Professor carries our research talks

Professor Peter McKiernan (Strategy & Organisation) directed the 7th Cycle of the EFMD/EURAM Research Leaders programme at the Nova Business School in Lisbon, Portugal in May. There were 16 Research Directors from among Europe's top ranking Business Schools as well as a diverse range of eminent speakers. Amid the topics covered was an introduction to post publishing review of academic papers - a trend that could replace the traditional pre-published, peer review process. Several major publishers are considering the former option, given the randomness of the latter process.

Professor McKiernan was a plenary panel speaker at the EFMD annual conference in Copenhagen in June. The panel focused upon preparing Business Schools for a radical future. Amid the issues covered was the notion of paying academics only for teaching and not for research. If academics wanted to pursue research, they would have to win external funds. Some schools, such as Hult International, do not pay academics for their research time but pay them only for their research output. It was suggested this might reduce the volume of research activity, improve its quality and tidy up the cost base of many schools.

The Strategy & Organisation professor also gave the opening plenary to the University of Wolverhampton's annual 2 day research conference. This is a cross faculty conference. Peter spoke about the massive problems with research quality (poor science) and research relevance (or utility) in business and management. Interestingly, this view was echoed strongly by the medics at the conference.

Paper selected as one of three best papers at NLDB conference

A paper by Abdullah Gök, Senior Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow, HCE, titled "Classification of intangible social innovation concepts" together with Nikola Milosevic and Goran Nenadic (UoM Computer Science) submitted to the NLDB 2018, has been selected as one of the three best papers submitted (there is no ranking among the 3 best papers) and awarded a monetary prize.

The 23rd International Conference on Natural Language & Information Systems (NLDB 2018) is one of the most prestigious text mining conferences with high number of submissions and around 15% acceptance rate.

He also presented a paper titled “Creating the European Social Innovation Database by utilising text-mining and machine-learning” at the SPRU Workshop on “Data Science for Innovation” at the University Sussex on 06/06/2018. This invited workshop was attended by data providers, policy makers and scholars working with advanced quantitative data to study innovation.

Economics workshop was well-attended

Dr Stuart McIntyre, Dr Graeme Roy and Professor Gary Koop of the Department of Economics organised a well-attended workshop at Strathclyde during May 8-9 on Regional Economic and Fiscal Forecasting, with presentations by colleagues from Kings College London (Martin Weale), Warwick Business School (James Mitchell and Ana Galvao) as well as colleagues from the Office for Budget Responsibility, Office for National Statistics and Scottish Fiscal Commission.

Professor Koop and Dr McIntyre presented their ongoing research, undertaken as part of the ONS’s Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, which provides a method for producing earlier estimates of regional economic growth in the UK. A paper describing this work is now online: https://www.escoe.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ESCoE-DP-2018-07.pdf

Business School alumni win big at Scottish EDGE

Strathclyde Business School alumni Craig Strachan (BA Hons, Accounting & Finance) and Hannah Fisher (BA Hons, Marketing & Finance) are co-founders of “Start Up Drinks Lab”; an ideas factory with the mission of ensuring that all great craft soda ideas can make it to market.

With support from Strathclyde Entrepreneurial Network (SEN) and others, the business won £75k during round 12 of the Scottish EDGE competition on June 14.  

Hannah and Craig first met in 2016. They were both entrepreneurs launching their own soft drinks companies and quickly discovered they had the same problem: they couldn’t find a suitable facility to help them develop, test and manufacture their products. The duo decided to launch their own solution to this problem and in January 2017 formed The Start-Up Drinks Lab. 

The Start-Up Drinks Lab is an ideas factory with the mission of ensuring that all great craft soda ideas can make it to market. The company will offer an end-to-end service, including product development, manufacturing, packaging, storage facilities and collaborative routes to market for all craft soda producers. You can pick and choose which services you need – be that concept to shelf, or anything in between.

Read more about Start Up Drinks Lab; and find their website here

Business School undergraduate in Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards top 20

Final year undergraduate Ruth Maclaren (Entrepreneurship & Marketing) was shortlisted for the Tech Category in the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards.

She will compete in the Semi Finals in Glasgow on June 26; pitching for a place in the national final in London for a chance to win a share of a £90k prize fund. This year, the competition engaged with more than 1,000 entrepreneurs on campus and received more entries into the competition than ever before.

Find out more about Ruth and her business

Two Strathclyde winners in SIE “I’m an Innovator”

Some of Scotland’s brightest students met at a special two day innovation retreat at Loch Lomond on June 6-7 for the final of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise’s I’m an Innovator Competition.

The finalists honed their ideas over the two days and made their final pitches to competition judges. The winners of I’m an Innovator 2018, each receiving £500 included Strathclyders Yanik Nyberg & Julian Engelmann (Scottish Samphire) and Ruth McLaren (Silver Lion Innovations).  

Finance paper presented at conference

Dr Patrick McColgan, Department of Accounting and Finance, presented a paper, co-authored with Arthur Krebbers and Andrew Marshall both of Strathclyde, "Home bias and investor preferences in corporate bond allocations" at the Financial Management Association European Conference in Kristiansand, Norway in June.  Strathclyde will be hosting the conference at the TIC in June 2019.

PhD student to present paper

 PhD student Mei Liu, Accounting and Finance, will present her paper "Explaining the role of CSR in firm’s FDI location and internalization choice: an extension and application of the eclectic OLI paradigm" (co-authored with Professor Andrew Marshall and Dr Patrick McColgan from Strathclyde) at the Academy of International Business Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, USA in the last week of June.  The paper was also nominated for the 2018 FIU/AIB Best Theory Paper Award at the conference.

Keynote speaker role for HRM professor

Professor Paul Stewart was invited as the key note speaker on the occasion of the 90th birthday of Professor Jolanta Kulpińska, the founder member of the Polish Sociology of Work section of the Polish Sociological Association on April 20, the University of Lodz. 

Professor Kulpińska had been a revolutionary and fighter in the Warsaw uprising in 1944.  After she and her sister were captured the Nazis executed her sister, also a revolutionary, but because Justyna was only 15 she was sent as a slave labourer to work in Berlin. After the factory she worked in was bombed she escaped.  Professor Kulpińska is still engaged and working on the Polish Sociology of Work journal. 

Professor Stewart commented, “It was probably one of the highlights of my career to be afforded the opportunity to speak in her honour at this event.”

Professor continues as Fellow of CEPR

Professor Ian Wooton, Department of Economics, has been reappointed as Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London for a seventh term. CEPR is Europe's leading research grouping in economic policy that encourages international research collaboration and coordinates research activity across Europe.

Commentary pieces makes the news

Dr Matthew Hannon, Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, produced a commentary piece for the i newspaper.

It explores why Scottish Government’s £10m Saltire Prize to support marine energy innovation, which was never awarded, was the right idea, at the wrong time. 

You can read the full article here

Book launch for HRM professor

The photograph shows Phil with Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the FBU.

Professor Phil Taylor of the Department of Human Resource Management participated at the Fire Brigades Union Conference which took place in Brighton from June 6-7.

Professor Taylor along with Professor Sian Moore (University of Greenwich) and Dr Tessa Wright (Queen Mary University of London) have written the history of the union on its 100th anniversary, and the book was launched at the Conference.

Academic is inaugural speaker at new network

Professor Julia Darby, Department of Economics, was the inaugural speaker at a newly established Econometrics Network at Aberdeen Standard Investments on June 7. She gave a talk on econometric modelling of volatility and then presented a paper which illustrates the use of the econometric methods discussed to investigate the impact of Scotland's Independence Referendum on the stock market volatility of Scotland's listed companies.