Forthcoming Call For Management Practices FellowsRobin 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.Objectives1. 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 2Three cohorts of early/mid career fellows…

Innovation + targeted initiativeServicesManagement Practices + management practices survey

[probably].

Plus ongoing activitiesGhoshal 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 Publication of Call September - October 2008 Information Seminars for potential applicants 13 November 2008 Closing date for applications February 2009 Interviews of shortlisted applicants February 2009 Commissioning Panel meeting April 2009 Funding decisions notified to applicants Sept 2009 – Jan 2010 Fellowships start

Mid-Career Fellowships: Further Information

Websites: www.aimresearch.org and ESRC www.esrc.ac.uk

AIM: Robin Wensley (robin.wensley@wbs.ac.uk) OR Andy Neely (a.neely@cranfield.ac.uk)

Tel: 0870 734 3000

ESRC: Teresa Tucker, (Teresa.Tucker @esrc.ac.uk)

Tel: 01793 442858.

http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/How/presentations/index.aspx?ComponentId=24860&SourcePageId=19742