Original Thinking Podcast: Recent Episodes

Alliance Manchester Business School

In this first series of the Original Thinking Podcast, we will explore the latest business school insights and research into the impact on business, business leaders and the wider economy of Covid-19. Our experts will offer advice and information for recovery.

For a list of our latest webinars, news and useful business content please visit ambs.ac.uk

What role can corporate sustainability play in terms of business transformation?

Zara De Belder, a recent MBA graduate from Alliance Manchester Business School and sustainability expert, joins Claire Binns, Senior Impact Manager at Sykes Holiday Cottages, to discuss the subject. Claire also talks first-hand about the recent steps Sykes Cottages has taken in terms of its specific approach to measuring and assessing its sustainability credentials.

Three years on from the height of the pandemic this podcast hosted by Alliance Manchester Business School explores the lessons learnt from Protect, a major UK government study into the transmission of the Covid-19 virus and the wider UK research programme around Covid-19.

Debating the findings of the nationwide study are Professor David Fishwick, Chief Medical Advisor at Health and Safety Executive GB, Sheena Johnson, Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing at Alliance Manchester Business School, and Martie Van Tongeren, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at The University of Manchester.

How do leaders of large organisations and businesses remain agile and nimble when faced with so many day-to-day challenges?

Panos Constantinides, Professor of Digital Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School, and Simon Hayward, Managing Director and Global Lead for Leadership and Culture at Accenture, discuss how change takes place across organisations, and in particular look at how to embark upon digital transformation.

What does it mean to be truly sustainable and how should companies and organisations approach their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies?

These were just some of the key topics explored by Sacha Sadan, Director of ESG at the Financial Conduct Authority, and Professor Konstantinos Stathopoulos from Alliance Manchester Business School, at a podcast hosted by Alliance Manchester Business School.

In this episode we will hear from Jan Iceton, Chair of Smart Works Greater Manchester.

Smart Works Greater Manchester is a truly inspiring charity that has helped over 3,500 unemployed, disadvantaged and often vulnerable women get back into employment. Their motto is “get the clothes, get the confidence, get the job”.... and 72% of their clients do just that. They bounced back quickly after Covid and now deliver circa 100 appointments a month from their centre in Stockport. Now, at this time of exceptional need, they are working towards opening a new Smart Works in Manchester by April 2023.

Aside from Smart Works, Jan supports entrepreneurial SaaS platform businesses as an Investor/NED.

Jan's whole career has been in business development with 10 years in large corporate IT (Fujitsu), 10 years BPO in the UK and North America (Vertex) then almost 10 years running her own consultancy / interim business supporting private equity owned companies.

In 2015, Jan went "back on the payroll" for 2 years when she joined Utiligroup, a fast growing, highly entrepreneurial SaaS provider to independent UK energy suppliers backed by North Edge Capital (PE). In April 2017 they sold the company to ESG for £100m and in November were recognised by the BVCA (Private Equity) as Best Management Team of the Year (Mid Market).

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

In this episode, Professor Duncan Shaw explores how Covid-19 has created opportunities for change across both central and local government. He also shares his thoughts on the need for deeper resilience building as life gradually returns to normal in the wake of the pandemic.

This episode will be hosted by Javed Siddiqui, Professor of Accounting, Alliance Manchester Business School.

Pressures from various donor agencies (such as the World Bank), combined with the pursuit of legitimacy by governments in many developing countries, have resulted in various western accounting and corporate governance mechanisms to be exported to the developing world.

Accounting researchers have identified the inherent limits to what (western) governance systems can achieve, especially in certain (non-western) contexts, and have often termed these practices as ‘ritualistic’. Drawing from his personal research journey, Professor Javed Siddiqui will discuss the potential policy implications of such research.

For example, given the presence of weak capital markets, where investors do not really appreciate the value of a ‘good’ audit, and the reasonable success of various supply chain certification schemes, is there a scope for changing the focus of auditing and governance mechanisms in developing economies (as suggested by the Brydon review)? If so, what is stopping certain forms of change from coming within? Also, given the tendency of governments in developing countries to adopt western governance mechanisms without considering the context, do regulators in western countries need a more cautious approach towards policy development?

Javed is a Professor of Accounting at the Alliance Manchester Business School, and the school Director for post-graduate taught (PGT) programmes, responsible for a portfolio of fifteen specialised MSc programmes. Javed joined Manchester Business School as a Lecturer in 2008, and was promoted to a Senior Lecturer in the same school in 2015. His primary fields of research are auditing, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, especially in the context of developing economies. His research has been funded by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK. Professor Siddiqui worked with international development agencies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Big Four accountancy firms, as well as national level professional accountancy bodies.

This event will be facilitated by Christopher Humphrey, Professor of Accounting in the Accounting and Finance division of Alliance Manchester Business School.

In this episode we will hear from Miki Shika, founder of Ekhaya Empowerment Community Interest Company and an entrepreneur with a passion for childcare, families and integration.

Miki qualified as a Montessori directress (teacher) almost two decades ago and in that time has mastered her skills in childcare and community engagement with a specialised focus on children, working on the needs of pre-primary school aged children. She has managed nurseries and currently runs a childcare business.

Miki originates from South Africa where her interests in education and child development were spurred. Her community engagement work was born out of her identification amongst displaced groups and her commitment to activism. She founded Ekhaya Empowerment C.I.C, an organisation which works with women and children from communities experiencing a range of social injustices.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

The Scale-Up Forum is a peer-to-peer network for ambitious scaling up businesses in Greater Manchester. It gives businesses at all stages of the scale up journey the opportunity to share experiences, challenges and lessons learnt for mutual business benefit.

Launched in 2018, it provides a platform for businesses in the scale up phase to gain insight from their peers and from academic experts on challenges experienced by business growing at pace, whatever their sector. The Forum is managed and delivered by our Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange team, who help to identify routes for mutually-beneficial collaboration between our academic researchers and business partners.

Our quarterly events are all based around themes proposed by the partner firms.

Achieving Innovation and incorporating innovation strategies

How have large and growing organisations successfully embedded innovation strategies to deliver success? We will hear an academic perspective presenting past research into this area along with a practitioner perspective.

As per the usual format the session will encourage interaction and shared learning, starting discussion points include “Should innovation be tasked to specialist teams within a business or is it everyone's responsibility? How should businesses plan their strategy and decision-making process to facilitate innovation?”.

Speakers

Bruce Tether

Bruce Tether is Professor of Innovation Management and Strategy, Associate Head of Research for the Innovation Management and Policy Division, and the Research Director of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre led by Nesta in London. He teaches innovation management and his research interests centre around three inter-related themes:

Innovation and entrepreneurship through creativity and design.
The competitive dynamics of professional service firms, especially those oriented to design and creativity, such as architecture practices, design and engineering consultancies.
How firms make choices regarding their geographical locations for competitive advantage.

Azhar Quaiyoom

Azhar is the director and CEO of QSustain, an independent award-winning specialist consultancy to the construction industry offering strategic support across many sectors.

Azhar is a highly motivated and charismatic entrepreneur and Engineering professional with 20 years’ experience within sustainable design and delivery across different sectors such as mix use, commercial, and in particular, rail, creating first of its kind achievements across complex projects. This is coupled with invaluable experience in practical major programmes with extensive knowledge of the feasibility, design and implementation stages. With this experience, Azhar now runs a successful consultancy that is well placed to expand and diversify.

Azhar has a rare and exclusive combination of Engineering design, sustainability and practical project management experience with knowledge of how to implement low carbon and sustainable developments from concept, design, and procurement to construction and operation.

The Scale-Up Forum is sponsored by Bruntwood Works

Audit in the UK is in transition, with major reform and increased regulation being planned by the Government and the Financial Reporting Council.

This episode with ICEAW Manchester and Alliance MBS will give the business community the opportunity to feedback to the government and to comment on the proposed reforms. This episode will also look to highlight the areas where practising and business accountants and Directors can start to understand how to deal with the changes. There will be ample opportunity for the audience, both present and online, to question the panel and make constructive comments on the proposals.

Background

In July 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) published a Position Paper setting out the next steps to reform the UK’s audit and corporate governance framework.

The paper follows the Government Response to the consultation on strengthening the UK’s Corporate Governance, Corporate Reporting and Audit systems, including the creation of the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA), to replace the FRC.

The document builds on the areas of the Government Response that fall within the FRC’s remit, providing advanced clarity for stakeholders on how the work of reform will be delivered ahead of government legislation.

That work includes revising existing codes, strengthening auditing and accounting standards, setting expectations to drive behavioural change ahead of statutory powers, and the development of guidance to address issues set out in the Government Response.

In particular, the Position Paper sets out proposed changes to the UK Corporate Governance Code. This will provide a stronger framework for reporting on the effectiveness of internal controls and Board responsibilities for expanded sustainability and ESG reporting, and new guidance on enhanced resilience statements and fraud reporting by directors.

Speakers

Lord Callanan, Under Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Corporate Responsibility

Lord Callanan was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 14 February 2020. He was Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union from 27 October 2017 to 31 January 2020.

Callanan was a Conservative Councillor on Tyne and Wear County Council between 1983 and 1986 and Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council between 1987 and 1996, and a Member of the European Parliament for the North East England constituency from 1999, re-elected in 2004 and 2009.

Callanan was created a Life Peer on 24 September 2014 taking the title Baron Callanan, of Low Fell in the County of Tyne and Wear. He was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Transport between June and October 2017.

Julia Penny (President, ICAEW)

Julia qualified as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant in 1989 having first completed an honours degree in Accountancy and Finance at Brighton Polytechnic. Soon after qualifying she moved into a training role, initially teaching students and later moving into CPD training and technical roles. She specialises in audit, financial reporting and anti-money laundering and has worked for diverse organisations including Wolters Kluwer, Wilmington plc, Chantrey Vellacott and Baker Tilly (now RSM).

Julia became involved with Thames Valley Society of Chartered Accountants early in her career and served first as treasurer and then as the Society President in 2001-2. Later she became chair of the ICAEW Technical Advisory Committee and a member of both the Technical Strategy and Financial Reporting Faculty Boards. Julia has been a Council member since 2013 and an ICAEW Board member since 2017.

Julia was Vice-President for the year June 2020 to June 2021. She became ICAEW President and will hold this office from June 2022 to June 2023.

In this Original Thinking podcast we will be joined by John List, Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, who will be discussing his book 'The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale'.

The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale

The premise behind the Voltage Effect is deceptively simple: No great idea is guaranteed to succeed. Be it a life-saving medical breakthrough, a new policy initiative, a cutting-edge innovation, or a bold plan for building a better world, translating an idea into widespread impact depends on one thing only: whether it can be replicated at scale.

Many college students will graduate into the world with a bold idea they hope to scale – whether by starting a company, through social advocacy or non-profit work, in the private sector, or elsewhere. The book draws on John's years of behavioural science research, as well as examples from the realms of business, education, policymaking, and public health to present a data-driven approach to the science of scaling. In it he outlines the five hurdles that must be overcome for an idea to succeed at scale, as well as four research-based strategies to achieve maximum-impact scaling. Topics include:

Best experimental design practices to validate an idea (and reduce the risk of false positives)
Navigating the supply-side economics of scaling
Using marginal thinking to assess the viability of an enterprise at scale
Preventing the negative externalities that may emerge when an idea is implemented on a large scale
Using behavioral-economic incentives to spur widespread adoption of an idea or increase compliance with a policy or program
How we can apply the principles of scaling to drive change in our schools, communities, companies, and society at large

To order the book or download a preview, visit The Voltage Effect.

John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago.

His research focuses on combining field experiments with economic theory to deepen our understanding of the economic science. In the early 1990s, List pioneered field experiments as a methodology for testing behavioural theories and learning about behavioural principles that are shared across different domains. To obtain data for his field experiments, List has made use of several different markets, including charitable fundraising activities, the sports trading card industry, the ride-share industry, and the education sector, to highlight a few. This collective research has lead to collaborative work with several different schools and charities, as well as firms including: Lyft, Uber, United Airlines, Virgin Airlines, Humana, Sears, Kmart, Facebook, Google, General Motors, Tinder, Citadel, Walmart and several non-profits.

His research includes over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several published textbooks. He co-authored the international best seller, The Why Axis, in 2013, before releasing The Voltage Effect in February 2022.

List was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. List received the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award, the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists for his research in behavioural economics in the field, and was the 2012 Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize recipient. He is a current Editor of the Journal of Political Economy

The episode will be facilitated by Timothy Devinney, Professor and Chair of International Business at Alliance Manchester Business School.

