Research Roundup
Events and external engagement
Simon Collinson has been an expert panel member on the Resolution Foundation’s event on the challenges for West Midlands and participated in the Chartered Association of Business Schools Annual Conference in his capacity as Chair of the Association. More information on these events can be found here and here. You can also visit the Business School blog for a full write-up of the CABS Annual Research Conference by Deputy Dean and Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer Isabelle Szmigin.
Pervez Ghauri and the MNEmerge team presented the policy implications that have arisen from the project’s research results at the UNIDO’s 50th Anniversary Conference in Vienna on the 24th of November, 2016. The policy briefing consisted of presentations and discussions on the research framework and methodology of the MNEmerge project, as well as on policy recommendations resulting from studies on capability building and poverty reduction in different sectors, such as sanitation and healthcare in India, energy and healthcare in Brazil and industry in Ghana. All in all, the policy briefing included lively and fruitful discussions among the project team and the audience, resulting in useful suggestions on how to proceed with policy recommendations, and inspiring further research.
David Houghton was interviewed BBC Breakfast News, BBC 1, on Saturday 4th February. David was discussing selfies and the history of the portrait, related to the Birmingham Business School Discussion Paper ‘Tagger's Delight? Disclosure and liking behaviour in Facebook: the effects of sharing photographs amongst multiple known social circles’. He was also the highest read author across the university for the same week on Research Gate.
Anastasios (Tasos) Kitsos provides an update from City-REDI:
In collaboration with KPMG, City-REDI has hosted the Bricks, Concrete and Steel event, looking at Birmingham’s future property and infrastructure development. The event was well attended by a range of stakeholders including local government officials, academics and private sector developers. More information here.
City-REDI also hosted the “Urban Living Birmingham: Challenges facing the City” where developments on the Urban Living Birmingham project were discussed. Professor John Bryson, PI to the project has facilitated the day. More information here.
City-REDI in collaboration with Birmingham University’s CURS and Birmingham City Council has been awarded an EU project on Urban Innovative Actions. The project aims to unlock social and economic innovation together in order to tackle urban challenges. For more information see here.
City-REDI sponsored an event hosted by Insider in January 2017 which brought together the mayoral candidates for the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) for a debate ahead of the election on May 4th. City-REDI’s Director Simon Collinson was there to bring the session to a close, providing a number of key reflections that came out of the debate. For details see here.
City-REDI has successfully organised AnalystFEST in late January 2017. The event featured keynote addresses from high calibre speakers and brought together researchers (policy and academic) in the West Midlands, creating links to researchers nationally, to promote the use of evidence in policy making. For a round-up of the event, click here.
For more information on City-REDI’s activities and events follow us on twitter @City-REDI or visit our website by clicking here.
Christina Niforou was invited to speak at the launch of launch of the Comparative Employment Research Centre (CERC) on 18th January at De Montfort University. The Centre aims to support and promote internationally comparative research which engages with the political economy of work and employment, and which addresses how actors involved in the governance of work and employment can promote better outcomes for workers and society.
Raquel Ortega-Argiles has been an expert contributor under the project scheme:
European Commission – Directorate General Urban and Regional Policy TAIEX-REGIO. Expert Mission on Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation: Monitoring and Assessment Mechanisms in the Spanish region of Castilla la Mancha.
In December, along with Serafim Bakalis (School of Chemical Engineering), Vivek Soundararajan co-orgnised a workshop titled 'Consumer products in a resource constrained world: Creating a Community of Practice'. This brought together scientists from P&G (UK and USA), academics from across the College of Social Sciences and the Business Engagement Team to discuss the topic, avenues for collaboration and external funding. Numerous projects emerged from this workshop – for example, Vivek, Diana Gregory-Smith and Serafim have initiated some small projects with the help of EPSRC Impact Acceleration Funds.
Awards and activities
Professor Lloyd C. Harris, Professor of Marketing, has co-authored a paper with Professor Emmanuel Ogbonna (University of Cardiff) ‘Ethnic gatekeeping on the shopfloor: a study of bases, motives and approaches’ which has been nominated for the WES 2017 SAGE Prize for Innovation and/or Excellence. The SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence is awarded annually to one paper in each of the BSA's prestigious journals: Cultural Sociology, Sociological Research Online, Sociology and Work, Employment and Society. Learn more about the prize and the paper here.
