The Advanced Institute of Management Research: Past, Present and Future

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

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. • 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… • Fostering new ways of working more effectively with managers and policy makers… • 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 Conduct research that will identify actions to enhance the UK’s international competitiveness. Raise the scientific quality and international standing of UK research on international competitiveness. Expand the size and capacity of the active research base for UK research on management. 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 Conduct research that will identify actions to enhance the UK’s international competitiveness. Raise the scientific quality and international standing of UK research on international competitiveness. Expand the size and capacity of the active research base for UK research on management. 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)

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.

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?

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

For 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. • Web guide on how to apply to the ESRC: http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/How/presentations/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). • See www.innovateuk.org

The Advanced Institute of Management Research: Past, Present and Future