This event is hosted by Yu-Wang Chen, Professor in Decision Sciences and Business Analytics at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Knowledge and Data-Driven Decision Making

Data-driven decision making is the practice of using data to support decision making, and it becomes more widely recognised with the development of decision science, data science and artificial intelligence. Real-world decision making problems are usually characterised by multiple criteria and associated with uncertainty. Data often come from different sources in different formats. In addition, decision makers’ domain knowledge also plays an important role in making informed decisions.

In this episode, Yu-wang will introduce his work in this research domain and a number of examples from his own research will be used to highlight how data and knowledge can be aggregated to support decision making in business and management.

Yu-wang Chen

Prior to joining AMBS, Yu-wang worked briefly as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University. He received the PhD degree in Control and System Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

His research focuses primarily on Decision Sciences and Data Analytics, including their applications in business analytics, supply chain risk analysis, healthcare decision support, etc. He has published more than 60 research articles in leading journals, such as European Journal of Operational Research, Computers & Operation Research, and more.

He has successfully coordinated and taught across a broad portfolio of course units at all different undergraduate and postgraduate levels at AMBS. He currently acts as the Programme Director (2015-2018 & 2020-present) for the MSc Business Analytics programme (2022 QS Ranking: 2nd in the UK & 10th in the world).

The episode is facilitated by Richard Allmendinger, Professor and Business Engagement Lead of Alliance Manchester Business School.

This event will be hosted by Kieron Flanagan, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at Alliance MBS.

What next for UK science and innovation policy?

The UK was an industrial and scientific pioneer. Yet for nearly as long, the country has fretted about falling behind industrial and technological competitors. For decades the UK’s not terribly impressive R&D/GDP ratio of around 1.7% has resisted all attempts to improve it.

For historical reasons, UK government R&D spending is unusually biased towards the ‘basic’ end of the spectrum by international standards, and the geographical distribution of that spending is highly concentrated on a small number of institutions in a few places – the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London.

Now the UK is once again aiming to transform its technological fortunes, with increases in public spending in the pipeline and a target of 2.4% of GDP to be spent on R&D by 2027. The hope is that this additional R&D effort will help ‘rebalance’ regional growth prospects and drive improvements in productivity.

This lecture will examine what progress has been made in this agenda, what its prospects are, and in doing so will draw out some broader questions about why we fund research and what we hope to gain from it.

This event will be facilitated by Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Alliance Manchester Business School.

This event will be hosted by Tony Venables CBE, Professor of Economics, Alliance Manchester Business School, and Research Director of The Productivity Institute.

Why some places are more prosperous

Why are regional disparities so persistent? Why do adjustment mechanisms fail, and what should policy do (and not do)? This lecture will review answers to these questions and offer insights based on a new measure of the structure of the UK’s local economies.

Tony Venables

Tony is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society. Former positions include Chief Economist at the UK Department for International Development, professor at Oxford University and at the London School of Economics, research manager of the trade research group in the World Bank, and advisor to the UK Treasury.

He has published extensively in the areas of international trade, spatial economics, and natural resources, including work on trade and imperfect competition, economic integration, multinational firms, and economic geography.

The event will be facilitated by Professor Bart van Ark, Professor of Productivity Studies & Director of the Productivity Institute at Alliance MBS.

This month we will hear from Chaido Doulala-Rigby (Yuli), chair of ICE North West - Institution of Civil Engineers.

Yuli is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE), a Fellow of the Permanent Way Institution, and a Fellow of the Institution of Royal Engineers. With over 25 years’ in Geotechnics, her work experience includes working as a Tunnelling Engineer for Balfour Beatty/AMEC JV at the Jubilee Line Extension Tunnelling project in London (1995), as a Geotechnical Engineer for Mouchel Asia Limited in Hong Kong (1996-2005) and as the Chief Civil Engineer for Tensar International, the inventor of polymeric soil reinforcing and soil stabilising geogrids (2005-present).

Yuli is the current (2021-2022) Chair of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) for the Northwest region of the UK, a past Chair (2016-2018) of the UK Committee of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS), an elected member of the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) Executive Committee (2020-2023) and has authored and delivered several publications about reinforced and stabilised soil around the world. She is a regular judge for the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Engineering Awards in the NW of the UK, the UK Ground Engineering Awards and she is the coordinator and a judge of the Baroness Platt of Writtle Awards on behalf of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, of which she is a Liveryman and a Court Assistant. She is a registered STEM Ambassador and was a Governor of Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College until it closed in 2021. She is the first female Engineer in the Northwest of the UK to obtain Fellowship of the ICE in September 2011 and the first non-military Engineer, to become a Fellow of the Institution of Royal Engineers (FInstRE) in May 2018.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

At this Vital Topics event we will be joined by Andy Haldane, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Arts, former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, and Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Andy will be exploring levelling up in this Vital Topics lecture.

Levelling up - where next?

Published in February 2022, the Levelling Up in the United Kingdom white paper sets out a plan of action to spread opportunity more equally across the UK.

In September 2021, RSA Chief Executive Andy Haldane was appointed by the Prime Minister to define and develop the flagship national levelling up strategy – a decade-long moral, social and economic cross-government, cross society programme to spread opportunity and prosperity to all parts of the UK.

In this event, Andy Haldane explores how the White Paper’s ambitious vision and 12 national levelling up missions can now be made a reality in towns and cities in every part of the UK, by 2030.

Andy Haldane

During his 30 years at the Bank of England, Andy has become a leading expert on monetary and financial stability as one of Britain’s most influential economists and served as a member on the Financial Policy Committee and Monetary Policy Committee. He was Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office from September 2021 to March 2022.

He stepped down from this role in 2021 to join the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) as Chief Executive.

In addition to his contribution to the Bank of England, Andy has led HM Government’s Industrial Strategy Council and in 2009 co-founded Pro Bono Economics, a charity dedicated to using economics to empower the social sector. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine in 2014 and among other positions, is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Social Sciences and Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

This event will be facilitated by Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Sponsored by DWF, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

In this episode, we will hear from Heather Waters, Enterprise Manager, Natwest. With over 20 years B2B experience, Heather is now part of the Women In Business team developing and delivering the strategy to support female entrepreneurs across the U.K.

In 2019, the Treasury commissioned Alison Rose, the CEO of NatWest, to lead an independent review of female entrepreneurship. Heather spoke to us last year following the publication of the second annual review, about how she would be working with key national and regional organisations that support female entrepreneurship to start and scale.

During this episode, she will give us an update on the findings from this year's Rose Review Progress Report.

This episode is hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

At this Vital Topics event we are joined by Marian Sudbury OBE, Director, Regions, Department for International Trade.

The event is facilitated by Mario Kafouros, Professor of International Business & Innovation and Head of the Division of People, Management and Organisations, Alliance Manchester Business School.

In her lecture Marian explores why governments including the UK government actively support exporting. She will discuss why governments partake in trade deals, and how the UK government is helping businesses to export through trade deals and through export support.

Marian Sudbury

A Cambridge graduate with an MBA from Manchester Business School, Marian’s background as a senior business leader means she brings commercial acumen to the role of Director UK Regions for the Department for International Trade.

Marian has worked on behalf of major blue chip companies, charities and government, defining organisational direction and designing and delivering short and long-term commercial strategy. She was made a Board Director in 2001 for planning and then setting up the international division within a Greater Manchester research firm.

Subsequently a Senior Vice President in a top 15 research firm she ran a business division conducting research and advice contracts for multinationals such as DuPont, Caterpillar, Mars and Oxfam. She then founded her own lifestyle business which worked for clients in locations ranging from Sakhalin to Birmingham Alabama. After three very successful years of trading she experienced, at a very personal level, the impact of the banking crisis.

Her career in advising clients on internationalisation began in Istanbul, where she provided research and advice to help Eveready, Mercedes and Avon Cosmetics understand how to operate in the Turkish market.

Since January 2013 she has been working for the Department for International Trade, initially leading Global Operations and the Northern Powerhouse and now as the Director for English Regions, a national role focussed on growing the UK economy by helping high potential businesses learn and grow through doing business overseas and high quality global businesses create wealth by investing in the UK.

Marian also sits on the Advisory Board at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Sponsored by DWF, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

Our Original Thinking Lecture series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event is hosted by Sheena Johnson, Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing, Alliance Manchester Business School.

In this episode, Sheena details her research into health and wellbeing at work. She outlines her early work into occupational differences and wellbeing related outcomes, before detailing her more recent focus on the ageing workforce which formed an impact case for REF2021 and led her to create the ‘Age, Health and Professional Drivers’ Network’. She will also talk about her ongoing work in the PROTECT COVID-19 National Core Study where she has investigated the impact of the pandemic on workers and workplaces.

Sheena is an Occupational and Chartered Psychologist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. She is an active researcher into the topics of stress and health and the ageing workforce. She established the ‘Age, Health and Professional Drivers’ Network, comprising transport and logistics firms, unions and industry representatives with an interest in age and health and wellbeing in the transport sector, which builds capacity in the sector to exchange knowledge and best practice.

The episode is facilitated by Elinor O'Connor, Professor of Occupational Psychology, Director of Teaching and Learning, and Deputy Head of Alliance Manchester Business School.

Our Original Thinking Podcast series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event is hosted by Antony Potter, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Alliance MBS.

The electric future: Unravelling how automakers collaborate with suppliers to co-develop electric, hybrid, & hydrogen fuel cell technologies

Over the past ten years automakers have invested heavily in the development of new electric, hybrid, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Although a large amount of attention has been given to the policy implications of this paradigm shift in the automotive industry, comparatively little research has studied how automakers work collaboratively with their suppliers to co-develop these eco-innovations.

Using patent data from the Toyota supply network together with econometric techniques and endogeneity analysis Antony will investigate how the automaker co-develops innovations with different suppliers. His findings unravel the unique way in which the automaker collaborates with external suppliers to develop buyer-supplier innovations, supplier-supplier innovations, supplier innovation triads, and inter-firm knowledge spillovers. Finally, he will discuss the managerial and policy implications of his findings considering the transition to net zero in the automotive industry.

Professor Antony Potter is the Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Alliance Manchester Business School (University of Manchester). His research interests focus on Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, and Innovation & NPD. In particular, his research investigates how different operations and SCM practices enable firms to co-develop innovations within global supply networks, especially for electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles. In addition, he undertakes interdisciplinary research into supply chain risk management, supplier disruptions, lean manufacturing (the Toyota Production System), and the evolution of clusters and supply networks.

His published articles have appeared in leading international journals including the Journal of Operations Management (a Financial Times top 50 journal), Research Policy (a Financial Times top 50 journal), Journal of Product Innovation Management (Grade 4 journal, ABS list), International Journal of Operations and Production Management (Grade 4 journal, ABS list), Journal of Economic Geography (Grade 4 journal, ABS list), International Journal of Production Economics (Grade 3 journal, ABS list), Regional Studies (Grade 3 journal, ABS list), Production Planning & Control (Grade 3, ABS List), Journal of Cleaner Production, and Trends in Food Science and Technology.

He has won a number of international awards for his research, such as the Emerald Literati Award for Excellence: Highly Commended Award (2020), Runner up for IJOPM’s 2019 Best Paper Award, the Chris Voss Highly Commended Award (EUROMA, 2013), Chris Voss Best Paper Award (EUROMA, 2012), and the Chan Hahn Best Paper Award Finalist (Academy of Management, 2012). In addition, he won the 2019 Runner Up Prize for the 'Teacher of the Year Award' and the 2022 ‘Researcher of the Year Award’ at Alliance Manchester Business School.

The event is facilitated by Joao Quariguasi Frota Net, Professor in Operations Management at Alliance MBS.

In this episode, we will hear from Ali Whitefoot, Senior Manager at Deloitte UK.

Ali leads organisations to get more value from finance. This can range from working with her clients to re-structure themselves to save costs all the way through to ensuring they are providing the business with insightful information to drive better decisions.

She has worked for Deloitte for 10 years and is passionate about developing talent within her organisation, thereby ensuring we can provide the best experience for our clients. This is through both traditional pathways and challenging the organisation to think differently about talent in parallel with making a social impact.

Outside work Ali is a relatively new mum of twin boys so is spending most of her trying to juggle family life, work and fitting in some fun for herself!

This episode is hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

Our Original Thinking Lecture series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event is hosted by Michael Hodson, Professor of Cities, Innovation and Society at the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI), at the Innovation, Management and Policy (IMP) division, Alliance Manchester Business School.

How are digital platforms being mobilised to re-imagine the future of cities, who is doing this, and why?

