Management Research

Management Book of the Year road show

Tue 6 March 2012, 18.00 - 20.45
The British Library
£20 members of Chartered Management Institute/ £30 non-members / students free

Hear shortlisted authors from the Innovation & Entrepreneurship category of the competition talk about the key ideas from their books and how they succeeded in setting up and running their business. The authors will also take part in a panel debate, which is your chance to ask questions. The event includes time for networking with the speakers and other guests.  

View the agenda

To book your place please complete the form on the CMI website
 
Speakers include:

Celia Gates - author of From Brainwave to Business: how to turn your brilliant idea into a successful start up. Celia is the founder of Doctor Cook Ltd., and distributes her award winning cookware range in over 15 countries. Celia was crowned the European Female Designer of the Year 2007.

Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan - authors of Bold: how to be brave in business and win. Shaun is founder and partner in the customer experience consultancy Smith+Co and is rated as a top business speaker internationally. Andy is a leading international consultant on brand and business culture and regularly appears in the media to comment on brand issues.

Chair: Terry Morgan CBE CMgr CCMI - President, CMI

As well as being President of the Chartered Management Institute, Terry is Chairman of Crossrail, a company established in 2001 to develop and deliver a new metro railway going through the middle of London. In this role Terry leads the Board and also the communications with shareholders and the very varied stakeholders that come with a Project of this scale and complexity. Terry was previously CEO of Tube Lines, a role to which he was appointed in early 2002. Prior to that he was Group HR Director and then Group Managing Director – Operations at BAE Systems.

Open Innovation: Working with others to make new ideas fly

Nigel Spencer, Research and Business Development Manager at the British Library writes:

Do you have access to all the skills, knowledge, experience and perspectives needed to develop innovative products and services within your own organisation?

No matter how large that organisation is, it is highly unlikely that you do.  If you seek input from other businesses, often in different sectors, customers, and others you are much more likely to identify innovative ideas and solutions and to build the type of partnerships which will help you turn those ideas into sustainable products and services.  This simple premise is the basis of open innovation.

Stefan Lindegaard 15inno says that people should view  open innovation as ‘a philosophy or a mindset that they should embrace within their organization. This mindset should enable their organization to work with external input to the innovation process just as naturally as it does with internal input’.

So,you should not look at  open innovation as a rigid business or innovation model. It  is a shorthand that describes a diverse range of engagement and collabration activity with differing levels of formality and structure.  Examples of these include crowdsourcing, online competitions, online jams and more closely facilitated relationships. There are many examples of  global corporations that have applied open innovation methods. These include  ‘Orange’, Procter & Gamble, Boots, Lego and Virgin Atlantic but the growth in social media and online open innovation platforms like Innocentive, mean that anyone can find a way of applying open innovation principles.

However, if you are looking to embrace the world of open innovation, or even dip your toe in the water, a number of perceived and genuine barriers and challenges may make you hesitate. Some of these are:

 

• How to make the contacts needed with external organisations and people and develop long-term mutually beneficial relationships. This a particular concern if the businesses are of differing sizes.
• How to overcome the internal organisational cultures which may be uncomfortable with the kind of openness, transparency and perceived loss of direct control which are involved in applying these ideas.
• How to protect ideas and creative outputs when these are being shared and an uncertainty as to how intellectual property fits into an open innovation environment.

 

On 29 November 2011 the BL is hosting a half-day conference which looks at these challenges head on.  It is called ‘Open Innovation: The Challenges & Solutions’.

We have brought together a great selection of experts and practitioners from organisations like 100% Open, Creative Barcode, Procter and Gamble and Quantum Innovation Centre to debate these issues. 

More information and booking on the event: http://goo.gl/Hl3G5.   The event is part of an EU-funded Interreg IVB NEW project called The Open Innovation Project.

Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: Lectures and other Presentations

Sam Nightingale, E-Communitations Manager at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, writes:

It's been an innovative year for the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) in the world of digital dissemination and social media. Not only did we acknowledge the significant role social media now plays in communicating and sharing ideas by establishing a home on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, but we have also launched an ambitious new resource on our website: 'Lectures and other Presentations', a growing digital repository of our work, thinking and reflections.