Birmingham Business School has been awarded PRME accreditation. PRME stands for Principles of Responsible Management Education and is an initiative of the United Nations. PRME accreditation recognises the work of numerous academic staff at Birmingham with respect to researching issues of responsibility and sustainability in business as well as integrating issues of responsibility and sustainability into teaching activities. Birmingham Business School will now seek to build on the achievement of this accreditation and further develop our thought leadership in this field. Visit www.unprme.org for more details.
Paul Edwards completed his term as editor-in-chief of Human Relations at the end of 2016. During this period the number of papers submitted rose from 465 to over 600 and the impact factor increased from 1.70 to 2.62. The journal published or has in preparation two special issues involving Birmingham staff [on Gareth Morgan's metaphors of organization -- Kiran Trehan; and the past present and future of feminism -- Scott Taylor] as well as issues on topics including organisational justice and employment relations in China. The journal entered the Financial Times 50 list of journals at the start of 2017.
Max Nathan has been awarded the 2016 Jim Lewis Prize for his paper in European Urban and Regional Studies for the following article
Nathan, M. (2012) ‘After Florida: Towards an economics of diversity’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 22 (1): 3-19.
Abstract:
In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers. Richard Florida’s ideas have provided a popular – and pervasive – framework for doing so. This paper assess Florida’s legacy and sets out a ‘post-Florida’ framework for ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ research. The paper first traces the development of Florida’s ideas. ‘Florida 1.0’, encapsulated by the Three Ts framework, has performed badly in practice. There are problems in bringing causality to the fundamental relationships, and in consistently replicating the results in other countries. ‘Florida 2.0’, though suggests that Creative Class metrics have value as alternative measures of human capital. This create space for a post-Florida agenda based on economic micro-foundations. I argue that the growing body of ‘economics of diversity’ research meets these conditions, and review theory and empirics. Urban ‘diversity shocks’ shift the size and composition of populations and workforces, with impacts operating via labour markets, and through wider production and consumption networks. While short-term labour market effects are small, over time low-value industrial sectors may become migrant-dependent. Diversity may help raise productivity and wages through innovation, entrepreneurship, market access and trade channels. Bigger, more diverse cities help generate hybridised goods and services, but may also raise local costs through crowding. All of this presents new challenges for policymakers, who need to manage diversity’s net effects, and address both economic costs and benefits.
Scott Taylor has been appointed Associate Editor of the journal Organization (Sage) - http://journals.sagepub.com/home/org
Organization is the major forum for dialogue and innovation in organization studies, addressing significant current and emergent theoretical, meta theoretical and substantive developments in the field. This is a time of unprecedented debate and diversity in organization studies, when intellectual reassessments go alongside a plurality of organizational forms and practices in a globalizing world. The central task for students of organization is to construct those analytical narratives and ethical discourses appropriate to the radically changing structural, theoretical and ideological realities we now face. Organization seeks to address this important task. We welcome standard academic papers of up to 10 thousand words, as well as 'Speaking Out' pieces written to challenge contemporary orthodoxies, and 'Connexions' essays that tie together contemporary social problems and the study of organizing. We will also publish replies to any of our published articles.
Publications
Jane Binner has had the following paper accepted in the Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies.
Binner, J. and Kelly, L. (forthcoming) ‘Modelling Money Shocks in a Small Open Economy: The Case of Taiwan’, Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/manc.12179/full
Abstract: This paper explores the relevance of the Divisia monetary aggregate in Taiwan over the period 1985M01 to 2013 M01. We apply a block recursive structural VAR approach which is adapted to a small open economy by adding the New Taiwan Dollar / US Dollar exchange rate to the block of economic activity indicators. We test the hypothesis that measures of money constructed using the Divisia index number formulation are superior indicators of monetary conditions when compared to an overnight bank lending rate alternative. We find that using properly measured monetary data solves short-run price, output and exchange rate puzzles and leads to sensible long-run impulse responses to monetary shocks. Future work on the optimisation of the construction of the Divisia index number formulation is recommended.
Simon Collinson has seen the 7th Edition of his book on International Business published.
Collinson, S., Narula, R. and Rugman, A. M. (2017) International Business, Pearson Education.
