Hotel School’ will be retained within the newly named Department and used as and when appropriate in recognition of its significant provenance and associated brand value.
Read full history of the former Scottish Hotel School.

The Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, recently completed a valuable research project investigating the link between transport and the tourism product in Scotland. The study was commissioned by the Transport Department of The Scottish Executive to provide an overview of existing research into the travel behaviour of visitors to Scotland. It was undertaken by Dr Karen Thompson of HTM and Dr Neil Ferguson of the Drs Ferguson and Thompson Department of Civil Engineering. The principal aim of the study was to review and collate existing sources of information on the use of transport by those visiting Scotland for leisure, recreation and business purposes. In conjunction with the objectives of the Scottish Executive, a thorough review of the literature and secondary data sources pertaining to the use of transport by visitors to Scotland was conducted. Key knowledge gaps were reported, and recommendations made for future research and policy directions. The report will be published imminently by the Scottish Executive and key findings will feed into the forthcoming National Transport Strategy.

The McCool Breakthrough Award is given annually by the International Council of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education (I–CHRIE) to recognise a noteworthy breakthrough and a new approach in the field of hospitality and tourism education. Sheryl Kline (Purdue University) and J. Stephen Taylor (University of Strathclyde) the co–chairs of the International Hospitality and Tourism Virtual Conference (IHTVC) received this award in July 2006 to S. Kline and J.S. Taylor recognize the innovative use of technology and the Internet within the field of hospitality and tourism education.
The IHTVC conference is a virtual conference designed to bring hospitality and tourism graduate students and faculty together in a virtual refereed research forum.
Read more about the McCool Breakthrough Award

Dr Julia Smith, Reader, Department of Accounting and Finance, has been awarded a two year ESRC grant to run a new series of Seminars in Accounting, Finance and Economics (SAFE), in collaboration with the University of St. Andrews.
With a launch event at the Royal Overseas League, London on 20 December 2006, the seminars aim to provide a common arena for those working at the accounting, finance and economics interface, offering an opportunity for communication and interaction currently lacking in universities at departmental levels.
Read more about SAFE.

Professor Chris Huxham and Pam Hearne are involved in a 2 year EU funded project called Learning to Collaborate. Involving 14 partners across 7 countries, including industrial partners such as Fiat, the project aims to produce a simulation for developing collaboration competences. The end product will be aimed at universities and corporate training departments.
The UK team comprises Chris and Siv Vangen, Visiting Senior Lecturer and co–author with Chris of Managing to Collaborate, as well as 2 research fellows directly employed for the project, Pam Hearne and Nik Winchester, who is based with Dr Vangen at the Open University. The team is providing some of the underpinning ideas for the simulation both from the Theory of Collaborative Advantage and from case study material developed with the industrial partners and others.
The Learning to Collaborate project is a collaborative project, in which they hope to "practice what they preach". Consequently, in addition to the simulation, there will be a web site with a knowledge base and virtual community of people interested in collaboration. When this site is ready, the team will be looking for colleagues who are interested in joining the Learning to Collaborate community, and also colleagues to help test the simulation. If this is of interest, please e–mail Pam Hearne on pam.Hearne@gsb.strath.ac.uk.

Dr. Simon Harris, Reader in International Strategic Management in the Department of Management has been discussing the new book that he has developed with his colleagues, Professor Michel Bernasconi of CERAM Business School in Sophia Antipolis, France, and Professor Mette Moensted of Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. High–Tech Entrepreneurship: Managing innovation, variety and uncertainty (Routledge, 2006) has an international orientation in many ways.
The key message is that when high-tech entrepreneurial managers face a combination of the international complexities and the uncertainty always involved in innovation and advanced technology, they have to be much more responsive to issues of risk and uncertainty than conventional business planning models, including those for traditional business start–ups, allow. Dr Harris and his co–editors have drawn together leading writers and researchers from across Europe to present a must–read for those interested in advanced entrepreneurship and high–tech start–ups.