At the heart of our work has always been the commitment to impart the learning derived from our research, evaluation, consultancy and professional development gained over the last 64 years. Having an orientation that responds and learns from both traditions and history our work is also very much situated in contemporary practice. A growing and significant aspect of that practice is the world of digital dissemination and dialogue. The possibilities of Web 2.0 have created an amazing opportunity to think beyond the written paper as a tool for sharing and learning; alongside text, podcasts, videos and multimedia presentations now frequently feature as we search the Internet for new information. With this in mind, the resources we are making available in 'Lectures and other Presentations' harness such technologies.

So what will you find in 'Lectures and other Presentations'? TIHR staff and associates are engaged with  evaluation and action research, organisational development and change consultancy, executive coaching, Group Relations and professional development; they continually produce high-quality, informative and ground breaking papers, presentations and lectures that are delivered to audiences worldwide. We are proud of this work, and through 'Lectures and other Presentations' we want to use the new media to share this knowledge and learning with the wider community.

Some of the current presentations include:

'An Introduction to Complexity Theory' – a video recording of Eliat Aram’s talk on Complexity Theory, presented as part of the TIHR lunchtime talk series.

'Understanding the Psychology of Regulation' – a paper by Mannie Sher, presented at Centre for Parliamentary Studies’ International Regulatory Affairs Symposium.

'Kurt Lewin: ‘Field Theory Rule' – the second part of a four-part series by Jean Neumann summarising selected Lewinian principles.

In the future we hope that participatory information sharing will develop even further, each presentation provides the opportunity for keeping dialogue fresh and active by creating the space for visitors to add their own comments and thoughts – we hope you will come and join the conversation.

Maternity leave: a waste of time?

Sally Halper, Social Sciences Content Development Manager at the British Library, writes:

On 20 October, Members of the European Parliament voted to extend the minimum maternity leave from 14 to 20 weeks on full pay, a proposal which is being opposed by the UK Coalition Government. This move, coming on top of Government proposals in May to reform UK maternity leave so that once the early weeks of maternity and paternity leave have ended, parents will be able to share the overall leave allowance between them, has prompted renewed debate about the impact of maternity leave: whether we take too much or too little, whether fathers should spend more time with their children, and how best to support working mothers.

But one issue that’s often glossed over is the unvoiced assumption that time spent caring for a child adds nothing to the skills or ability of parents in their working life.

It’s almost as though the work and family spheres are totally separate.

This post tries to challenge that view, using my experience of six months’ maternity leave following the birth of my son in March 2011. I don’t have an axe to grind - my colleagues here at the British Library have been wholly supportive - but I think it might help others better understand the issues. It also flags up some useful articles, reports and discussions about maternity leave available online and from the British Library, and the things that help women on their return to work.

Time well spent
So, what skills and abilities have I developed over the last six months? Here are my top five:

Time management: Having only three hours between feeds, and an incredibly wriggly little person to get ready before you can go out anywhere, forces you to do a lot, fast. Non-priority tasks (such as flossing, and sleep) get dropped. The word ‘No’ got used a lot more. And I’ve learned not to feel guilty about it. I can see a difference in my approach at work already.

Multi-tasking: I thought I was quite good at this one before I had my son. But I can now respond to calls or answer emails, play with him, plan dinner and think about work simultaneously. My baby son’s idea of multi-tasking is drinking and farting at the same time, but we all have to start somewhere.

Diplomacy: I’ve definitely improved my ability to smile sweetly and say the right thing in the face of criticism or unsolicited (and often contradictory) advice, and then do what I think best. An essential skill.

Resilience: I’ve learned to manage on 5 hours’ sleep a night. To see the funny side of life more often. And to trust my own judgement.

Creativity: Entertaining a small child using nothing but yourself and assorted everyday objects gets you used to making the most of limited resources and makes you look at things differently – both useful skills in these times of cuts.

You may feel there are others, based on your own experience. I haven’t come across any studies looking at the question of whether parents have improved skills compared with their childless colleagues or their former, childless selves – do you know of any?

The further reading section below provides details of some useful resources about maternity leave and measures that seem to help women returning to work. I’ve annotated the entries to explain why they’ve been included.

Further reading

Euro MPs back 20-week maternity leave plan. BBC News website, 20 October 2011. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11582112

Home Office Modern Workplaces Consultation. Home Office website, 16 May 2011, see http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/news/parental-leave and on the MBS Portal here. 

Leighton, D. and Gregory, T. Reinventing the workplace. London, Demos, 2011
Research looking at the benefits of flexible working for employers and staff, including maternity policies, with case studies of current practice in UK firms including BT and John Lewis.