Innovation with urban infrastructure and its social organisation has become a key strategic concern for policymakers and other stakeholders at an urban scale. As a response to a range of pressing contemporary and future challenges facing urban contexts, infrastructural innovation is frequently mobilised in visions of the future of the city that are produced by public authorities, business organisations and NGOs. Yet, visions of infrastructural innovation are not benign, technocratic representations of the future of cities but are media through which the struggle for the future of the city, and the role of infrastructural innovation in this, is played out. This requires critical thinking about the strategic centrality of urban infrastructure to how the future of the city is being re-imagined but also focusing on the politics of possibility in shaping urban infrastructure and the future city.

In this event, Mike will construct an argument that provides the first step towards this end by addressing how digital platforms as a form of urban infrastructure are being mobilised in visions of the future of the city, the social interests shaping this, and what the implications of this are.

The event is facilitated by Andrew McMeekin, Professor of Innovation in the Sustainable Consumption Institute.

The University of Manchester celebrates women in business by hosting an inspirational event aimed at showcasing the potential of female entrepreneurship and encouraging students to embrace their creativity, spark connections and test out business ideas.

Hosted by the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre, this event features a range of insightful talks and workshops to help build your confidence, broaden your networks, and introduce you to new tools that will help you refine and launch a business idea.

Starting with our Keynote Speakers Alicia and Nat, founders of The Future Kind Collective, who help companies to grow faster and more sustainably by defining their purpose, designing their culture and growing their impact. You’ll hear their experiences, insights, and reflections on how they continually push the limits and drive change.

We then listen to a panel of entrepreneurs, who share their experiences of building confidence despite the fear of failure, whether that be as students, entrepreneurs or in our everyday lives. With experience ranging from the fashion industry to agri-tech solutions, to the creative and dance sector, learn how each of our panel members overcame barriers and set expectations in their respective fields.

Panellists include:

Dr Beenish Siddique - AEH Innovative Hydrogel

Tina Rehana - Aim Sky High Academy & The Purpose Agency

Danielle King - KIHT Collective

Who this event is for:

Students who want to build connections and understand more about the entrepreneurial experience.

Students who would like to learn more about personal branding, or how to turn their passion into a potential project/business.

Budding female entrepreneurs wanting to accelerate their ideas to the next level through powerful concepts and original thinking.

Our Original Thinking Podcast series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event is hosted by Wing Lam, Professor of Organisational Psychology at Alliance MBS.

Does Proactivity Matter at Work?

Proactivity continues to be a major research discussion in the field of organisational psychology, with increasing studies on proactive personality, goals, and behaviour appearing in top-tier journals since 2000. Scholars and practitioners agree that being proactive is distinctive and vital now more than it has ever been due to the dynamic nature of work environment. Is proactivity worth viewing as a superpower at work?

Professor Wing Lam will address her scholarly trajectory in this research domain and current thinking on proactivity, aiming to make connections with scholars and practitioners that might lead to future collaborations.

This event is facilitated by Hongwei He, Chair Professor of Marketing and School Director for Social Responsibility at Alliance Manchester Business School.

The Scale-Up Forum is a peer-to-peer network for ambitious scaling up businesses in Greater Manchester. It gives businesses at all stages of the scale up journey the opportunity to share experiences, challenges and lessons learnt for mutual business benefit. After two years of online-only events we are hosting the first Forum event of 2022 in-person and bigger than ever, all welcome.

At our annual review of 2021 in December the most popular theme proposed for an event theme in the 2022 series was workplace wellbeing, particularly how this relates to productivity. Professor Sir Cary Cooper is an internationally renowned author and speaker on the subject and we are delighted to have him deliver a keynote talk as we launch the 2022 Forum event series.

Cary is joined by Alexia Roberts, Head of People, Bruntwood, Zak Fenton, Founder of Bloom AI, and Maria Mander , Health & Wellbeing Specialist – Skills For Growth Programme , The Growth Company.

Speakers

Professor Sir Cary Cooper

Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at Alliance Manchester Business School, Cary is a world leading expert on workers’ health and well-being. He is President of the Chartered Institute of Personal Development in the UK and Co-founder of Robertson Cooper. He co-founded The National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work in 2015, which is focussed on improving workplace wellbeing in the UK and globally

Alexia Roberts

Bruntwood is a property company specialising in workspace, retail, and leisure destinations in both the commercial and life science/tech/digital sectors across the UK. With over fifteen years of experience, Alexia leads People Services that span across Strategy & Culture, Wellbeing & Engagement, People Operations, People Partnering, Talent Development & Talent Attraction.

Zak Fenton

Zak has an MSc in Workplace Health & Wellbeing from the University of Nottingham's School of Medicine and specialises in empowering organisations to make smart, data-driven, and evidence-based employee wellbeing and benefits decisions.

Maria Mander

Maria is a Health & Wellbeing Specialist at The Growth Company. She is a renowned expert and leader in employee wellbeing and provides specialist advice on the Skills For Growth Programme supporting SME’s across Greater Manchester to develop a healthy, thriving and productive workforce for business success. For the last 3 years, Maria operated her own company providing Wellbeing Consultancy providing strategic direction to SME’s and corporate companies (both private and public sectors) across the UK and globally.

Business Engagement & Knowledge Exchange (BEKE) at The University of Manchester

The BEKE team supporting business innovation by facilitating collaboration between academic researcher and non-academic partners, finding ways for our academic expertise to address business and societal challenges through co-produced research, consultancy, facilities sharing and knowledge exchange programmes.

The Scale Up Forum was launched in 2018 to provide a platform for businesses to share experiences and learn from each other and to gain insights from our experts across a range of academic disciplines.

Seed-Funding competition

We recognise that early stage work is often the most challenging when trying to establish effective partnerships for research and development, as such we’re launching a competition to kick-start projects that could address your business needs.

Find out more about the Scale-Up Forum here.

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and join us online for the networking event of the month! Speak to like-minded business women for an amazing online event. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Prepare your digital business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

This month we will hear from Dot McCarthy, farmer at Cronkshaw Fold Farm.

Dot runs Cronkshaw Fold, a traditional hill farm with a passion for environmentally friendly farming, animal welfare and teaching about the importance of sustainable agriculture. They use sustainable farming practices that promote a healthy environment, care for the countryside, increase local wildlife and preserve traditional rural skills such as dry stone walling, hedge laying, coppicing and companion planting. They are also working hard to raise money to invest in renewable power technologies so we can produce and store energy on site.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

At this event, we are joined by Dr Emma Fitzgerald and Dr Jenny Rodriguez. Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance MBS, will open the discussion.

Dr Emma Fitzgerald

Emma is a business leader with a passion for building great teams and bringing innovations to market to address the worlds big challenges.

Most recently she was CEO of Puma Energy focused on delivering affordable and sustainable energy solutions to emerging markets in Africa, Central America and Asia. Prior to this she ran gas, water and waste networks for National Grid and Severn Trent in the UK. She also spent many years running Downstream Retail, Lubricants and LPG businesses for Shell around the world. She has served on the boards of plc, privately owned and not for profit organizations in both an Executive and Non Executive Director capacity including Puma Energy, Severn Trent plc, Cookson Group plc, Alent plc, DCC plc & Windsor leadership Trust.

She is currently a Non-Executive director of UPM Kymmene, an innovative global paper & biomaterials business, Seplat Energy, an indigenous Nigerian Energy company which is dual listed on the London stock exchange and the Nigerian premium exchange, and Newmont Corporation, the recognised industry leader in the execution of principled environmental, societal and governance practices in gold mining. She is also an Expert Advisor for the World Economic Forum on acceleration of energy transition in developing markets and a Mentor on the climate workstream for the Creative Destruction Lab.

Emma holds a DPhil in Surface Chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford University and an MBA from Alliance Manchester Business School.

Facilitator: Dr Jenny Rodriguez

Jenny is Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the Human Resource Management, Employment Relations & Law Subject Area Group and member of the Work & Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School. Prior to joining Manchester, she worked at the Dept of HRM at the University of Strathclyde Business School and at Newcastle University Business School. Dr Rodriguez's research focuses on intersectional inequality in work and organisations, and the interplay between identity, work and regulation. She is particularly interested in the transnational experiences of skilled migrant women. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Academic Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Dr Rodriguez is the Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee at Alliance Manchester Business School. Between 2019 and 2021, she was Associate Head of Social Responsibility & Civic Engagement in the People, Management and Organizations (PMO) Division at Alliance Manchester Business School.

She is also involved in scholar activism as founding member of the Decolonizing Alliance, an international community committed to intellectual and practical collaboration, translation, active solidarity and resistance to tackle intersectional inequalities and neo-colonial power relations faced by people of colour in the Global South and the Global North.

At this event we will be joined by Emma Sheldon, Non-Executive Director and Business Consultant, Kellie Noon, founder of Onno, and Ian King, Business Presenter for Sky News.

Emma Sheldon

Over the past 20 years, Emma has built businesses internationally and led cross-functional teams in marketing, sales, operations and research and development. She participated in a management buy-out of a healthcare business in 2015.

Emma now works as a coach and consultant, with recent projects including the development of an international commercialisation strategy designed around Internationalising Healthcare. The main sectors in which she operates are healthcare tech, pharmaceuticals, med-tech, AI and digital. She is also a Group Board member of UK India Business Council, and sits on the board of the Growth Company and Future Everything. She has recently been appointed Chair of the charity Odd Arts.

Emma achieved her Global Executive MBA from Manchester Business School in 2016 and was awarded her MBE for Services to Exporting in 2018. Emma promotes international trade, digital transformation space technology and investment.

Emma has her own consulting and coaching business, focusing on growth, innovation and commercialisation. She is a qualified coach and mentor, working with the SpaceHub to mentor advanced technology businesses.

Jyoti Mehan

Jyoti is a highly experienced health care leader, with over 18 years of experience in transforming health care within the UK and combining this with international best practice she is regarded an expert in her field.

Currently the CEO of Health Care First, a General Practice at Scale serving over 32,00 patients across 7 sites, she is focusing on transforming and growing the business.

An ex-big four consultant with specialist skills in motivating teams to design, deliver and run complex, never-been-done-before programmes of work.

Jyoti has a strong track record of developing a pipeline and translating this into revenue streams across strategy consulting and private equity clients.

She has a passion for innovation combined with an entrepreneurial spirit and a never-say-no attitude.

Kellie Noon

Kellie Noon is the founder of Onno, a UK-based consultancy specialising in global communications and business. Kellie strongly believes in the importance of developing lasting connections through real understanding of local differences and genuine engagement.

A linguist and trainer who has worked with organisations across the globe, Kellie works on international business development which includes cross-cultural management and ‘International English’ training.

Kellie also works as an assessor for the Institute of Translation and Interpreting and regularly supports the charity RefuAid.

Ian King

Ian King has been Business Presenter for Sky News since April 2014, during which time he has interviewed two-thirds of the FTSE-100’s chief executives, along with countless other leading figures from the world of business, finance and economics. Prior to that, he was Business & City Editor of The Times and, during 25 years as an award-winning financial journalist on national newspapers and television, has also worked for The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday. Prior to becoming a financial journalist, Ian worked as a business analyst for the Midland Bank Group (now HSBC UK) in the City of London for three years.

Brought up in Bristol and in Devon, Ian has an honours degree in History from The University of Manchester and a postgraduate diploma in newspaper journalism from City, University of London. During his time at Manchester, he took a year out from his studies to serve as the elected Editor of Mancunion, the University of Manchester Students Union newspaper.

At this event we will be joined by Dr Emma Fitzgerald and Dr Jenny Rodriguez. Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance MBS, will open the discussion.

Dr Emma Fitzgerald

Emma is a business leader with a passion for building great teams and bringing innovations to market to address the worlds big challenges.

Most recently she was CEO of Puma Energy focused on delivering affordable and sustainable energy solutions to emerging markets in Africa, Central America and Asia. Prior to this she ran gas, water and waste networks for National Grid and Severn Trent in the UK. She also spent many years running Downstream Retail, Lubricants and LPG businesses for Shell around the world. She has served on the boards of plc, privately owned and not for profit organizations in both an Executive and Non Executive Director capacity including Puma Energy, Severn Trent plc, Cookson Group plc, Alent plc, DCC plc & Windsor leadership Trust.

She is currently a Non-Executive director of UPM Kymmene, an innovative global paper & biomaterials business, Seplat Energy, an indigenous Nigerian Energy company which is dual listed on the London stock exchange and the Nigerian premium exchange, and Newmont Corporation, the recognised industry leader in the execution of principled environmental, societal and governance practices in gold mining. She is also an Expert Advisor for the World Economic Forum on acceleration of energy transition in developing markets and a Mentor on the climate workstream for the Creative Destruction Lab.

