Professor Iain Black recently taught MBA students from Strathclyde’s Bahrain centre an elective on ‘Sustainability: Perspectives and Practices’. As was to be expected, the conversations on this topic with students from this region were challenging and allowed interesting cultural and socioeconomic issues to be brought to the fore.
The class focused on the systemic changes required to meet ESG and Net Zero targets, and the challenges of doing so. Discussion in the class also focused on Iain’s decision to travel to Bahrain – this decision was based on earlier carbon footprint analysis of the MBA unit highlighting the savings possible if the students were taught at a regional centre rather than coming to Glasgow for the summer school, making it a better option.
Professor Black thanked the staff of the centre for being such warm and considerate hosts.
Dr Jennifer Remnant, Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Work, Employment and Organisation, is taking on the role of vice-chair of the British Sociological Association (BSA), the national subject association for sociologists in the UK.
The BSA’s primary objective is to promote sociology and is the largest sociological network in the UK and is the public face of sociology in Britain. The role of the vice-chair is to deputise for the chair with the acknowledgement of the Board of Trustees as being capable and appropriate to do so. It’s expected that the individual who is appointed to the role of vice chair will step into the role of chair when their term ends.
The main responsibilities of the vice chair role are to lead and chair meetings of the Public Engagement Committee, assist the chair with strategic review meetings, attend and take an active role in meetings of the BSA Advisory Forum and BSA Members’ Meetings, attend meetings of, and take an active role in, the Finance and EDI committees of the board alongside standard trustee responsibilities.
Eight of our full time MBA students attended MBAT (MBA Tournament) at HEC Paris Campus. This is an event held by HEC Paris and acts as Europe’s largest gathering that unites over 1,500 MBA students from top business schools around the world. For three days the students engaged in sports competitions, cultural activities, networking events and celebrations.
The students who attended were: Tapasya Wali, Shweta Samdadia, Akash Singh, Xiaoling Sang, Nilam Shete, Taranjot Chopra, Diego Fonseca, and Ekaterina Bashtavenko.
HEC has been hosting this event for the last 32 years with participants from some of the world’s leading business schools like Oxford, Cambridge, LBS, IMD, RSM, Imperial, and IE. This year, a total of 17 business schools including Strathclyde participated, and the event was held at HEC campus from May 4-6, 2023.
In the tournament, MBA students represent their respective universities and participate in a variety of extra-curricular activities, including a flag march, various sports/games, networking, dance competition, and bands. MBA students also collaborate with other business schools to participate in these activities. HEC organises activities ranging from rowing, cross-country and a mud rope pull to a gala dinner.
Eight students from our September MBA cohort participated in various activities such as cross-country, basketball, squash, and cricket. Diego Fonseca played squash against a London business school. In addition to sports and games participation, the group participated in the Pride Parade, showing inclusivity and support for the LGBTQ+ community. The event ended on May 6 with a gala dinner in the heart of Paris at the Intercontinental Le Grand Hotel.
Akash Singh said, “Organising and participating in MBAT has directly complemented my strategic leadership development because I enhanced my team management, leadership, and conflict management skills while managing the different expectations of my classmates and the organising committee from HEC. In addition, presenting our esteemed school on a global platform was such a proud moment for all of us, and meeting with other super smart MBA folks coming from all over the world has given me hands-on experience of cultural diversity and given me an opportunity to build lifelong friends beyond my MBA class. In the end, the three days at HEC Paris were filled with learning, networking, and fun, and MBAT will always have a special place in my MBA memory lane.”
Shweta Samdadia said, “MBAT 2023 exceeded all my expectations and has been an incredible bonding experience and one of the highlights of my MBA journey. After three incredible days, we returned to Glasgow, a little more tanned, contented to have completed the most beautiful cross-country run, thought -provoking reflections & unforgettable memories with lifelong friendships attesting that “Paris is always a good idea for MBAT.”