Maternity = leave? (Blog post dated August 2011)
http://carycooperblog.com/2011/08/04/maternity-leave/
Blog post by leading organisational psychologist Cary Cooper.

How to manage your maternity in the workplace: taking control of your career before and after maternity leave. May 2010. Practical article by Chris Clarke, a coach from Talking Talent, who specialise in coaching working mothers. http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2010/05/25/how-to-manage-your-maternity-in-the-workplace-taking-control-of-your-career-before-and-after-maternity-leave/

Kennett, M. There is life after maternity leave. Management Today, July 2009 p.70
The First Class Coach offers advice to one woman whose job scope has been reduced.

Stat of the month: maternal instincts. Management Today, October 2009 p.22
Reports that survey by the Department for Children, Schools & Families in 2009 found 33% of working mums would like to quit their job and stay at home to raise their children

Pearson, A. I don’t know how she does it. London, Vintage, 2011
This fictional account of one female London City trader combining work and motherhood provides useful insights into practical and psychological coping strategies that many working parents will recognise.

Read, E. People management: women in transition - returning to work after maternity leave. New Zealand Management, September 2008 pp.48-49
Reports the findings of a survey of New Zealand women in New Zealand about the measures that helped them in their return to work. It showed that a structured transition plan to assist in return to the workforce was important, as was the handover from the replacement who had been carrying out the role. Access to an independent confidante (eg, internal or external coach) and a 'buddy' (a woman who has recently returned to the organisation after having a child) were also identified as helpful.

The Centre for Longitudinal Studies website
http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/
This ESRC Resource Centre based at the Institution of Education in London houses three internationally-renowned birth cohort studies: the 1958 National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study and the Millennium Cohort Study, which provide a huge range of data on effective parenting and work. They also run seminars to help you use the datasets.

Reinventing the workplace - flexible working: good for the employee and for business too

Michelangelo Staffolani writes:

 

In this difficult economic climate and in the face of pressure from the business lobby, should the government rethink its commitment to the right to flexible working for all, enshrined in the coalition agreement? No, according to Reinventing the Workplace, a Demos' pamphlet out last month. Based on new survey of employees and employers, focus groups and interviews with managers and employees, the pamphlet argues that it would be both economically short-sighted and socially irresponsible to roll back the progress made over the past decade.

I went along to hear its author, Dan Leighton, Head of the Public Interest Programme at the think tank Demos, discuss the findings of the research with the Business Secretary Vince Cable MP and the Patrick Lewis, Partners' Counsellor at John Lewis Partnership, where 76,500 employees own one of the leading retail businesses in the UK and share the profits and benefits created by its success. All three speakers agreed that flexible working is not only good for employees' well being – it is good for business too. But, making it work in practice will require ''an ethos of reciprocity between employees and employers and among employees themselves''.

Illustrating the findings of his research, Leighton pointed to flexible working becoming part of the working lives of most people – a substantial achievement for its advocates. Nine out of ten employers today offer a form of flexible working: from part-time working to job-sharing, flexitime, compressed hours, term-time working, working from home and varying start and finish times.

But, there are signs that future extensions may stall. Most employers don't expect their organisation to extend flexible working in the next two years, with small businesses granting less than one in four requests. Employers cite operational pressure or the public facing nature of the work as barriers to flexible working. For employees, the barriers are cultural as well as economic, with men in particular concerned about loss of earnings and the impact flexible working would have on their career promotion.

In his reply Vince Cable stressed the Coalition Government's commitment to flexible working. For employees, flexible working means a better balance between work, family and caring responsibilities. Businesses benefit from it too; it helps them reduce absenteeism, retain staff and widen the talent pool from which they recruit. Figures by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills suggest that the increased productivity and improved profitability will benefit business by an average of £52.4m per year. And a flexible labour market explains why the country has a lower unemployment rate compared to other countries – even in a downturn.

Reciprocity is the key

In his speech, the Business Secretary signalled the intention of the Government to stimulate a cultural change to make flexible working practices become the norm - when new jobs are designed, for example, and new staff recruited. This will require more than just legislation and the Government is considering non-legislative measures like non-statutory Code of Practice to encourage employers to offer increased flexible working to their employees and to highlight good practice.

Patrick Lewis echoed the Business Secretary, saying it is not possible to legislate for flexible working. Instead reciprocity must be at the heart of it: as employers place increasing demands on their employees' time, asking for more weekend and evening hours for example, they should offer greater flexibility in return. The right to request flexible working must be coupled with mutual responsibility - not just between employer and employees but among employees as well.

