Why a developing research culture is important strategically

It’s hard to believe we have already passed Directed Study week – I hope students enjoyed the alternative events on offer.

The feedback from my recent blog was positive and I hope this one continues to capture the energy of the School. I mentioned the Bloomberg suite last time and people have asked me to say a little more…

The Bloomberg suite is a fantastic teaching resource, providing real time and historic company/sector/country data, and Modules are increasingly using the resource. Students can also acquire an industry standard qualification – the Bloomberg Market Concept (BMC) - while studying and this qualification is undertaken by financial services employees. Currently, 70 students are studying for the qualification. Karl Roberts is leading on this and talking to a number of financial services companies in the city about opening up the facility for staff training purposes.

In other news, I’m also pleased to hear that a Finance Society has been launched this year and look forward to reporting on the activities of this student led group in the coming months.

We have welcomed many guests to the School over the past few weeks. Mick Card, the new regional Knowledge Transfer Partnership advisor for Innovate UK, led an informative session on KTP opportunities. Similarly, Anthony Wallis and Joanna Buckley, from Business in the Community, shared their insights into civic engagement and responsible business.

We also welcome Dr Claus Nesensohn, the founder of Refine Projects AG in Stuttgart who addressed the first meeting of the Project Management forum and similarly, Dr. Aileen Lawless and Dr. Deborah Humphreys, as part of the newly formed Leadership, Education, & Development (LEAD) research group played host to guests from the Institute of Public Affairs, Jagiellonian University, Kraków (pictured left).

Assistant Professor Beata Jalocha was leading a group of researchers investigating how Liverpool Business School conducts Action Research with its partners and students.  This is an area of growing importance and the School co-sponsors the Action Learning: Research and Practice journal with the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM).

Our developing research culture is important strategically and a further recent development has been the creation of a women’s writing group, by Aileen Lawless, to support staff writing for publication.

The DBA team, led by Dr Christine Unterhitzenberger and Prof Dave Bryde, have been particularly busy. Next year we celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the DBA and as part of the celebrations we have been selected to host the 2018 CAB/BAM DBA symposium. The planning for this event started last week.

Additionally, visits to the Police Attache’s office of the UAE embassy in London, to Abu Dhabi, UAE and Oman have identified opportunities to strengthen recruitment to our DBA and PhD programmes. Visits to Zayed and Muscat Universities also provided an opportunity to meet alumni and discuss potential collaborative activity.

The tangible result of all of this will be that an additional DBA cohort will be run in January 2018. This is a great achievement.

Further visits have been made overseas to partners in China, the USA and Europe. I was delighted to be invited, along with Alastair Balchin, to attend the 40^th anniversary of the founding of the Economics Faculty of our partner in Ostrava. This was a great celebration and gave us a chance to see some fantastic academic gowns.

I spoke last time of our work with professional bodies and wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the contribution made by Prof. Jim Stewart to the work of CIPD nationally. Jim not only co-Chairs the CIPD Ethics Panel but also is a CIPD Quality Assurance Panel Chair and a member of the CIPD Applied Research Conference Task Force.

Our professional body relationships and broader relationships with business are critical in enhancing students’ employment prospects. In the past few weeks we have welcomed Hannah Clark and Lauren O’Neil, from Nestle and Airbus, to discuss graduate and undergraduate opportunities with second and final year students. Similarly, the accounting and finance team organised a careers event with CISI members from the wealth management sector to discuss careers in the financial services.

We also held a successful placement’s fair at the Adelphi organised by Rosemary Capper and the placement team. This attracted many companies including Nestle, Xerox, Liverpool Airport and Aldi.

Our work with other faculties in the University grows in importance. I have spoken previously of the joint Data Science Research Centre and the £5million LCR Activate project we are collaborating in. Prof Shona Bettany presented recently at LJMU’s Public Health Institute conference on image and performance as part of a broader collaboration with PHI, Criminology and a charitable body in the sexual health sector. We have also developing a stream of joint programmes with Applied Mathematics, Law, Journalism and are looking to develop a programme in the on-line retail sector with fashion.

As for other staff news, Dr Moatz Alhilou represented the School at the first Academic Board of the year. This was the first such Board we have attended as a standalone faculty and we wish Dr Alhilou well in this new role.

I would also like to congratulate Dr Phil Kelly on the continuing success of his book Management Theory and Practice written with the late Gerald Cole. This book is in its 8^thedition and ranked in the top five management science books with Amazon. Discussions regarding the 9^thedition are ongoing.

My continuing thanks to you all for your contribution to the work of the School.