Diego Fonseca added, “Without a doubt, the MBAT experience at HEC was beneficial and will remain a significant highlight of my MBA. Not just because I was able to spend time with my classmates in a different atmosphere, but also because of the number of individuals and cultures I was able to meet.”
Two Strathclyde Business School students are finalists in the AIM2Flourish competition, which saw them conduct an in-person interview with a business leader and the resulting story be selected for the competition website.
A total of six students on the Business School's Management Development Programme (MDP1) entered the competition run by the Fowler Center for Business at the Weatherhead School of Management, with two making it to the final.
Student Edward Murphy interviewed Kirsty MacArthur, Legal Director and Co-Owner of MacArthur Green in a piece called By Land, Sea... or Peat while Eleni Kalli interviewed Al Shariat, Director and CEO of Coconut Merchant for an article entitled One coconut, countless sustainable products. Both students were supervised by Dudzile Rance, a teaching fellow in entrepreneurship at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship.
AIM2Flourish starts in the classroom, when students learn about the strengths-based Appreciative Inquiry approach developed at the Weatherhead School of Management, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals.
Using the UN Global Goals as their lens, students research and identify a positive business innovation and interview a business leader about it. Students then write a story about this and publish it on AIM2Flourish.com as inspiration for others.
The 2023 Flourish Prize finalists include 78 stories from 32 universities in 25 countries under the guidance of 35 different professors. The businesses profiled come from 25 countries and more than 15 industries.
MBA alumnus, Blair Maxwell who is Director of Strategy and Quality in the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi invited Professor Tom Baum, Department of Work, Employment and Organisation, to share thoughts on recruitment, retention and engagement issues in the hospitality industry with senior colleagues and the HR team in the resort. The session was lively and highly interactive, addressing issues that are both long-standing and emergent as the resort adapts to its rebranding as part of Mandarin Oriental.
Tom has also been involved in a number of other events both home and away. He was keynote speaker at a Public Seminar jointly organised by the Tourism Management Research Centre and the Centre for Research in Employment and Work at the University of Greenwich where he spoke on “Labour Shortages in Hospitality: Post-COVID crisis or embedded structural reality?” and also delivered a public Masterclass at the SBS Centre in Dubai on “Tourism and Sustainability: Opportunities for Dubai”.
Tom was invited to contribute to an International Symposium organised by The College of Economics and Business Administration (CEBA) at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences in the Sultanate of Oman, on the Emerging Trends in Shaping the Future of Work. Tom’s keynote was on “The Future of Low Skills Work”.
Along with Irma Booyens, Tasos Hadjisolomou, Dennis Nickson, and Tayler Cunningham from WEO,Tom participated in the launch of the Global Hospitality Research Alliance (GHRA), a network of over 50 critical scholars from 11 countries with a shared interest in the hospitality workforce. The launch was part of the International Labour Process Conference which was hosted by WEO in April.
Professor Patricia Findlay, Department of Work, Employment and Organisation, met with various individuals and organisations during April and May.
On April 6, she met with the new Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing, Economy, Fair Work and Energy, Neil Grey, in her role as Co-Chair of Scotland’s Fair Work Convention. Tricia also hosted the Cabinet Secretary at the FWC meeting on April 2nd.
She then gave a keynote address at the 41st International Labour Process Conference on ‘Delivering fair and decent work? The potential of critical interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship’ on April 13, and on April 19, Patricia attended the SCDI Productivity Club Scotland Advisory Board meeting as a member of the Advisory Board.
Also in April, she attended as a member of the ESRC funded ReWAGE experts group and on May 3 she was an invited attendee at the new First Minister’s Anti-Poverty Summit in Edinburgh.
The following day Tricia met with the new Director General for the Economy at the Scottish Government, Gregor Irwin, in her role as Co-Chair of Scotland’s Fair Work Convention and on May 10, Tricia met with Damian Thomas from Ireland’s National Economic and Social Council to discuss public policy to embed fair work.
Along with Jo McQuarrie of SCER, Tricia met with the lead for TUC Education in Scotland to discuss trade union representatives’ skills and learning needs.
