Transcript Introducing AIM Research: Presentation for FME Fellows

The Advanced Institute of Management Research:
Past, Present and Future
Andy Neely/Robin Wensley
AIM Research
Agenda
•
Welcome and introductions
•
Introducing AIM: Phases 1 and 2
•
New opportunities:
–
–
•
The management practices call
High Value Manufacturing
Q&A
Agenda
•
Welcome and introductions
•
Introducing AIM: Phases 1 and 2
•
New opportunities:
– The management practices call
– High Value Manufacturing
•
Q&A
What is AIM?
•
AIM: The UK’s Research Initiative on Management.
•
Budget of £35+ million invested by the Economic and Social Research Council and the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
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Used to fund over 250 Fellows and Scholars – all leading academics in their fields…
•
Working in cooperation with leading international academics and specialists as well as
UK policy makers and business leaders…
•
Undertaking a wide range of collaborative research projects…
•
Disseminating ideas and shared learning through publications, reports, workshops and
events…
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Fostering new ways of working more effectively with managers and policy makers…
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To enhance UK competitiveness and policy…
AIM’s mission and objectives
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.
AIM’s mission and 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 with previous fellows
Senior Fellows, Public Service Fellows and Ghoshal Fellows
IPGC Fellows [being managed by John Bessant]
Ideas Factory [being managed by Uwe Aicklen]
AIM Scholars [as appropriate]
Support staff/AIM office…
Claire [Office Mgmt], Agi [Events], Hannah [Website], TBA (Comms)
Agenda
•
Welcome and introductions
•
Introducing AIM: Phases 1 and 2
•
New opportunities:
– The management practices call
– High Value Manufacturing
•
Q&A
ESRC principles: QII
• Quality - funding research and training of the
highest quality by world standards
• Impact - focusing on areas of major national
imaportance and key policy areas
• Independence - ensuring independence from
political, commercial or sectional interests
The research agenda for
management practices
• Explaining Practices, Exploring Implications
• Practices and Competitive Advantage
• Barriers to Sustained Improvement
• 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?
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
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.
How far can innovation in management practices be seen as a special case of more
general issues in innovation: the extent to which they should be characterised as
"open", "user-led" and influenced by the relevant IP regime? What are the barriers to
practice innovation at firm and sectoral levels?
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?
How does the adoption of particular practices relate to the transformations in and
identification of appropriate business models? What are the implications for
management practices of applying new technologies to different business models
and how might this impact on value added and performance?
Sectors of the Economy
Current Draft Wording:
“The ESRC is interested to hear of proposals for
research in any of the three main sectors of the
economy: private, public or third, as well as comparative
work. It is particularly interested in any work in the
following priority areas: financial services, management
consultancy, creative industries, retail and marketing.”
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
(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
For further information
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Websites: www.aimresearch.org and ESRC www.esrc.ac.uk
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AIM: Robin Wensley ([email protected]) or Andy Neely
([email protected])
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Tel: 0870 734 3000
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ESRC: Teresa Tucker ([email protected])
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Tel: 01793 442858.
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Web guide on how to apply to the ESRC:
http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/How/prese
ntations/index.aspx
High Value Manufacturing
•
New call for research into Global Value Systems for High Value
Manufacturing (£5 million funding provided by TSB, EPSRC and ESRC).
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See www.innovateuk.org
Information day
22nd October 2008
Competition opens
19th January 2009
Expressions of Interest deadline
26th February 2009
Feedback provided by
16th March 2009
Feedback discussion in week beginning
16th March 2009
Applicants briefing (mandatory)
25th March 2009
Registration of intent to submit (mandatory)
23rd April 2009
Deadline for receipt of full applications
30th April 2009
Decision and feedback to applicants
29th May 2009
Agenda
•
Welcome and introductions
•
Introducing AIM: Phases 1 and 2
•
New opportunities:
– The management practices call
– High Value Manufacturing
•
Q&A