Emma holds a DPhil in Surface Chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford University and an MBA from Alliance Manchester Business School.

Facilitator: Dr Jenny Rodriguez

Jenny is Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the Human Resource Management, Employment Relations & Law Subject Area Group and member of the Work & Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School. Prior to joining Manchester, she worked at the Dept of HRM at the University of Strathclyde Business School and at Newcastle University Business School. Dr Rodriguez's research focuses on intersectional inequality in work and organisations, and the interplay between identity, work and regulation. She is particularly interested in the transnational experiences of skilled migrant women. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Academic Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Dr Rodriguez is the Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee at Alliance Manchester Business School. Between 2019 and 2021, she was Associate Head of Social Responsibility & Civic Engagement in the People, Management and Organizations (PMO) Division at Alliance Manchester Business School.

She is also involved in scholar activism as founding member of the Decolonizing Alliance, an international community committed to intellectual and practical collaboration, translation, active solidarity and resistance to tackle intersectional inequalities and neo-colonial power relations faced by people of colour in the Global South and the Global North.

The gender pay gap in the UK and elsewhere in Europe has remained stubbornly high. The EU is proposing a pay transparency directive to provide new impetus to ensuring equal pay for work of equal value. The UK introduced gender pay gap reporting measures in response to earlier EU recommendations to increase pay transparency; if the UK was still an EU member this proposal for wider pay transparency would be a hot issue in HR. Pay transparency measures are also being adopted outside the EU, for example in some US states, Iceland and Australia.

On International Women’s Day this session provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of UK gender pay reporting measures, the impact if the EU’s proposed new measures were adopted in the UK, and what else should be done to close the gender pay gap.

At this event, we will be joined by Professor Jill Rubery, Executive Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance MBS, Caitlin Schmid, PhD candidate, University of Manchester and Claire-Marie Boggiano, Director & Coach at Lurig Change & Development and an Alliance MBS MBA alumna.

Jill Rubery

Jill has worked at Manchester since 1989, first at the Manchester School of Management at UMIST and since 2004 in Alliance MBS. She previously worked at the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge University. She is the Executive Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance MBS. She was previously Deputy Director of Alliance MBS (2007-2013) and head of the People, Management and Organisation Division (2004- 2009). In 2006 she was elected a fellow of the British Academy and an emeritus fellow of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.

Caitlin Schmid

Currently in her final year as a PhD candidate, Caitlin is part of the Gender, Work and Care research network and affiliated with the Work and Equalities Institute. She is researching the construction and policy uses of gender equality indices with a particular interest in measurements of unpaid work. She is also a Research Associate at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London, where she previously collaborated on two research projects – one piloting a UK sub-national gender equality index and the other, funded by the UN Foundation, comparatively assessing the gender pay gap reporting regimes of six countries.

Facilitator: Claire-Marie Boggiano

Claire-Marie is a business change and development professional. She is a Chartered Engineer and Lecturer in Leadership at the University of Salford Business School. In 2002, Claire-Marie enrolled in an MBA at Alliance MBS and set up her own independent consultancy business, Lurig Ltd – specialising in the Change Management and People Development. She is an Ambassador for Women on Boards and sits on the steering committee of Queen Bee Coaching, which is a Pankhurst Trust service providing free coaching to women in leadership in Greater Manchester. She also hosts the successful monthly Women Leading in Business events series at Alliance MBS.

At this event we will be joined by Sola David-Borha, Chairman Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc, Jennifer Rose, Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Alliance MBS, and Damaris Albarran, Chair of the Advisory Board, AMBS.

Sola David-Borha

Sola is the Chairman Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc. She is also a Non-Executive Director of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited and Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited. She is an Independent Non-Executive Director of Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company.

Sola was the Chief Executive for Africa Regions in Standard Bank Group responsible for the Group’s 19 markets in Africa outside South Africa (2017 -2021). She is an Honorary Senior Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria and was the winner of the CNBC African Woman of the Year Award 2016.

Jennifer Rose

Jenni Rose qualified as an Accountant with the ICAEW when working in Audit with KPMG in 2008. From this she went on to teach in the KPMG Learning and Development team and then on to professional accountancy teaching before joining the University of Manchester in 2015.

She is now a Senior Lecturer and passionate advocate of empowering independent connected learners. The main focus of her teaching is in auditing, financial reporting and financial statement analysis, as well as on the MBA at the University. She won the teaching excellence award University of Manchester Teacher of the Year in 2020 for her work as BSc Accounting Programme director and in sharing best practice in teaching excellence debriefs.

Facilitator: Damaris Alberran

Damaris retired from a 30-year career in global corporate banking in 2016. While working for two leading US banks, the Bank of Boston (now part of Bank of America) and the Bank of New York Mellon, she acquired a broad knowledge and experience of the financial markets, an understanding of corporate finance for companies at all stages of their growth and development and skills in Relationship Management, which she now enjoys sharing on some of the Business School's Executive Education programmes.

Since retiring, she has focused on working with charities as a volunteer, trustee and Honorary Treasurer. Damaris graduated from the full-time MBA programme at Alliance MBS in 1984 and became Chair of the School's Advisory Board in October 2018.

Businesses are central in enabling global transitions to Net-Zero carbon energy and land-use systems. Business firms will need to innovate and scale new technologies, goods and services, business models and markets that make this new, more sustainable world become a reality. In the process, business incentives, accountabilities, and legitimacy will also be transformed. Institutions matter and they evolve.

To meet the Net-Zero challenge, business organisations themselves are needing to change. In this lecture, Frans will review how the scope of business accountability has changed, what this means for notions of performance, how this influences practices of reporting and transparency, and how this feeds through to access to key resources, including capital and talent. Using some examples, Frans will conclude with some suggestions about how these linked business trends related to scope, performance, transparency and resources may unfold in future.

This annual Grigor McClelland lecture will be given by Professor Frans Berkhout, Professor of Environment, Society and Climate at King’s College London.

Frans’ presentation will be followed by a panel discussion. Joining Frans will be Professor Frank Geels, Professor Carly McLachlan, Director of Tyndall Manchester and Nkem Marian Igwe, Full-Time MBA Candidate. The discussion will be facilitated by Professor Andy McMeekin, Professor of Innovation at the Sustainable Consumption Institute.

This lecture series was introduced in our 50th Anniversary year in 2015 in honour of the School’s founding Director, Professor Grigor McClelland. During his twelve years as Director and Professor of Business Administration at Manchester Business School, Grigor shaped management and education for the next generation. He was a strong advocate of the principle that business cannot be divorced from society and that managers should be ethical and socially responsible.

Our previous guest speakers for this lecture series, include Co-op Group’s CEO Steve Murrells; Sir George Bain, former Chair of the Low Pay Commission which introduced the Minimum Wage in 1998; Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth; Torsten Bell, Director of the Resolution Foundation, Anna Dixon, Chief Executive of Ageing Better, Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times and Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. All have based the core themes of their lectures on this principle.

This month we hear from Delight Mapasure, CEO and Co-Founder at K'S WORS LTD.

Delight Mapasure is an award-winning entrepreneur who successfully created a six-figure food brand from her kitchen table to retail shelves The former Dragon’s Den participant co-founded K’s Wors Ltd - a multi-award winning eclectic range of South African Boerewors sausages.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

To avert the catastrophic impact of climate change and meet the targets of the Paris Agreement targets, we need to reduce carbon emissions by 50% this decade, a further 50% the next decade, and be net zero by 2050. However, achieving these targets will be no mean feat. Locking the world down in 2020 achieved only a reduction of about 5-7%. So how can we achieve a radical reduction in carbon emissions without destroying global economies?

And how will leaders respond to this challenge, given that decisions made this decade will determine how society and the planet we occupy will shape up for probably 1000s of years to come. We are the first generation to have the indisputable facts at our fingertips that our climate is changing, and the last generation that can do something about it.

The leadership responsibility is immense but are companies furnished with the right leadership skills? Companies have the choice now whether they will be on the right or the wrong side of the climate crisis. Which side they choose to be on will determine their future prosperity and will be existential for many.

The times where companies could address sustainability by promoting good news stories and implementing ‘less bad’ incremental strategies are over. They now need to drive sustainability into the heart of their organisations and recognise that it will be a key determinant of future value creation and risk and resilience strategies.

In this podcast, Stuart McLachlan will argue how sustainable performance drives value through the intersect of economic, environmental, and social dimensions and sees superior financial performance on the other side of meaningful purpose. Strategic connections between systems shifts, drivers of change, and geographic materiality with a deep understanding of how clients create value will become the ingredients of sustainable performance. Companies with strong commercial power, but poor sustainability, will be exposed to unacceptable risk. The most sustainable companies will discover sources of strategic advantage in their sustainable practices.

After setting out his vision of sustainability, Stuart will have a discussion with Professor Jonatan Pinkse about what it means for a business to become a leader in sustainable performance. Sarah George, senior reporter at sustainability trade title edie, will facilitate the discussion.

Sponsored by DWF, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

In this episode, Felicity talks about the evolution of behavioural insights from a phrase coined by a small government team in 2010 to a policy approach that touches the lives of millions of people around the world. She also discusses her current areas of focus and where behavioural insights might be used in the next 10 years.

This event was facilitated by Liz Richardson, Professor of Public Administration at the University of Manchester.

This month we hear from Amna Abdullatif, councillor for Ardwick, Central Manchester.

Amna is a community psychologist who has worked in the voluntary sector for over 15 years, previously leading the work on children and young people for the national domestic abuse charity Women's Aid and currently as assistant director for youth empowerment at the Anne Frank Trust.

She completed her masters in community psychology and has her thesis 'The voices of women in the Arab Spring' published in the Journal of Social Science Education. She has presented her studies and work internationally including in Palestine, Lebanon, Estonia & New Zealand. She has also had a chapter published in The Anthology of Silence which explores cultures of silence around abuse.

She was elected as a local Councillor representing the ward of Ardwick in Central Manchester in 2019 as the first visibly Muslim and Arab heritage woman to be elected in Manchester.

In the summer of 2021, alongside two friends she launched a viral campaign to ban racists from football which was signed by over 1.2 million people and made national and international press as The Three Hijabis. She is currently working to set this up as an organisation that tackles racism and provides the tools to challenge it in our work places and communities.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

Dr Mark Britnell, Vice Chair and Global Health Expert, KPMG UK, and award-winning author, delivers this year’s Teddy Chester lecture,Human: Solving the global workforce crisis in healthcare.

By 2030, the world will be short of 18 million health workers – a fifth of the total capacity to care. Mark draws on his work in 80 countries to offer solutions to this growing crisis and presents unique insights on what works, and what doesn’t.

Reframing the global workforce problem to one of health and national wealth, Mark invites us to refashion this wicked problem in new, adaptive ways in order to enhance productivity and prosperity. Harnessing technology, he asks us to reimagine new models of care and levels of workforce agility whilst always remembering that the kind heart of a human is the essence of care.

For 11 years, Mark was Global Head of Healthcare at KPMG International and Global Chair of Infrastructure, Government and Healthcare for 3 years. He is one of the foremost global experts on healthcare systems and has a pioneering and inspiring global vision for health in both the developed and developing world. Mark has dedicated his entire professional life to healthcare and has led organisations at local, regional, national and global levels –provider and payer, public and private. Over the past 11 years, he has worked in over 80 countries on circa. 345 occasions, gaining a unique first-hand experience.

This annual lecture marks the contribution of Teddy Chester, who was the first professor of social administration at the University of Manchester. From his appointment in the early 1950s, to his retirement in the 1970s he was an influential pioneer in management development, using evidence and research with policy makers, and working with clinical leaders. He was involved in founding and leading the NHS Graduate Training Scheme, and in founding Manchester Business School.

Mark will be joined by Charlotte Refsum, Global Healthcare Executive at KPMG, and the event will be facilitated by Naomi Chambers, Professor of Health Management at Alliance Manchester Business School.

This month we will hear from Jennie Johnson MBE, CEO and co-founder, My First Five Years Limited.

Authentically passionate about improved outcomes for every child, Jennie’s most recent eureka moment in January 2021 led her to founding My First Five Years Ltd, a ground-breaking App to support and empower parents and provide expert knowledge to guide their child(ren) through the unique journey of their first five years.

Formerly Founder and CEO of the multi-award winning Kids Allowed, Jennie is renowned for being down to earth and incredibly honest about the highs and lows of juggling motherhood and running award winning businesses. Awarded an MBE for services to Apprenticeships in 2016, she was the first female to be awarded CEO of the Year in 2017 and Businesswoman of the Year in 2019.