Finally, Tricia Findlay met with representatives of SCDI and Scottish Government Construction Leadership officials to plan an event on the workplace challenges facing the Construction industry in Scotland.
Professor Jill MacBryde, Professor Colin Lindsay and Robert Stewart, along with colleagues from Loughborough hosted a research sandpit as part of our ESRC funded InterAct project. The challenge was to develop research proposals that would help the diffusion of industrial digital technologies to help manufacturing. Jill said, “We had a fantastic three days at Loughborough and saw enthusiasm of social scientists delving into the digital technology challenges confronting the manufacturing sector and the subsequent discussions.
“We heard about the real world context of challenges to manufacturing in-person from the MTC's David Brackett and via videos courtesy of a number of manufacturing leaders including John Burdett, Troy Barratt, Jim Walters, Martin Welsh and Russell Watkins. Our attendees also had a chance to visit some of the laboratories with research funded by EPSRC through Made Smarter Innovation. We will be announcing winners of funding in the coming weeks.”
Strathclyde hosted an InterAct Future of Manufacturing Work Discovery Day in the Business School on June 1 in conjunction with Flexibility Works. The event heard from four manufacturing companies about how they are changing work and introducing more flexibility to help recruit and retain talent. InterAct are also hosting a summer school for early career researchers in Letterkenny in July. More information can be found on the InterAct website https://interact-hub.org/
Dr Livia Pancotto, lecturer in Banking at the Department of Accounting and Finance, has been successful in a research fellowship application to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Research Fellowship Programme.
Fellowships are awarded to scholars who have established a strong reputation in their field and whose proposal allows for fruitful collaboration with BIS economists. Fellows will be invited to the BIS’s Monetary and Economic Department (MED) for short periods, ranging from a few days to several weeks.
Candidates will conduct economic research on policy-related issues of relevance to the BIS and the programme aims to promoted policy-relevant research that meets the highest academic standards; allow prominent scholars to gain an insight into the policy making environment of the BIS; and foster joint research between academics and BIS economists.
The BIS carries out research to shed light on issues of core interest to the central bank community, to support meetings of Governors and other central bank officials, and to provide analytical backing for the activities of the various Basel-based committees. MED contributes to these tasks by conducting research on monetary and financial stability, monetary economics, macroeconomics and finance, financial markets, central bank governance and other institutional issues.
Department of Marketing PhD students presented their work in a series of presentations and posters in the 10th International Research Conference in Marketing, May 22-23.
The conference opened with a Keynote Presentation titled ‘The emergence of concerned partnerships in the ethical marketization of place: a narrative lens’, by Dr Teea Palo (University of Edinburgh Business School). A second Keynote Presentation on ‘Animate Assemblages: how interspecies encounters re-order consumption’ was delivered by Professor Robin Canniford (KEDGE Business School).
As well as inspiring the PhD community with their research, Dr Palo and Professor Canniford also took on the difficult job of awarding Best Presentations Prizes:
Now celebrating its 10th year, the International Research Conference in Marketing remains a highlight of the year for the Department of Marketing.
Masters students from the Department of Economics recently attended the Scottish Parliament for a fact-finding mission on the role economists play with regard to the Scottish budget.
More than 30 students from all Economics MSc programmes took part in the trip led by Dr Grant Allan, Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes for the Department of Economics. The students heard first of all from Ross Burnside from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre on the role that economists play in supporting the analysis and deliberations in the Parliament on the Scottish budget.
The students were lucky enough that their trip coincided with the vote in the chamber on the election of the new first minister and, as a result, were in Parliament to hear the first words of the newly-elected Humza Yousaf MSP in his new role as First Minister.
The Fraser of Allander Institute is delighted that four Business School students have secured placements on the Economic Futures Summer Placement Programme. Economic Futures is a key initiative within the University of Strathclyde Business School’s Fraser of Allander Institute and is centred on supporting applied economics learning and teaching, offering work experience opportunities for talented undergraduate students from across Scotland.