Several members of the newly formed Department of Management attended the British Academy of Management (BAM) conference in Belfast earlier this month and managed to gather two of the best paper awards.
Dr Simon Harris and Professor Hugh Scullion won a best paper for the Operationalisation of the concept of social capital. Similarly, Dr Paul Hibbert won the best paper in the Identity stream, entitled By invocation of the same – Identity and inter–organisational Collaboration.
SBS staff and PhD students and alumni were involved in a variety of streams including Strategy as Practice, Identity, Leadership and Interorganizational Relations.
The conference also reflects BAM’s increasing relevance to the development of the Business and Management community. The very well attended pre–conference doctoral programme – which includes "research conversations" with senior Business and Management academics – together with the opportunity at the main conference to present developmental papers, provides an excellent forum for doctoral students to get started on the conference circuit and helpful feedback on their research. For Directors of Research, there was a session let by a media consultant on "Media Engagement". Deans were also invited to attend a special session to discuss plans being jointly developed with the ESRC and other key bodies such as AIM Research and ABS, for bringing new research active staff into the Business and Management area.
Outside of the conference, BAM runs an ever increasing variety of research training events and programmes which provide networking opportunities as well as the obvious benefits of the training itself. BAM will be launching its new website in the next few weeks. Find out more at www.bam.ac.uk

Professor Hugh Scullion’s latest book, Global Staffing, Routledge, London 2006, with co–author, D Collings, was launched at August’s Academy of Management meeting, Atlanta, USA.
Professor Scullion co–chaired a Professional Development workshop on the Internationalisation of the HR function at this event, and presented papers on Alternative Forms of International Assignments and International Talent Management.
The latest addition to the prestigious Routledge Global HRM series, Prof. H Scullion Global Staffing, follows Professor Scullion’s last book, International HR: A Critical Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2005, and secures his position as a leading European specialist in International HRM.

At the recent conference of the British and Irish Section of the Regional Science Association International, Kim Swales was awarded the 2005 Moss Madden Memorial Medal for the most distinguished article in regional science in 2005. He was awarded the medal for his article entitled "Resource–constrained export–base regional multipliers: a Northian approach", which was published in the Journal of Regional Science in 2005.

In August, Professor Roger Sandilands was invited to contribute a paper at a "Festschrift" conference at the University of Western Ontario in honour of David Laidler, the distinguished monetary economist. The main theme of the conference was international monetary policy and the papers included one by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman who participated in the conference by video link from Stanford with John Taylor for a discussion of the famous (or infamous) "Taylor Rule" for central banks. Other distinguished central bankers in attendance were Sir Charles Goodhart (founder member David Laidler of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee) and John Crow and Gordon Thiessen, both former governors of the Bank of Canada. Professor Sandilands’ paper compared the mistakes of US monetary policy in the Great Depression of the 1930s with the failure of the Bank of Japan to extricate that country from protracted deflation in the 1990s and early 2000s. The conference papers will be published next year by Cambridge University Press.

The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship@Strathclyde and its partner organisation CONN ECT Scotland have together won the contract to provide business training to Fellows on the Enterprise Fellowship Programme, a Scotland–wide programme which is funded by Scottish Enterprise and delivered by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The Enterprise Fellowship Programme supports academic researchers who have an interesting business idea, usually based around science and technology, and an interest in taking this idea forward as a new business venture. Enterprise Fellows receive twelve months salary and intensive business training support, including access to experienced business mentors. The programme has been highly successful with some 70% of fellows going on to establish new start–up companies.
Anthony Keating , Executive Director Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship said: "We are delighted to have been awarded the contract to provide enterprise training to such a prestigious programme. It further strengthens the Hunter Centre’s role in technology entrepreneurship and, for the first time, establishes a direct link between the Hunter Centre and the Royal Society of Edinburgh".
Further details of the Enterprise Fellowship can be found at the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s website at: www.royalsoced.org.uk/research_fellowships/scot_ent.htm. Anthony Keating