More details about My First Five Years can be found at https://www.mffy.com/

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

This event will be hosted by Anthony Rafferty, Professor of Employment Studies and Managing Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance MBS.

The people management case for workplace equality, diversity and inclusion is often made in terms of ethical or social responsibility reasons, or the benefits to the bottom line of a ‘business case.’ In this Original Thinking lecture, Anthony will examine evidence for an argument traversing both perspectives: That workplace discrimination leads to an under-utilisation of skill and human potential that can be harmful to the individual, society but also business performance and productivity.

Evidence will be presented from across 30 European countries showing that people who report workplace discrimination across a range of protected characteristics (sex, age, ethnicity, religion, disability or sexual orientation) are more likely to report having skills that they do not fully utilise in their job. For some, discrimination also appears to be linked to under-skilling or inadequate training. Potential explanations will also be discussed, with specific attention given to how discrimination may affect the quality of line manager relationships. Anthony will also consider implications for leadership and broader people management practice.

This event will be facilitated by Professor Jill Rubery, Executive Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School

This month we will hear from Kathleen Harrison, Associate Director, Jacobs. With over 20 years’ experience in the construction industry, Kathleen is an Associate Director with Jacobs working as a Framework Manager delivering projects for a local authority in North West England. Having worked in a male dominated environment for her entire career, she is passionate about promoting gender equality, inclusion and STEM, and over the last 5 years she has become an advocate for positive mental health in the workplace.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

This episode will be hosted by Julia Handl, Professor in Decision Sciences at Alliance MBS. Her expertise lies in the areas of optimisation, data-mining and machine learning and she has a keen interest in the development and use of these techniques in challenging application areas.

We all face and make decisions on an ongoing basis, whether at work or in our private lives. The vast majority of these decisions involve trade-offs between multiple criteria, be it healthiness versus taste in our choice of breakfast cereal, cost versus energy efficiency in our choice of a new household utility, or risk versus expected return in our selection of a financial portfolio. Typically, there is considerable conflict between these criteria and, in the presence of such conflict, a single optimal solution may not exist. Taking a sound decision will then require the exploration of a set of alternative trade-offs, and the incorporation of additional preference information.

The same types of trade-offs exist in machine learning applications, where our models frequently have to strike a compromise between a variety of conflicting criteria. In this presentation, Julia will discuss the various origins of these criteria in a machine learning context. Using a number of examples from her own research, she will then highlight how multicriterion optimisation can support us in exploring a range of alternative trade-off solutions for machine learning problems, supporting the analyst in identifying their preferred model.

The response and recovery to COVID-19 has been a whole-of-society effort where every community has played a crucial role. To maintain this outpouring of goodwill, local government and voluntary organisations have been discussing how to renew their efforts on community resilience to ensure that a positive legacy of the pandemic is a more cohesive, risk-aware, and prepared society that can work with local government to enhance its own local resilience.

In the UK, this ambition was galvanised by the government’s recent Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy which outlined ambitions on ‘whole-of-society resilience’ and which encouraged an integrated approach to building national resilience.

In response, a National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+], abbreviated to NCSR+, has now been initiated by Professor Duncan Shaw from Alliance Manchester Business School and Ben Axelsen from the Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum to pursue the ambition of whole-of-society resilience outlined in the Integrated Review. Membership of the consortium includes almost all local authorities in the UK along with key resilience partners.

To mark its official launch - which was held on the same day as the UN’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction - this special panel debate discusses the reasons behind the launch and hear from members on why it is such an important initiative and what they hope to achieve.

Panellists:

Professor Duncan Shaw, Alliance Manchester Business School

Ben Axelsen, Co-Chair of NCSR+, Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum, England

Joan McCaffrey, Local Government Civil Contingencies, Northern Ireland

Kevin Murphy, The Office of the Committee for Home Affairs, States of Guernsey

Ellie Greenwood, Senior Adviser, Local Government Association

Clare Rudall, Business in The Community Wales

Marie Hayes, British Red Cross, Scotland Director

The UK has a profound problem of regional disparities in productivity performance, with second tier cities that underperform compared to expectations based on their size, and deindustrialised towns and urban areas that have failed to find productive new economic roles. The distribution of research and development investment in the UK – especially in the public sector – is also highly skewed to the prosperous Greater South East.

At this Vital Topics event, Richard A.L. Jones, Vice-President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement, University of Manchester, will discuss the evidence - and the uncertainties – relating to the link between R&D and productivity at a subnational level, and outline the institutional landscape that has led to the UK’s current, highly unbalanced, regional distribution of R&D. He will consider some of the uses and pitfalls of using innovation policy as an instrument of regional economic development.

He will go on to reflect on recent policy development in the UK, as the current Government’s “levelling up” slogan is turned into concrete policy. We have seen the idea of “place” become a new theme in the Innovation Strategy, and a transition from an “Industrial Strategy” driven by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to a HM Treasury driven “Plan for Growth”. We now await the imminent arrival of a Levelling Up White Paper, driven by a joint No 10/ Cabinet Office unit.

Finally, Richard will consider how best devolved nations, regions and cities in the UK should respond to this agenda, and discuss the role of GM’s new initiative, Innovation Greater Manchester.

This event will be facilitated by Elvira Uyarra, Professor of Innovation Studies at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Sponsored by DWF and Capita, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

Vital Topics is sponsored by DWF and Capita.

This episode is hosted by Bart van Ark, Professor of Productivity Studies & Director of the Productivity Institute at Alliance MBS, a UK-wide organisation which aims to lay the foundations for an era of sustained and inclusive productivity growth by bringing together academic research, policy studies and business engagement.

After several decades of work on productivity issues, Bart will take the audience of this lecture on a tour through “global productivity land”. He will assess what he has learned about the drivers of and barriers to productivity, and what he thinks we still need to discover.

He will place today’s productivity puzzles in the western world in a long-term and international comparative perspective, presenting evidence and narratives for the three countries he has worked in particular - the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Beyond that the productivity experiences of the European Union and Asia will feature in the background.

He addresses the role of technology, innovation, skills, policy and institutions, but also looks at the key challenges for the productivity agenda of the future, namely climate change and the distributional effects of productivity.

This event is facilitated by Professor Ken McPhail, Deputy Head and Director of Research at Alliance Manchester Business School.

This episode will be hosted by Emma Banister, Professor of Consumption and Society at Alliance MBS.

It is well-established that products and brands serve as social tools, providing means of communication between individuals and their social worlds. However, one of Emma’s key research interests lies in what consumers resist, what they shy away from, and how these more negative or rejected aspects of consumption inform identity projects

Emma will draw on a number of her studies related to identity and (dis)tastes. In particular she will focus on a recent paper that explored ‘identity refusal’ in relation to young people who do not drink alcohol, yet refuse to be marked out by their non-participation in what is often an important cultural practice.

This episode is facilitated by Dr Judy Zolkiewski, Professor of Marketing at Alliance MBS.

To celebrate the launch of Organising care around patients Manchester University Press and Alliance Manchester Business School are hosting a live panel discussion, asking how care can be better organised around the needs of patients.

Joining authors Naomi Chambers, Professor of Healthcare Management at AMBS, and Jeremy Taylor, Director for Public Voice at the National Institute for Health Research, the discussion will be chaired by Alastair McLellan, Editor of the Health Service Journal, with Professor Kath Checkland and Dr Habib Naqvi as panellists.

Organising care around patients is not for the fainthearted. Naomi Chambers and Jeremy Taylors have curated twenty-five accounts from people who agreed to tell the story of what happened when they or their loved ones came into contact with the NHS. The authors defy you not to laugh or cry, or hold your breath in disbelief, at some point when reading this book.

In these true and compelling accounts, we learn the experiences - good and bad - of people grappling with birth and death, caring for loved ones, living with mental illness, coping with long-term conditions, and struggling in older age. This book is a call to action aimed at healthcare professionals, managers and politicians: a manifesto for more patient-centred care.

These stories show the NHS at its very best - and also when it falls significantly short. Patients or carers currently battling with the system will derive some hope and encouragement, and clues about what to expect, what to ask for, and from whom.

This podcast will be hosted by Dr Simon Hayward, Honorary Professor of Leadership at Alliance MBS, CEO of Cirrus, and Managing Director and global lead on leadership and culture at Accenture.

Drawing on his extensive experience consulting with leading UK and international organisations, Simon will describe his and others’ research into the leadership attributes needed in this post-pandemic world, in line with the dramatic changes the pandemic has brought in terms of the changing skills required, hybrid working and the rapid digitisation of organisations of all types. He will address the business requirements for greater agility, innovation and purpose-led cultures, and the implications for leaders internationally and future priorities for executive education.

This event will be facilitated by David Holman, professor of organisational psychology at Alliance MBS.

As the economy shows promising signs of recovery, Tony Danker, the CBI’s Director General, will set out why the choices we make now will define the decade to come, in this latest Vital Topics event from Alliance Manchester Business School.

Building on the CBI’s ‘Seize the Moment’ economic strategy for the UK, he will argue that the economic rebound could well be temporary; that private sector investment is locked up, not let out; and that Britain risks losing out to international competitors if we don’t fix this now. If business and government work together and make the right choices, this can be a truly breakthrough decade for the UK and its people.

Tony joined the CBI as Director-General in November 2020. His career spans a range of roles in business, media and government. Before the CBI, Tony was the first CEO of Be the Business, a business-led movement created to transform UK’s productivity founded by a group of FTSE-100 Chairmen and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. From 2010-2017 Tony was International Director, then Chief Strategy Officer, at Guardian News & Media.

For two years before that, he was a Policy Advisor HM Government (2008-10), joining the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury. Tony’s early career was at McKinsey & Company (1998-2008) in London and Washington DC where he worked for 10 years.

This event will be facilitated by Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, FRS, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester.

Sponsored by DWF and Capita, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

In the unique and challenging world of a global pandemic, the resilience of local services and businesses has been critical to maintaining successful operations for response organisations, providers of essential local services, and critical infrastructure.

In this, the third in a three-part series of podcasts co-produced with the British Standards Institution (BSI), we examine the human aspects of the pandemic and identify organisational learning for psychological health and wellbeing of staff. From developing safe working practices and managing psychosocial risks - to access and inclusivity, we will look at a range of emerging lessons and standards that contribute to the longer-term goal of strengthening our resilience to future shocks.

Host/Facilitator:

David Powell – Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester

Speakers;

Dave Adamson – Lead Standards Development Manager, British Standards Institution

Professor Duncan Shaw – Alliance Manchester Business School, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester

Roisin Jordan - Project Co-ordinator in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, University of Manchester

Sally Swingewood – Committee Manager, ISO/TC 283 Occupational health & safety management, British Standards Institution

Jean Hewitt – Buro Happold & Senior Lecturer at University College London

In partnership with the British Standards Institution.

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

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This month we will be joined by Helen Pankhurst, a women’s rights activist, an international development practitioner working mainly in Ethiopia for CARE International, a Professor at MMU and the Chancellor of the University of Suffolk.

Helen is the convenor of the Centenary Action Group and of GM4Women 2028 and is the granddaughter of Sylvia, great granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, leaders of the British suffragette movement. To reflect on the progress since the struggle for the vote, in 2018 she wrote Deeds Not Words, the Story of Women’s Rights, then and Now.

In the unique and challenging world of a global pandemic, the continuity of local services and businesses has been critical to maintaining successful operations for response organisations, providers of essential local services, and critical infrastructure.

In this, the second in a three-part series of podcasts co-produced with the British Standards Institute (BSI), we examine the contribution of standards to resilience planning, business continuity, and city resilience in terms of how we can recover and renew in the aftermath of Covid-19. Our speakers will share views on the key opportunities for enhancing continuity and resilience of organisations, cities, and wider systems.

Panel:

Introductions and welcome from Professor Duncan Shaw (University of Manchester) and Dave Adamson (British Standards Institute)

Dave Adamson – Lead Standards Development Manager, British Standards Institute (“Standards for resilience and continuity”)

Professor Caroline Field – Associate Director Arup, Energy Sector Lead, Resilience Shift. Chair BSI City Resilience Standard Committee and ISO Urban Resilience Committee (“Resilience of Urban Systems”)

Russell Price – Chair of Continuity Forum and Cyber Risk & Insurance Forum (“The important relationship between risk and resilience in evolving real-world capabilities”

Rob McFarlane – Deputy Director, UK Civil Contingencies Secretariat (“What place does assurance have in improving Integrated Emergency Management?”)