This year Economic Future has secured 17 summer placements for students, the placements are from across a broad spectrum of policy areas, hosted by partnering organisations including BiGGAR Economics, the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA), Scottish Fiscal Commission, and several academic institutions.
Last summer Lewis O'Neill completed an Economic Futures placement, building the Economic Futures Hub. This online resource, accessible at https://hub.economicfutures.ac.uk/ provides comprehensive material for applied economics teaching in secondary schools. It's part of an ongoing endeavour to support economics learning and teaching within the Scottish education system.
This summer, he has returned to the EF project to update and enhance the Economic Futures Hub, working to ensure content reaches even more students, particularly within state schools. The overarching mission is to democratise access to economics education in Scotland, opening up opportunities for all young minds to explore, understand, and engage with economic concepts.
Lewis said, “Working with Economic Futures has been an enriching experience for me, not just professionally but personally. The opportunity to engage directly with teachers and students, to understand their needs, and to help create a resource that can fulfil those needs, has been incredibly rewarding. Translating complex economic concepts like fiscal and monetary policy into accessible, digestible content is a challenge that I've thoroughly enjoyed.
“My journey in this project has reaffirmed my belief in the power of education and the importance of making it accessible to all. I come from a state school background myself, and I'm passionate about ensuring that every young person, regardless of their starting point, has the opportunity to learn about and engage with economics. Both the Economic Future summer placements and the Economic Future Hub are crucial steps in achieving this, helping to close the access gap to economics education in Scotland.”
Economic Futures, a project funded by the Scottish Funding Council which aims to engage with undergraduate economics students, graduates, and early career academics, across Scotland to provide an eco-system for applied economic analysis. The project offers a series of programmes including work placement opportunities in academia, public policy, charities and the private sector and events to showcase opportunities and learning in applied economics. Economic Futures is hosted by the University of Strathclyde and supports activities across all HE institutions in Scotland which have economics teaching provision.
Any organisation interested in being part of this journey should email economicfutures@strath.ac.uk. You can follow Economic Futures on LinkedIn for up-dates and opportunities: https://www.linkedin.com/in/economic-futures/
Dr Keith Pyper from the Department of Marketing recently visited the Department of Business and Trade (DBT), formally the Department of International Trade, at their London Headquarters in the heart of Whitehall - Old Admiralty Building (OAB). He had meetings with senior staff across a range of teams focusing on international trade. This included a meeting with the DBT Chief Economist Ben Cropper and Chief Statistician Jane Naylor.
Keith also delivered a one hour guest presentation of his research to seven teams, comprising of more than 50 members of staff, and his presentation was also livestreamed throughout the DBT gaining wide coverage. This visit builds upon previously established relationships he has with the DBT and positive plans were discussed for moving forward collaborative projects between SBS and the DBT.
The University of Strathclyde Business School and Iain Black, Professor of Sustainable Consumption, hosted the inaugural PRME (Principles of Responsible Management Education) Scotland chapter workshop on May 30.
Twenty academics and professional services colleagues from across Scotland’s business and management schools attended to discuss how to embed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in particular Sustainable Development Goal 2 - Zero Hunger - into teaching and research.
Professor Black of the Department of Marketing said, "It was a terrifically collegiate day, particularly sharing pedagogy and how to measure our current levels of activity. We look forward to feeding this forward to the UK chapter conference in June."
This year, the annual competition for schools, run by the Marketing Department at Strathclyde Business School, focused on the long-standing tradition of support for charities. Each school has their own preferred charities and pupils were asked to detail a plan to promote the charity itself or an event to support the charity.
The Department was delighted with the response and the creative ideas proposed for the different charities, with the level of commitment to each one, evident to see. The judging panel consisted of all members of the Marketing Department and all submissions received votes. Congratulations to winners:
Elizabeth McKee and Jane Johnstone (Marketing) were delighted to visit the winning schools to deliver prizes and celebrate with the winning students and their teachers.