Find the Demos report Reinventing the workplace and the Government's Consultation on modern workplaces on the British Library's Management and business studies portal

Are sponsored degrees the future?

With a record number of students applying for degree places before the tuition fees rise, many potential students are going to be disappointed. While there’s always the option of taking a gap year and reapplying for next year’s entrance, with UK tuition fees increasing three-fold, up to £27,000 for a three year course, many will be thinking twice.

It’s likely, therefore, that students, parents and educators alike will be looking for alternatives and it would appear that some companies are rising to the challenge. For example, this year Morrisons supermarket chain launched its Morrisons Manufacturing Sponsored Degree Programme in collaboration with Bradford University School of Management, enrolling 17 undergraduates in January and planning to enrol a further 20 in October. The degree programme provides undergraduates with a salaried job, relevant to their chosen career, whilst studying for a BSC (Hons) in Business and Management.

The degree programme is not an easy option but the equivalent of doing a BSC whilst holding down a full time job. The candidates need to have good A-level results and will embark on a three-year course. The first three months are all based in the factories getting to know the manufacturing business, and then the studying starts with eight modules of 100 hrs each to be fitted in between February and October. These modules start with one week in the lecture theatre followed by five weeks on site embedding their knowledge and skills with “work based learning” which involves reflecting on their work and drawing the links between theory and practice. The advantages however could be numerous for those who fear leaving university with massive debts and stiff competition for jobs, and have some idea of their future career. The manufacturing function of Morrisons has launched the degree programme, aiming to solve a perennial problem faced by manufacturers… how to get new good quality talent.

Earlier in the year The British Library hosted a debate Myths and Realities: manufacturing matters, doesn’t it? Among the topics discussed was the threat to manufacturing of hard-to-fill vacancies and skill shortages that will make it extremely difficult for firms to grow, and in some cases even continue to survive, as companies find it increasingly difficult to recruit commercially aware engineers and other forms of skilled labour. So the Morrisons Manufacturing Degree Programme is not purely philanthropic, it provides a rapidly growing company with good quality home grown talent who are committed and well educated and will be their future senior leaders.

The success of the Manufacturing Degree Programme has led Morrisons to expand the programme and they are now introducing a company wide programme for 1,000 high achieving A-level students to embark on a foundation degree in retailing management.

Sponsored degrees provide a real alternative to self-funding students and are likely to become increasingly attractive as the cost of education increases and the students start to appreciate the actual fiscal value. After all when you take into account the cost of tuition fees and a competitive salary, corporate degrees could be worth around £75-90,000 over three years. Combine this with a guaranteed job at the end of the programme and this is a viable alternative well worth a second look.

A bad workman blames his tools

The social media tools which were lauded for being instrumental in the facilitation of political change in the middle east is now being demonised in the aftermath of the riots in the UK.

Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry messaging aren’t to blame, they just allow groups of like minded individuals to communicate quickly easily and in real time regardless of distance.

When you see an image of a syringe do you think it is a good or a bad thing? Something that has saved lives by enabling children to be vaccinated, antibiotics to be given or life saving cancer drugs to be administered? Or is it something that has brought death and disease in the form of intravenous drug abuse, dirty needles being shared in back alleys spreading disease.

Obviously the answer is both but the hypodermic syringe is not responsible for the fate of a human life, it is just a tool and the manipulator of that tool is responsible for the outcome, the contents of that syringe make all the difference.

Social media is the same. The media is not to blame but the words that are held within that medium can have very different effects. The important thing is that that tool leads people to act, to work together. It is used as a management tool to manage and organise a very large number of people very rapidly, it facilitates change but only if the right words are sent.

Linkedin Etiquette

Over a cup of tea and a chat with my boss the conversation soon turned to Linkedin and acceptable behaviour after she had been sent a recommendation request by an ex-colleague “but I haven’t worked with her for 5 years, I don’t know what her work is like now….and more to the point I didn’t work with her much then”. This got us to thinking about Linkedin etiquette and how to politely refuse requests and consider reasonable behaviour for social networking.

 

The general Linkedin advice suggests you should ask for recommendations from people you have worked with or done business with but does not offer advice about selecting who those people should be. How many of us think about the last face to face, not virtual, interaction we had with the person we are asking for a recommendation. If you have no contact with someone for five years it is the last contact you had with them that they will remember so if you didn’t speak or were rude to them the last time you saw them what is going to be their lasting memory….probably not the three projects you worked together on prior to that, no matter how well you worked together.