Hosted by David Powell - Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester

In partnership with the British Standards Institution

Sponsored by: EPC

Recent corporate scandals and the response of some corporations to the pandemic have brought attention back to the role of auditing in restoring trust to business. The government has submitted proposals aiming at strengthening corporate governance for major UK companies and reforming the way they are audited.

The expressed key objectives of the proposed reforms are to restore public trust to business, ensure responsible corporate governance, empower stakeholders and keep the UK legal framework at the forefront of international best practice.

This podcast brings together two academic experts in the areas of auditing and corporate governance from Alliance Manchester Business School and a Manchester-based partner and London-based director from auditing and consulting firm PwC. They will present their views on the proposals, the current state and future of the auditing process and profession as well as the implications to the UK corporate governance framework from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations.

Panel:

Daniel Brydon, Partner, Assurance in Financial Services, PwC

Christopher Humphrey, Professor of Accounting, AMBS

Jayne Kerr, Director, Audit Strategy & Public Policy, PwC

Brendan O’Dwyer, Professor of Accounting, AMBS

Host: Konstantinos Stathopoulos, Professor of Accounting & Finance, AMBS

In partnership with PWC.

Covid-19’s duration, and the intensity of measures taken in responding to it, have brought major disruptions with lasting consequences.

Health precautions have redefined our relationship to mortality and death, not least by disrupting the rituals that enable societies to overcome major trauma. Those not directly affected by mourning are often affected by isolation, by difficult or unbearable living conditions, the breakdown of relationships, and the disappearance of faces – those indispensable human landmarks that are now hidden behind masks. The extent of the resulting psychological, social and economic damage is still gradually emerging.

Societies invent ways of remembering the dramatic moments they have experienced in order to re-establish forms of coexistence and acknowledge places forever altered by tragedy. Commemorating the current crisis also requires finding appropriate ways to recognise the true value of roles and service that have proved to be essential to communal life, yet receive so little recognition.

In this podcast, we will consider how we will collectively remember the Covid-19 pandemic. Our speakers will review lessons from history about building resilience through coproduced commemoration. They will also discuss key considerations for policymakers and communities in planning to recognise the enormous losses caused by Covid-19, but also the collective effort to sustain responses to the crisis and support communities most affected by it.

Panel:

Professor Ana Carden-Coyne – University of Manchester

Professor Norio Maki – University of Kyoto

Associate Professor Ronald Schumann - University of North Texas

Assistant Professor Elyse Zavar - University of North Texas

Host David Powell - Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester

Knowledge-intensive startups are well known to be a source of novel technological innovations and economic growth. Yet, such startups face significant challenges when trying to grow and become large global technological leaders and many of them fail.

In this talk, Niron Hashai, visiting Professor of International Business at Alliance MBS, goes over 20 years of his own work on the topic and addresses the question of how knowledge-intensive start-ups can successfully grow to become industry leaders.

He will explore the challenges knowledge-intensive firms face in terms of international expansion, new product introduction, and alliance formation at the wake of fierce competition from large foreign multinationals.

The podcast will be facilitated by Mario Kafouros, Professor of International Business and Innovation and Head of the CIB group at Alliance MBS.

Today’s podcast was recorded at a special Women Leading in Business webinar in partnership with WIN Manchester.

Opened by Alliance MBS’s Head of School, Fiona Devine, and hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, we hear from three keynote speakers - Kristin Engvig, CEO & Founder of WIN & the WIN Conference, Lucy Danger, CEO of EMERGE and Nazir Afzal OBE, International Adviser on Rule of Law & Former Chief Prosecutor – who give their take on the conference’s theme this year ‘Leading with courage’.

In this annual Grigor McClelland podcast, we will explore how current business practices are encouraging short-termism, ignoring nature and harming customers.

The sense that capitalism needs to change, post-pandemic, reflects widespread concerns about the way business operates. In particular, many sectors of the economy are increasingly dominated by big companies, and this has been accompanied by the productivity slowdown, an absence of pay increases - except for executives - and a sense that innovation has stopped benefiting consumers. There are calls for businesses to rediscover their sense of corporate purpose and sign up to ESG reporting. But while businesses should of course behave ethically, a reset of the social contract requires governments to play an important part. Shaping the kind of market society we want after the pandemic involves political choices, not just technical measurement frameworks.

The podcast will be given by Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge. Diane was a Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester from 2014 – 18. She played a pivotal role in bringing the Productivity Institute to AMBS and now sits on its leadership team.

This series was introduced in our 50th Anniversary year in 2015 in honour of the School’s founding Director, Professor Grigor McClelland. During his twelve years as Director and Professor of Business Administration at Manchester Business School, Grigor shaped management and education for the next generation. He was a strong advocate of the principle that business cannot be divorced from society and that managers should be ethical and socially responsible.

Our previous guest speakers for this series include Co-op Group’s CEO Steve Murrells; Sir George Bain, former Chair of the Low Pay Commission which introduced the Minimum Wage in 1998; Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth; Torsten Bell, Director of the Resolution Foundation, Anna Dixon, Chief Executive of Ageing Better and Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times. All have based the core themes of their lectures on this principle.

Facilitating the event, Bruce Tether, Professor of Innovation Management, Alliance MBS.

In the unique and challenging world of a global pandemic, the continuity of services and organisational resilience has been critical to maintaining successful operations for both response organisations, providers of essential local services and critical infrastructure (including travel).

In this, the first in a three-part series of podcasts co-produced with the British Standards Institute (BSI), we examine the inter-dependencies between business continuity and resilience planning, and look at how we will move beyond the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our speakers will share their views on the key opportunities for enhancing continuity and resilience and the perspectives of local government, organisational resilience development, small business networks and travel risk management sectors.

Panel:

Nicola Dawson - Public sector resilience for responding organisations, Somerset County Council

Rick Cudworth – Organisational resilience, Deloitte

Hannah Tankard – Resilience of small business networks, Business in the Community

Kevin Myers – Managing Travel Risks , International Standards Organisation

Hosted by David Powell - Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester

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This month we will be joined by Codilia Gapare, an entrepreneurial breast cancer survivor who has revolutionised the beauty industry by creating the first ever false lashes range for chemotherapy patients.

The mother-of-two had always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and started studying when she came to the UK from Zimbabwe. Hours before her interview for University, Codilia was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 36, and it was through this intensely difficult time in her life that she realised that there were no fake eyelash options for cancer patients.

Codilia transformed her idea into an actual product, ‘C-Lash’, and partnered with beauty brand Eylure. The company has since launched the range in the UK, USA, Australia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Poland, making the cosmetic industry more accessible for women with cancer. C-Lash won several awards including National Diversity Award - Entrepreneur of Excellence 2019 and Allure USA - Breakthrough Award 2020.

Sponsored by DWF and Capita, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

The next Vital Topics event takes an in-depth look at how industry and academia are working increasingly closely to tackle the huge challenges – technical, economic, and social - around cyber security.

Such challenges are rapidly evolving for businesses across all sectors, not least because of the rapid acceleration of online services across a vast swathe of sectors in the wake of the pandemic. During our debate we will bring together leading figures from industry, government and academia to discuss these issues, and also look at the relationship between cyber security and productivity.

Panel:

Alban Tramard, Chief Information Security Officer, The Hut Group

Victoria Knight, Greater Manchester Cyber Advisory Group

Dr Elvira Uyarra, Reader in Innovation Policy and Strategy, Alliance Manchester Business School

Professor Adam Joinson, Director of the UKRI Digital Security by Design Social Science Hub

Chair: Emma Barrett, Professor of Psychology, Security & Trust, University of Manchester

In the latest of our series of podcasts (in partnership with The International Emergency Managers Society – TIEMS, and Capacity Building International - CBI) our speakers will explore more of the key lessons and themes that have emerged from the Covid-19 crisis, concentrating on the perspectives of strengthening resilience planning and the implications for the emergency management profession going forward.

We will examine how Covid-19 has required different ways of resilience partnership working in the UK, placing new demands on emergency managers; the dynamics of national direction of responses to a health-led emergency, and some of the early challenges of planning for recovery and renewal at the local level.

In introducing a subject that we will explore in further detail with TIEMS, later in this series, we also ask the question of how prepared for Covid-19 the Emergency Management profession feels it was, the challenges that may have arisen for members of TIEMS, and the opportunities for further enhancing the work of the profession.

Panel:

Duncan Shaw - Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

David Powell - Principal Advisor in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Harald Dragar – President of The International Emergency Managers Society (TIEMS)

In April 2020, at the height of the first wave of COVID-19 across Europe, academics at Alliance Manchester Business School and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at The University of Manchester launched The Manchester Briefing, a UK funded research project influencing global and local recovery and renewal strategies.

A year on from when the crisis first struck, this special podcast is specifically aimed at students who are interested in hearing how academic research can have a real-world impact through the application of tools, theories and social science.

Our speakers will explore the key lessons and themes that have emerged from the crisis, talk through the societal benefits of this important and timely academic work, and share their views on the big questions that the world faces right now. What makes Covid-19 so different from other disasters? What we are learning from global responses and early recovery efforts? And how do you develop specific guidance on recovery, renewal, resilience?

After the presentations students are given the opportunity to engage with our panellists through a Q&A session.

Panel:

Duncan Shaw - Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

David Powell - Principal Advisor in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Roisin Jordan – Project Co-ordinator in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, University of Manchester

Dr Nat O’Grady – Lecturer in Human Geography and Disaster, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and meet other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and come join us for the networking event of the month! Meet like-minded business women for an amazing event in Manchester. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Bring along your business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

We will hear from Heather Waters, Enterprise Manager, Natwest. With over 20 years B2B experience, Heather is now part of the Women In Business team developing and delivering the strategy to support female entrepreneurs across the U.K.

Following the launch of the Rose Review, her role will see her working with key national and regional organisations that support female entrepreneurship to start and scale. This will include the Back Her Business Programme.

This episode will be hosted by Mark Healey, Professor of Strategic Management at Alliance MBS. His research focuses on cognition in organisations, particularly applied to strategic decision making and the wider strategic management process.

What does it take to think and act strategically? Strategic thinking is one of the most coveted skills in business but it remains poorly understood.

In this lecture, Mark will argue that the classical view of the strategic thinker as an aloof cool calculator provides a misleading view of the skills required for effective strategic thinking and action in today’s dynamic and complex business world. Rather, we need to see strategic thinking as an adaptive, embodied and collective process, which involves regulating the thoughts and feelings of oneself and others to think and act flexibly in an increasingly changeable world. Mark will draw on his own research to examine what we know about the capability for strategic thinking – and what more we need to know.

During COVID-19, we have witnessed community responses on a scale and diversity that was previously unthinkable with invisible acts of good neighbourliness, donations by businesses of all sizes, and the creation of thousands of mutual aid groups, all in addition to the work of the voluntary sector.

We now need to galvanise the progress made, identify and remove barriers for communities to flourish, and co-produce a new understanding of risk, vulnerability and capability through communities.

This podcast asks whether community resilience can be a new local resilience capability, and explores different models of community action from the US, Chile and the UK to illustrate how this might be achieved.

Panel:

Duncan Shaw – Professor of Operations and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

Fernando Padilla - National Director of the Volunteer Programme, National Youth Institute Chile

Suu-Va Tai – President of Community Emergency Responses Teams (CERT), US

Hannah Tankard - Business Emergency Resilience Campaign Director, Business In The Community

In April 2020, at the height of the first wave of COVID-19 across Europe, academics at Alliance Manchester Business School and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute launched The Manchester Briefing – a fortnightly document that brings together international lessons for local and national government recovery and renewal in the wake of the pandemic.

The Briefing, which has been successfully distributed across the world, has been specifically aimed at those who plan and implement recovery from COVID-19, including government emergency planners and resilience officers.

One year on since its launch, this special event will explore and collate the key lessons and themes that have emerged from around the globe during the crisis, and we will be joined by a panel of emergency managers who will share their local experiences of COVID-19 responses, early recovery efforts, where their cities are now, and the challenges that lie ahead in terms of recovery and renewal.

Speakers:

Duncan Shaw – Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

Piero Pelizzaro - Chief Resilience Officer, Milan, Italy

Luis Carvalho - Civil Protection, Municipal Service, Amadora, Portugal

Katia Tynan - Manager, Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction, City of Vancouver, Canada

Chair: Harald Dragar, President of The International Emergency Managers Society (TIEMS), Norway

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and join us online for the networking event of the month! Speak to like-minded business women for an amazing online event. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Prepare your digital business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

In this episode we are joined by Susan HayesCulleton, CFA, “The Positive Economist”. Susan is Managing Director of the Hayes Culleton Group, with clients across Europe and the USA. The businesses include BECKSearch which facilitates active peer learning and #SavvyTeenAcademy which manages the entire experience of teenage work experiences in corporate organisations. The company also provides training, speaking and content development services, in the subject areas of the financial markets, economics and entrepreneurship.