Paul Edwards has had the following paper accepted for publication in the British Journal of Management.
Edwards, P. K. (forthcoming) ‘Making “Critical Performativity” Concrete: Sumantra Ghoshal and Linkages between the Mainstream and the Critical’, British Journal of Management.
Abstract: Critical performativity (CP) advocates direct engagement with managerial practice to promote social change while being subversive of a focus on efficiency. Its critique of efficiency needs to be reconsidered: there can be a common real interest in efficiency, and addressing efficiency does not entail an uncritical acceptance of a managerial agenda. Taking this step allows CP to engage with more conventional views. Two kinds of such views can be distinguished, the unitarist, which stresses common interests, and the pluralist, which allows for diverging interests. The work of the mainstream scholar Sumantra Ghoshal illustrates an effort to move beyond unitarism towards a more pluralist position. He developed a ‘good theory of management’ that aimed to address efficiency, but also the quality of jobs. Appraisal of this theory from the perspective of real interests points to limitations, but also ways in which it can be given a critical edge. The result is an analysis that advances that strand of CP that seeks to make specific interventions in concrete organizational practice.
Rob Elliott and Matthew Cole have had the following paper accepted for publication in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
Cole, M.A., Elliott, R.J.R., Okubo, T. and Strobl, E. (forthcoming) ‘Pre-Disaster Planning and Post-Disaster Aid: Examining the Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
Abstract: In this paper we examine the extent to which pre-disaster planning and post-disaster aid can help firms recover from the negative impact of a natural disaster. Using detailed plant-level data covering the areas affected by the March 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami we find that the number of stopped days of operation was negatively impacted by the disaster although we find that only the tsumani-affected plants experienced reduced sales six months after the earthquake. However, we do find evidence to suggest that post-disaster sales was influenced by a number of pre and post-disaster policies. More specifically, we find that pre-disaster policies such as having alternative transport arrangements and a diversified supplier network positively affect post-disaster sales. We also find that post-disaster aid from local banks and trading partners positively influences post-disaster sales but that direct cash payments from government appears to have no statistically significant effect.
Rob Elliott has also had the followingpaper accepted in Ecological Economics
Elliott, R.J.R. and Lindley, J. (forthcoming) ‘Environmental Jobs and Growth in the United States?’ Ecological Economics.
Abstract: Green growth is increasingly being seen as a means of simultaneously meeting current and future climate change obligations and reducing unemployment. This paper uses detailed industry-level data from the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Green Goods and Services survey to examine how the provision of so-called green goods and services has affected various aspects of the US economy. Our descriptive results reveal that those states and industries that were relatively green in 2010 became even greener in 2011. To investigate further we include green goods and services in a production function. The results show that between 2010 and 2011 industries that have increased their share of green employment have reduced their productivity although this negative correlation was only for the manufacture of green goods and not for the supply of green services. In further analysis we investigate skill-technology complementarities in the production of green goods and services and show that industries that increased their provision of green goods and services grew more slowly, reduced their expenditure on technology inputs and increased their demand for medium educated workers, whilst simultaneously reducing their demand for lower skilled workers.
Geraint Harvey, Andy Hodder and Steve Brammer have had the following paper accepted for publication in the Industrial Relations Journal.
Harvey, G., Hodder, A. and Brammer, S. (2017) ‘Trade union participation in CSR deliberation: an evaluation’, Industrial Relations Journal.
Abstract: Whereas there has been considerable interest in the concept of political corporate social responsibility (CSR), trade unions have been largely omitted from such scholarly discussion. This paper explores the potential of trade unions as the other in political CSR and the contribution of trade unions to deliberative democracy with the firm. We discuss the importance both of the legitimacy and the efficacy of the other in political CSR. We proceed to assess trade unions as legitimate and effective deliberative partners with the firm towards CSR, evaluating the contribution of trade unions to deliberative democracy and also the potential outcomes for trade unions in adopting this role.
Geraint Harvey has also published the following piece in The Conversation about strikes in British Airways.
