In this year's Guardian University Guide 2014 Strathclyde Business School features twice in the top ten subject tables, ranking 3rd for Tourism, Transport and Travel, and 9th for Business & Management Studies. Overall, the university is 26th in the league table ranking out of 119 universities ranked, moving up 8 places. Strathclyde improved its performance for measures such as student satisfaction and career prospects.
The full guide is available here.
The inaugural History and Strategic Raw Materials Initiative conference took place from June 24-26 at Strathclyde Business School with the theme of Strategizing Raw Materials: Business, Government, History and Planning. Dr Andrew Perchard (Department of Strategy and Organisation) introduced the conference.
The full conference programme is here.
Marketing doctoral student, Leighanne Higgins, won the St Mary's University Award for best doctoral paper at the Miracles and Management conference in Lourdes, France, in May.
Leighanne presented her research on consumption of the Sanctuary of Lourdes in the conference's plenary introductory session and was very well received. Her paper won in the management and spirituality stream at the conference.
The presented work was entitled, "The Human Rosary Bead: Heresy or Heralding? A Discussion into the Show Business of Religion at Lourdes" and looked at the relationship between religion, consumption, and the marketplace.
With the government's reform to disability benefits high on the political agenda, Dr Colin Lindsay at the Scottish Centre for Employment Research (Strathclyde Business School) has published a major new text on the nature of the benefits 'problem' and the appropriateness of current welfare reforms. The book 'Disability benefits, welfare reform and employment policy' (Palgrave Macmillan) was co-edited with Dr Donald Houston, St. Andrews University, and brings together twenty experts from the UK, Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany.
Dr Kathy Hamilton, Dr Paul Hewer, Dr Aliakbar Jafari and Dr Catherine Demangeot from the Department of Marketing attended the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) conference which took place in May in Lille, France. This was the first occasion the conference was hosted outside of the USA.
The conference follows a dialogic format organised around a series of tracks that deal with social and economic problems and challenges created by the modern marketplace. Transformative consumer researchers are dedicated to using research to enhance consumer welfare and bring about positive social change. Transformation consumer research offers significant policy implications for the betterment of life in human society at large.
Dr Hamilton was co-chair of the Poverty and Vulnerability track. and Dr Jafari was co-chair of the Immigration, Culture and Ethnicity track.
Dr Kerem Akartunali from Management Science has been awarded a grant of £5,000 by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) through its "Innovation Voucher Scheme" for a project with First Milk, the largest farmer owned co-operative in the UK.
The project aims to help First Milk optimise their production schedule for some of their cheese and cream products, with the greatest impact expected in reduction of waste triggered by expired and excess production. With his expertise in mathematical optimisation and production planning, Dr Akartunali expects this project to be an invaluable first step for a long term relationship with First Milk.
Professor Richard Butler presented a paper at the 13th Meeting of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, held in Faro, Portugal, from June 2 to 7. Professor Butler's paper was titled "Tourism, Nature and Community Involvement: Fifty Years of Change on a Remote Island", and reported on a project funded by the Leverhulme Foundation under its Emeritus Fellowship Programme. Professor Butler also participated on a panel at a Workshop on Local Tourism Challenges, where he spoke on Seasonality in Destinations.