Susan has twice co-authored “Positive Economics”, the market-leading Leaving Cert economics textbook in Ireland, and she is the author of two books published by Penguin, The “Savvy Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom” and “The Savvy Guide to Making More Money”. Susan is co-founder of The Positive Economist, Associate Lecturer at Ulster University, host of the “Fantastic Female Fridays” YouTube show and presenter of the Savvy Women Online podcast. She serves on the boards of the Irish International Business Network and the Ireland Hong Kong Business Forum. Susan holds a Chartered Financial Analyst charter, MSc Executive Leadership, BSc Financial Maths and Economics and a Diploma in Taxation.

Today’s podcast was recorded at the Women in Business MBA Student Council event held on International Women’s Day.

Joining us on the panel were Professor Fiona Devine OBE, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School, Damaris Albarran, Chair of Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board and former Vice President at Bank of New York Mellon, Katie Clinton, a member of Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board and Partner at KPMG UK and Head of Internal Audit, Risk and Compliance, and Jennifer Halliday, also a member of Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board Finance Director, CF Industries UK and USA. They answered questions from facilitator Tania Rahman, MBA Class of 2022 and VP of ESG & Community about how they ‘choose to challenge’ – the theme of this year’s international women’s day.

This podcast continues the interdisciplinary discussion of critical issues confronting human labour under COVID-19.

Conflicting Covid narratives: The value of supermarket work and implications for the future

Abbie Winton is a final year doctoral researcher at the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research explores retail work and sociotechnical change, with a current focus on the crisis and the shaping impact this could have on the future of work within the sector.

Debra Howcroft is Professor of Technology and Organisation at the Work and Equalities Institute and is the Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment’.

Sharing the load: How work sharing can reduce unemployment, improve gender equality, and benefit mental health

Jill Rubery is Professor of Comparative Employment Systems and Director of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her current research interests include inequality in the labour market, digitalisation in the workplace, and the related effects of COVID-19.

Isabel Tavora is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Manchester Alliance Business School and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research focuses on comparative employment policy, collective bargaining, gender equality and work-family reconciliation. Isabel chairs the School’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Beyond work intensification – the contradictions and ironies of the changing nature of cleaning work in a context of austerity and organisational change

Jo McBride is a Professor at the University of Durham and has worked on a range of issues related to collectivism at work, the nature of skills and in work poverty, and the role of decent work initiatives.

Miguel Martinez Lucio is a Professor at the Work & Equalities Institute and is the Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment. He has worked on questions of change within work, the transformation of worker representation and the development of regulation and the state.

Job value during COVID-19 pandemic: Recognising migrants as ‘critical’ but neglected workers

Anthony Rafferty is a Professor of Employment Studies at the University of Manchester and a Deputy Director of the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI).

Stefania Marino is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in the field of labour sociology, industrial relations and labour market studies with a specific focus on international comparative analysis. Stefania has worked extensively on the relationship between labour migration and labour market and in particular on trade union representation of migrant workers across countries.

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

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In this episode we will be joined by Yukti Bhardwaj, Co-founder & CEO Aimo, ED of Aim Group. Co-founded by Yukti in 2019, Aimo's mission is to accelerate the adoption of green mobility in India and make EVs more accessible for consumers. It has the ambitious aim of becoming India’s top tech-based end-to-end mobility solution.

Growing up amongst a family of social workers engaged in community service, Yukti has come to terms with many struggles in life including the problems of both health and wealth. She has always had the hunger to strive for more and do things differently, rather than going for a traditional path - she studied science in high school, commerce and business in university and went on to build a tech start-up of her own.

Yukti had always been interested in business, which was the reason she left her law degree at Nottingham University in 2016 to join Alliance Manchester Business School to pursue a degree in business and finance. She graduated with a first in 2019 with a degree in BSc Management (International Business Economics).

Aimo is getting noticed within Indian business circles and last year was nominated as mobility start-up of the year by Entrepreneur India magazine. They are currently being accelerated by Rebalance Start-up accelerator.

This episode will be hosted by Panos Constantinides, Professor of Digital Innovation and Digital Learning Lead for Executive Education at Alliance MBS, who will be discussing artificial intelligence systems.

Research into Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems has increasingly moved out of the lab and into organizational and social settings where they affect how people live and behave. This research describes the evolution of technology-assisted driving across the five automation levels specified in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International Standard (SAE 2014). Through this analysis, implications for an interdisciplinary research agenda are explored.

Panos' research focuses on the transformative potential of digital technology, including digital platforms, infrastructures and artificial intelligence. He has carried out funded research projects with a range of organisations on innovations in digital infrastructures and platforms, ranging from healthcare and financial IT infrastructures, mobile payment platforms, and smart grids.

The discussion will be facilitated by Dr Christos Begkos, Lecturer in Management Accounting at Alliance MBS.

As we look ahead, one thing is clear. The old style of innovation isn’t working.

With evolving technologies playing a vital role, and the pace of change not set to slow, now is the time for legacy organisations to be their own catalysts for change and to tap into the wealth of resources that will allow them to compete in the innovation game.

What has stopped companies unleashing their potential to innovate and quickly transform? How can legacy companies adopt the tactics and ideas of fast-growing start-ups?

Join Ismail Amla, Chief Growth Officer at Capita and AMBS alumnus, as he explores how legacy companies can create the right conditions for transforming themselves through innovation and shares key insights and case studies from his forthcoming book From Incremental to Exponential.

The discussion will be facilitated by Alliance MBS' Silvia Massini, Professor of Economic and Management of Innovation.

Vital Topics is sponsored by DWF and Capita.

The belief that corporations have social charter to operate goes back many decades. This has, for better or worse, been encapsulated in more recent discussions of the social responsibility of corporations and can be seen operationalised in the environmental and social positioning of companies. However, despite the promise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) the evidence that it ‘matters’ materially is open to question.

In this podcast, Timothy Devinney, Professor of International Business at Alliance MBS, goes over 20 years of his own work on the topic and addresses the question of whether we can have CSR without other forms of social responsibility that are reflected in the behaviour of consumers, investors, managers, and employees.

He takes this a step further by also addressing the question of whether our failure to deal with larger social issues, such as climate change, are really a failure of Individual Social Responsibility.

The podcast will be facilitated by Professor Giana Echkhardt, Professor of Marketing at King's College London.

In today's podcast we are delighted to be joined by businessman and philanthropist David Gregson who is here to discuss the Greater Manchester Young People's Wellbeing Programme.

During a distinguished corporate career David has sat on the boards of some 30 companies and charities while also co-founding a leading private equity firm. He is also an alumnus of the University of Manchester and sits on the Advisory Board of Alliance Manchester Business School.

The Wellbeing Programme, which is being led by the Manchester Institute of Education at The University of Manchester, in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre, aims to gather data from tens of thousands of young people about their wellbeing. Over the coming months, the project team is working with teachers and young people, as well as Local Authorities, local businesses, academics, charities, the GM Health and Social Care Partnership and many others, to get their input on the design of the Programme.

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and join us online for the networking event of the month! Speak to like-minded business women for an amazing online event. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Prepare your digital business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

In this podcast we will hear from Caroline Roberts-Cherry. Caroline runs Saffron Cherry Productions in Manchester, an independent TV and film company that has just launched a new children’s series The World According to Grandpa on Milkshake!

Filmed in lockdown this live action and animated series stars Don Warrington as Grandpa and Sally Lindsay as the voice of Halifax the rabbit. Caroline first worked with Don when she produced King Lear the film in which he starred which was released in cinemas before being shown on BBC 4 on Christmas Day 2016. Sally fronted the 2018 documentary Emmeline Pankhust;The Making of a Militant for Saffron Cherry. It was first shown on BBC One North West and then BBC Four. A DVD of the show was distributed to all GM Secondary Schools by Mayor Andy Burnham’s office and it has been sold internationally.

Caroline has held senior positions at the BBC and ITV and is an industry diversity champion.

This episode will be hosted by Elinor O'Connor, Professor of Occupational Psychology at Alliance MBS, who discusses how Psychology can help us to understand and manage the impact of a range of work demands on workers’ performance and well-being.

Elinor is currently the Director of Teaching and Learning at AMBS, and is a member of the School's Senior Leadership Team. Her interests in the field of work psychology focus on occupational stress and its management, and her work includes research with the University of Manchester’s School of Pharmacy on occupational stress and error in community pharmacists. More recently, Elinor has been conducting a programme of applied research on work-related stress and well-being in veterinarians, an occupational group that experiences poor psychological health.

The discussion will be facilitated by Alliance MBS' Professor David Holman.

This podcast presents an interdisciplinary discussion of critical issues confronting human labour under COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on work and working lives. This has ignited an important debate on the value of human labour, which has increased awareness of the criticality of a wide range of jobs, many of which have been traditionally undervalued, both politically and socially.

The UK government’s definition of ‘key workers’ amount to 7.1 million adults, many of which are underpaid, working in insecure jobs and operating in public-facing roles. Among key workers, Black, Asian, and working-class groups make up a disproportionately large share, leaving them far more exposed to infection. Additionally, sectors dominated by female workers, such as retail and hospitality, have been hit hard by variations of lockdown, placing them at increased risk of both job loss and furlough. Uncertainty surrounding schooling and childcare provision adds an extra burden.

In the last decade we’ve experienced an influx of FinTech start-ups challenging traditional financial institutions and attempting to disrupt the market through new and innovative product propositions. This 'new' FinTech phenomenon brought about a wave of change in financial services which resulted in altered competitive dynamics and shifting industry architecture.

In this podcast, Markos Zachariadis, Greensill Chair of Financial Technology (FinTech) and Full Professor of Information Systems at Alliance MBS, will explore the role of technology and its impact on the financial services landscape based on a programme of research around FinTech and relevant regulation.

He will discuss how FinTech is changing market dynamics and what the new business models are that new entrants and incumbent firms are exploring following the technological, regulatory, and market transformation of the last few years. He will also point to current and emerging topics around financial technology and research plans going forward to set a FinTech research agenda.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu will explore how, despite traumatic experiences in her childhood during the 1950s, she managed to overcome them and achieve success in her adult life. She will reflect on both positive and negative aspects of living in a Children’s Home until the age of 9, followed by being subject to physical abuse at the hands of her stepfather due to her being mixed-race.

The reason for choosing a career in nursing will be discussed, together with the background to how she became the first UK Sickle Cell Nurse Specialist. Finally, Dame Elizabeth will explain why she became actively involved with the successful campaign for a statue of Mary Seacole, the Jamaican/Scottish Victorian nurse and entrepreneur.

This annual lecture marks the contribution of Teddy Chester, who was the first professor of social administration at the University of Manchester. From his appointment in the early 1950s, to his retirement in the 1970s he was an influential pioneer in management development, using evidence and research with policy makers, and working with clinical leaders. He was involved in founding and leading the NHS Graduate Training Scheme, and in founding Manchester Business School.

Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu was joined by Ann Mahon, Professor of Health Leadership and Head of the Health Management Group at the University of Manchester.

Juergen Maier, former CEO of Siemens UK, discusses his views on the impact of COVID-19 on UK productivity and talks about how industry now needs to work closer than ever before with policymakers and other stakeholders to create a much more focused industrial strategy and address the UK’s productivity puzzle.

Juergen was joined by Gurpreet Narwan, economics correspondent at The Times, who facilitated the discussion.

How do we connect with others around us and build strong working relationships? How do we boost morale and motivation or stimulate people to fight for social justice?

Karen’s event was so engaging that we ran out of time during the event for her to answer the many questions posed to her, so she kindly agreed to follow up on these after the event. This allowed her to delve even deeper into the subject in this interview.

In this podcast, Karen Niven, Professor of Organisational Psychology at Alliance MBS, will argue that the key to achieving these goals is shaping other people’s feelings. She will provide an overview of her research programme on this topic of ‘interpersonal emotion regulation’, considering how and why we strategically influence the feelings of those around us and the effects of doing so on people’s working lives.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

How do we connect with others around us and build strong working relationships? How do we boost morale and motivation or stimulate people to fight for social justice?

In this podcast, Karen Niven, Professor of Organisational Psychology at Alliance MBS, will argue that the key to achieving these goals is shaping other people’s feelings. She will provide an overview of her research programme on this topic of ‘interpersonal emotion regulation’, considering how and why we strategically influence the feelings of those around us and the effects of doing so on people’s working lives.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

How would you feel about losing your job to a machine?