It reminded me of my Linkedin “what do I do?” moment which happened a few weeks ago. I got a request from a contact asking me to reconnect to him on his new account as he was changing companies. I reconnected and days later I noticed the name of the original account changed so all of a sudden I was connected to someone I didn’t know. Had my original connection been to a company and not an individual this would have been acceptable to me but since I thought I was connecting to the individual I found it strange.

Even more strange is going on to the account profile and seeing recommendations for the original individual. It made me wonder whether recommendations can be withdrawn, after all I can disconnect any connections but can I remove an endorsement since it is very misleading for other people to come along to this connection and see recommendations that are for another individual.

So whilst I like Linkedin and I use it, I am unsure of the rules of engagement. We all understand how to behave in the real world, we hold doors open, we use good manners, we are polite but in the virtual world of social media I feel we’re all still in kindergarten and learning the basics but where are the guides?

Mass Observation- a growing treasure

Tomorrow, May 12th is Mass Observation Day.

Mass Observation began in 1937 as a private venture designed to give a voice to those usually excluded from academic and fictional accounts of everyday life in the UK. The aim was to create an ‘anthropology of ourselves’. They called for people from all parts of the UK to record everything they did from when they woke up in the morning to when they went to sleep at night on 12th May. This was the day of George VI’s Coronation. The resulting diaries provide a glimpse into the everyday lives of all sorts of people on this day.

 

The Mass Observation Archive repeated this call in 2010 by asking for electronic diaries written on 12th May. This day, coincidently, was the first day of the new coalition government. These diaries are stored in the Archive alongside the 1937 documents.

The call has gone out again for May 12th 2011, anyone from any part of the UK whatever your age or background is asked to send them a diary in electronic form. Full details are available from their website.

Mass Observation  provides one of the richest archive resources for researchers interested in everyday British life and opinions about anything you can think of - working life, consumption of all sorts of foods and goods, dreams, hobbies - if you want to research it, chances are part of the archive has some data for you. Scott Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Leadership Studies at University of Exeter Business School, has written a fascinating editorial article about the Mass Observation database which is available at The British Library.

The Mass Observation archive is freely available in the British Library's Reading Rooms in St Pancras, London, our newspaper reading room in Colindale, and our reading room in Boston Spa, Yorkshire. The British Library also has all the Mass Observation publications, and microfilm of the material in the archive at Sussex that has not yet been digitised - making our Reading Rooms a great place for your research. All you need is a British Library Reader Pass. Staff on the enquiry desks in the Reading Rooms will be happy to help you use these resources and our requesting system for print publications and the microfilm, if you want to consult those.

The revolution of social media

As twitter celebrates its 5th birthday, and Facebook recently celebrated seven years I am struck by the amount of media coverage these social media outlets get. Twitter and Facebook are the celebrities of the social media with the paparazzi just waiting at the next street corner to catch them doing something good, bad or ugly-all newsworthy.

In recent weeks the revolutions in North Africa have driven political change at an extraordinary speed and there has been much media coverage about the role that Facebook has played in this.  It is likely that these revolutions would have happened anyway but the major role that Facebook played was speeding the process of reform by making it easier and cheaper to organise the revolutions.

Following the earthquake in Japan, mobile phone networks jammed and the Japanese turned to Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch with friends, with the added advantage of letting all their friends know at once that they were alright, with 1200 twitter messages per minute coming out of Tokyo following the disaster. Likewise, concerned people around the globe could offer support and check on friends and relations. The global community comes together at a faster pace than ever before.

With this much communication power, business leaders should be harnessing it: either within the organisation to discuss issues affecting the organisation as a whole; or externally as a route for marketing or contributing to wider issues.

With over 30 million Facebook users in the UK alone it surely would not be a wise man who buried his head in the sand and pretended social media doesn’t exist. Euan Semple is an expert on the impact of the web and social media on an organisation. Previously, as the Director of Knowledge Management at the BBC, he was one of the first to introduce social media tools into a large organisation, he is now a leading independent advisor on the use of social computing in business and has written an editorial for the British Library discussing how managers and organisations can use social media tools to facilitate their communications, management and strategic development. So while Twitter is eating its birthday cake and Facebook is busy organising revolutions, why not read what Euan has to offer.