Transcript Forthcoming Call For Management Practices Fellows

Forthcoming Call For Management
Practices Fellows
Robin Wensley
Director of AIMresearch
ESRC Principles: QII
Quality
Funding research and training of the highest quality by
world standards
Impact
Focusing on areas of major national importance and key
policy areas
Independence
Ensuring independence from political, commercial or
sectional interests
AIM’s mission & objectives: Phase 2
Mission – to significantly increase the contribution of and future
capacity for world class UK research on management.
Objectives
1. Conduct research that will identify actions to enhance the
UK’s international competitiveness.
2. Raise the scientific quality and international standing of UK
research on international competitiveness.
3. Expand the size and capacity of the active research base
for UK research on management.
4. Develop the engagement of that capacity with world
class research outside the UK and with practitioners
as co-producers of knowledge about management and
other users of research within the UK.
Context for AIM Phase 2
Three cohorts of early/mid career fellows…
Innovation + targeted initiative
Services
Management Practices + management practices survey
[probably].
Plus ongoing activities
Ghoshal Fellows [still some on contract]
Senior Fellows [on no cost extensions]
IPGC Fellows [being managed by John Bessant]
Ideas Factory [being managed by Uwe Aicklen]
AIM Scholars [as appropriate]
Support staff/AIM office…
The Research Agenda for Management Practices
1. Explaining Practices, Exploring Implications
2. Practices and Competitive Advantage
3. Barriers to Sustained Improvement
4. Adopting and Applying Practice
Explaining Practices, Exploring Implications
The most effective practices are developed locally and emerge from
processes of trial and error on the part of first-line employees, often working
in conjunction with other organisations. What are the implications of this for
the effective development of new practices within any organisation?
How do we better understand the actual process of implementing new
management practices? How managers (and crucially also, employees)
interpret them and make them their own; how they deal with the unintended
consequences of putting textbook ideas into practice, which in turn feeds
back into the idea itself.
Given that it is the way practices are performed and the embeddedness and
recursiveness of practices that provides the basis of the promise they hold to
contribute to organisational innovation and competitiveness, how far should
practice development be seen as a gradual process within the organisation
based on and how far a radical introduction of a new approach?
Practices and Competitive Advantage
How do organisations best manage the tension between adopting a generic
practice of some degree of proven external success while developing
particular more local practices to enhance differential advantage?
How far should economic policy encourage parity or differential advantage at
the level of the firm or unit? How should it compare a focus on the adoption
of generic practices where there is some degree of evidence of wide spread
positive impact with encouraging local development of particular approaches?
How much is the performance impact of management practices more related
to a particular “bundle” of practices rather one particular practice?
Barriers to Sustained Improvement
Why do managers seem so reluctant, in general, to pick up and run
with promising practices? Are there enough rewards and incentives
when they do? How much is adoption a function of leadership and
authority? In what ways is evidence of impact used to support the
development of particular practices.
How do we better understand the actual process of implementing
new management practices? How managers (and crucially also,
employees) interpret them and make them their own; how they deal
with the unintended consequences of putting textbook ideas into
practice, which in turn feeds back into the idea itself.
Adopting and Applying Practice
How should the challenge of achieving the right balance between
looking outward to identify new and promising practices and looking
inward to identify and build on the specific organisational ‘heritage’
of distinctive promising practices be handled?
How should practice development be applied given the research
which suggests that alongside questions relating to the intervention
and its leaders, contextual factors — addressing internal barriers and
organisational issues, and fitting the intervention to the context and
other change programmes — plays a large part in ensuring that the
improvement generated from a new management practice can be
sustained over time?
Mid-Career Fellowships
The Fellowships in management practices are for two years’
research time which need not be taken in one block
Researchers from any discipline are eligible to apply
Full salary costs are payable for 60% time commitment, at
80% of Full Economic Cost
Mid-Career Fellowships: The smaller print
Interaction with AIM colleagues will take the equivalent of least 2 full days per month
throughout the duration of the Fellowships
Annual budget of up to £20,000 for travel and incidental research expenses in support
of personal research activity
Annual budget of up to £10,000 for networking with other groups with interests linked
to personal research activity
AIM Directors will provide opportunities for Mid-Career Fellows to apply for additional
funds for Visiting International Fellows
The extent of institutional non-financial support for the application will be taken into
account in the assessment of a proposal.
Business support for proposed research can be demonstrated through covering letters
of support and non-trivial levels of cash and/or in-kind contributions.
Mid-Career Fellowships: Timetable
29 September 2008
September - October 2008
13 November 2008
February 2009
February 2009
April 2009
Sept 2009 – Jan 2010
Publication of Call
Information Seminars for potential applicants
Closing date for applications
Interviews of shortlisted applicants
Commissioning Panel meeting
Funding decisions notified to applicants
Fellowships start
Mid-Career Fellowships: Further Information
Websites: www.aimresearch.org and ESRC www.esrc.ac.uk
AIM: Robin Wensley ([email protected]) OR Andy
Neely ([email protected])
Tel: 0870 734 3000
ESRC: Teresa Tucker, (Teresa.Tucker @esrc.ac.uk)
Tel: 01793 442858.
http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/How/presentatio
ns/index.aspx?ComponentId=24860&SourcePageId=19742