How about a tsunami alert system that fails?

Would you react differently to acts of discrimination performed by a machine or a human?

Honorary Professor at Alliance MBS César A. Hidalgo discusses the findings from his latest book How Humans Judge Machines in a discussion facilitated by Dr Kieron Flanagan, Senior Lecturer in Science and Technology Policy at Alliance MBS.

How Humans Judge Machines compares people’s reactions to actions performed by humans and machines. Using data collected in dozens of experiments, Professor Hidalgo reveals the biases that permeate human-machine interactions.

On this joint podcast from MICRA and Alliance Manchester Business School a panel of experts will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on older workers.

Speakers:

Dr Sheena Johnson, Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing.

Sheena will give some brief background to how older workers are potentially disproportionately affected given their increased risk to Covid19, and consider what support employers can put in place to mitigate this. She will then outline what academic research can tell us about this and also outline what research is in progress / being planned.

Dr Emily Andrews, Senior Evidence Manager at Centre for Ageing Better:

Emily will discuss how the emerging picture of the impact of this recession on workers is u-shaped across the life course: the youngest workers being hit hardest, but the oldest (working-age) workers also seeing a substantial hit to their earnings and hours. Emily Andrews from the Centre for Ageing Better will present findings from new research produced in partnership with the Learning and Work Institute – on the impact of this recession on workers in their 50s and 60s, what we can learn from previous responses to unemployment among this age-group, and what needs to be done next to ensure that progress on 50+ employment does not go into reverse.

Dr Mat Ainsworth, Assistant Director – Employment (Policy, Strategy & Delivery) Greater Manchester Combined Authority:

Mat will talk about the work of the GM Ageing Hub on tackling labour market inequalities faced by older people; the risks and potential opportunities presented by Covid-19 and the launch of an innovative local pilot in partnership with Ageing Better and DWP.

Hear from Capita, BT and experts from Alliance Manchester Business School as they discuss how 5G has the power to change the way we communicate, support economic growth and kick-start the next industrial revolution.

Industries across the UK are looking at 5G as the backbone of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Industrial-grade wireless offers an opportunity to transform industry and healthcare; support millions of people with ultrafast internet speeds, and provide capacity for communications service providers to create and capture new market spaces by driving innovation, efficiency, and growth across various industries.

An online conversation facilitated by Professor Naomi Chambers, Professor of Health Management, Alliance MBS.

Speakers

• Sarah Walker, Director, Corporate & Public Sector (North & Midlands), BT

• Del Alibocus, Head of Internet of Things, Capita Consulting

• Panos Constantinides, Professor of Digital Innovation, Alliance MBS

With thanks to our sponsors DWF and Capita Consulting.

During this Original Thinking Podcast a panel of industry experts will discuss both the positive and negative aspects of home and remote working that COVID-19 has highlighted.

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown light on both the positive and negative aspects of home and remote working. On the one hand workers have shown great resilience and resourcefulness in adapting to the challenges, demonstrating their commitment in the industries and sectors where it has been possible to do so. Indeed, as technology increasingly enables remote working, some employers are now considering a longer or even permanent shift to homeworking.

But is homeworking, and new forms of remote employment, the great panacea that some now think it is? And, if so, how can it be sustainable? Ongoing research at the Work & Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School suggests that remote working can be stressful, lead to greater work precarity and casualisation, and be fraught with ethical and equity challenges for HR professionals.

At this webinar Professor Tony Dundon from Kemmy Business School and Alliance Manchester Business School will be joined by Jonny Gifford, Senior Advisor for Organisational Behaviour at the CIPD, and Natasha Owusu, Policy & Campaigns Support Officer for Equalities at the TUC, to debate this most pressing issue of our time.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

In this Original Thinking Podcast Dr Judit Csiszar, Senior Lecturer (Healthcare Management), Alliance MBS, will be joined by Masters students to discuss how pandemic simulation workshops can help prepare managers.

Protecting staff and controlling the spread of COVID-19 will now be essential for any organisation. Dr Judit Csiszar has been running pandemic simulation workshops since before the crisis on our MSc in International Healthcare Leadership (IHL) programme in Singapore and Dubai. The workshop, which is linked with the International Health Policy module of the Masters programme, has proven to be an effective way of teaching and learning about the complexity of decision-making in the midst of a rapidly evolving pandemic.

During this podcast Judit will be joined by students in Singapore and Dubai who have taken part in previous workshops to discuss the benefits that such simulation-based training offers to MBA and management and leadership education students.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

In this Original Thinking podcast Mark Healey, Professor of Strategic Management, Alliance MBS, will discuss how to build a long term strategy beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

It’s a worrying time for SMEs running short of money during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only will they be hit hard by a significant drop in customer revenue, traditional funders are also holding back, fearing an uncertain future. This lack of cash means reinvesting profits for organic growth is impossible, and simply paying the bills has become a challenge.

In this Original Thinking Podcast hear from our panellists as they explore the impact of COVID-19 on routes to funding for SMEs and discuss what lies ahead post-lockdown.

Panellists:

Dr Robert A. Phillips, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, AMBS
Tony Walker ,Deputy Director Masood Enteprise Centre, AMBS
Dr Laura Etchells, Enterprise Business Development Manager, Masood Enterprise Centre, AMBS

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

In January Alliance MBS hosted a Vital Topics event with keynote speaker Sacha Sadan (Director of Investor Stewardship at LGIM) arguing that ESG was now in the mainstream.

3 weeks later the Coronavirus crisis happened.

So, in a world dealing with a major pandemic and heading towards a global recession, is ESG still relevant?

Our experts argue that COVID-19 has shown exactly why a focus on environmental, social and governance factors is vital for all stakeholders (shareholders, employees and customers) but that history also shows us why we should employ professional scepticism when business leaders talk about ‘business purpose’ and specific ESG elements.

Our podcast will look at what we can learn from history, where we need to employ ‘caveat emptor’ (buyer beware), what needs to change and where the opportunities lie for the future.

Public services in the UK have faced unprecedented challenges over the past decade which the COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying. Already under pressure budgets are being stretched further and the introduction of new technologies and services models is being accelerated to meet the demands of the new normal.

This presents an opportunity for a fresh look at productivity in public services – how we measure and value it, how it links to productivity in the private sector and broader concepts of well-being, and what innovative practices and policy interventions we can adopt in public services to support increased national prosperity.

In this podcast we discuss these issues and how we need to adapt as a country to drive productivity and improve well-being during the recovery.

Panelists:

Professor Diane Coyle, co-director Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge
Dr Elvira Uyarra, Reader in Innovation Policy and Strategy at Alliance Manchester Business School
Professor Andy Westwood, Vice Dean for Social Responsibility in the Faculty of Humanities and Professor of Government Practice, University of Manchester
Donna Hall, Chair of the New Local Government Network and Honorary Professor of Politics

On this podcast, Professor Naomi Chambers discuses her observations of NHS leadership behaviours during COVID-19.

Naomi’s wide range of teaching, advisory and research interests include healthcare leadership, organisation culture, diversity and inclusion, board governance, clinicians in management, health care commissioning, health policy and management in Europe, primary care, patient and public involvement, emergency planning, e-health and clinical costing. Her publications and media profile reflect this breadth of interests.

Naomi is currently co-director of Leadership & Management in the Higher Specialist Healthcare Scientist Training (HSST) Programme. Previous teaching roles have included programme director for the Nye Bevan executive programme for aspiring NHS board directors, university lead for NHS Leadership Academy programmes, and Director of Executive Education. Outward facing roles have included President of the European Health Management Association and vice chair of NHS North Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group.

Two recent research projects have involved leading a team investigating changes in board level leadership in hospitals in England following the publication of the Francis Report into the failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Hospital Foundation Trust (completed 2018) and the evaluation of the content, applications and impacts of the NHS well-led framework on behalf of CQC and NHSI (completed 2020). Current projects include research for a book on organising care round patients to be published by Manchester University Press, a study on long serving NHS CEOs on what makes them tick and what keeps them going, and women’s experiences of urogynaecology services.

Drawing from her research, teaching and advisory experience, Naomi has an ongoing working relationship with a number of NHS boards and senior leadership teams supporting them to develop to meet the challenges of today’s and tomorrow’s health and care systems. She is also in close collaborative contact with colleagues working in national regulatory and oversight bodies, and with independent policy organisations such as the Kings Fund, Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation.

Forthcoming and recent publications:

Chambers N & Taylor J (2021:forthcoming) Organising Care Round Patients Manchester University Press

Sheaff R, Morando V, Chambers N, Exworthy M, Mahon A, Byng R, Mannion R ( 2020) Managerial workarounds in three European DRG systems Journal of Health Organization and Management https://doi.org/10.1108/JHOM-10-2019-0295

Snelling I, Benson L, Chambers N (2019) How trainee hospital doctors lead work-based projects Leadership in Health Services 33 (1) 85-100 DOI: 10.1108/LHS-12-2018-0064

Chambers N, Smith J, Proudlove N, Thorlby R, Kendrick H, Mannion R (2019) Roles and behaviours of diligent and dynamic healthcare boards Health Services Management Research . https://doi.org/10.1177/0951484819887507.

Chambers N and Exworthy M (2019) How to survive as an NHS chief executive Health Service Journal 17 June https://www.hsj.co.uk/leadership/how-to-survive-as-an-nhs-chief-executive/7025324.article#commentsJump

Smith J and Chambers N (2019) Mid Staffordshire: A case study of failed governance and leadership? Political Quarterly 14 June 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12698

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

In this podcast we discuss how COVID-19 is impacting productivity today, and how government, business and workforce needs to adapt in order to drive productivity during the recovery.

Panellists

Bart Van Ark, Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School and Executive Vice President and Global Chief Economist of The Conference Board (moderator).
Tera Allas, Director of Research and Economics, McKinsey’s United Kingdom and Ireland Office.
Alan Harding, Chief Economic Adviser at Greater Manchester Combined Authority; Visiting Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School.
Vicky Pryce, Chief economic adviser and board member, Cebr.
Anthony Venables, BP Professor of Economics; Director, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource-Rich Economies (OXCARRE).

In this Original Thinking Podcast episode we will hear how staff from across The University of Manchester, led by Alliance MBS, are working with organisations around the UK and globally to develop successful plans for ensuring their recovery from COVID-19.

The team produces the ‘Manchester briefing on COVID-19’ each week which brings together international lessons and examples to prompt thinking on response to, and recovery from, COVID-19. Recipients are complementary about it: “really palatable and useful” (UK Local Authority senior manager), “There is a lot of great content” (Asia-Pacific, Managing director) and it is circulated to 250 individuals and, through an international partnership with the Global Resilient Cities Network (GRCN) a further 4,000 cities across the world.

Hear from members of the team Professors Ruth Boaden and Duncan Shaw, & Dr Jennifer Bealt, as they discuss their thoughts on recovery from COVID-19 and the development and impact of the Manchester Briefing.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

In this Original Thinking Podcast we will hold a discussion about the impact of Covid-19 on the global supply chain.

Hear from Stuart-Michael Whiting, senior Vice President Logistics & Planning, Global Supply Chain at Schneider Electrics alongside Alliance Manchester Business School's Mario Kafuros, Professor of International Business and Innovation, Fahian Huq, Senior Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management and Chris M. Smith, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Operations and Critical Systems.

Hosted by Timothy M. Devinney, Chair and Professor of International Business, Alliance Manchester Business School.

In this Original Thinking Podcast episode we will be joined by Professor Jill Rubery, Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School, to debate just how viable is the government's job retention scheme is in the long-run and other questions around this. Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

The need to summon up both our individual resilience, and collective resilience as a society, has arguably never been greater than in the wake of the huge health, social and economic challenges posed by COVID-19.

Joseph Lampel, the Eddie Davies Professor of Enterprise and Innovation Management at Alliance Manchester Business School, has written extensively over many years on the subject of resilience and in this latest podcast in our Original Thinkers series he will be sharing his views on the subject and how individuals and organisations should be responding to this crisis.

Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

What are the top tips on working from home and how do you successfully manage remote teams? In this podcast Cary Cooper and Kelly Metcalf will discuss how leading organisations are tackling this challenge and give practical tips on how to best support your employees’ well-being while they are working from home. Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.

Will Covid-19 be a game-changer for climate change? In this podcast Jonatan Pinkse will explore whether individuals will rethink their behaviours and their approach to climate change. Hosted by Jim Pendrill, AMBS’ Research Communications Lead.