Harvey, G., and Turnbull, P. (2017) 'Why British Airways cabin crew are striking', The Conversation, 9th January. https://theconversation.com/why-british-airways-cabin-crew-are-striking-70950
Andy Hodder has published a paper in the International Labor Brief, the journal of the Korean Labor Institute. The journal features a special feature in response to the 2015 publication ‘Young Workers and Trade Unions: A Global View’, edited by Andy Hodder and Lefteris Kretsos, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Hodder, A. (2016) ‘청년 근로자와 노동조합 : 영국 사례’, International Labor Brief, 14 (11): 9-17 (published in Korean).
Tasos Kitsos has published an open access paper on Economic Resilience in UK Local Authority Districts in the Annals of Regional Science.
Kitsos, A. and Bishop, P. (2016) ‘Economic resilience in Great Britain: the crisis impact and its determining factors for local authority districts’, The Annals of Regional Science, 1-19.
Abstract: The 2008 recession has had a prolonged and varying effect both across and within countries. This paper studies the crisis impact on Great Britain’s Local Authority Districts (LADs) using the concept of economic resilience. This country is an interesting case study as the impact varied significantly among LADs. The focus is on employment, and a new method is proposed for comparing pre- and post-recession conditions in order to assess the recession impact. The influence of a number of determining factors is examined, and the study finds a significant effect for initial economic conditions, human capital, age structure, urbanisation and geography. Policy makers need to take into account subnational differences in these factors in order to design and implement better targeted policies.
Max Nathan has published a paper on ethnic diversity, firm performance and cities in Environment and Planning A. More information here https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cityredi/research-into-ethnic-diversity-firm-performance-and-cities/
Nathan, M. (2016) ‘Ethnic diversity and business performance: Which firms? Which cities?’ Environment and Planning A, 48 (12): 2462-2483.
Abstract: A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm–city interactions remain more or less unexplored. Ethnic diversity may help firm performance by introducing a wider range of ideas, improving scrutiny or improving international market access. Urban locations may amplify in-firm processes via agglomeration economies, externalities from urban demography or both. These firm–city effects may be more beneficial for knowledge-intensive firms, and for young firms with a greater dependence on their environment. However, firm–city interactions could be negative for cost and competition-sensitive younger firms, or for firms operating in poorer, segregated urban markets. I deploy English cross-sectional data to explore these issues within firms’ ‘top teams’, using latent class analysis to tackle firm-level heterogeneity. I find positive diversity–performance links for larger, knowledge-intensive firms, and positive firm–city interactions both for larger, knowledge-intensive firms in London and for younger, smaller firms in second-tier metros.
Raquel Ortega-Argiles has had chapters published in the following books:
McCann, P. and Ortega-Argilés, R. (2016) ‘Regional Innovation, R&D and Knowledge Spillovers: The Role Played by Geographical and Non-Geographical Factors’ in R. Shearmur, C. Carrincazeaux and D. Doloreux (eds.) (2016) Handbook on the Geographies of Innovation, Edward Elgar Publishing.
McCann, P. and Ortega-Argilés, R. (2016) ‘The Intellectual and Practical Bases of the Application of RIS3 within EU Cohesion Policy’, in P. McCann., F. van Oort and J. Goddard (eds.) The Empirical and Institutional Dimensions of Smart Specialisation, Routledge: London.
Frank Strobel and Nick Horsewood have published the following paper in the Journal of Financial Stability. This paper has attracted international media interest, particularly in India and China (see the University press release: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2017/02/Birmingham's-early-warning-system-flags-global-financial-crises.aspx)
Dawood, M., Horsewood, N. and Strobel, F. (2017) ‘Predicting Sovereign Debt Crises: An Early Warning System Approach’, Journal of Financial Stability 28: 16-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfs.2016.11.008
Abstract: In light of the renewed challenge to construct effective "Early Warning Systems" for sovereign debt crises, we empirically evaluate the predictive power of econometric models developed so far across developed and emerging country regions. We propose a different specification of the crisis variable that allows for the prediction of new crisis onsets as well as duration, and develop a more powerful dynamic-recursive forecasting technique to generate more accurate out-of-sample warning signals of sovereign debt crises. Our results are shown to be more accurate compared to the ones found in the existing literature.
Scott Taylor has had the following paper accepted in Business History.
Durepos, G., McKinlay, A. and Taylor, S. ‘Narrating histories of women at work: Archives, stories, and the promise of feminism’, Business History, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2016.1276900
Abstract: This paper explores narrative in Business History and business histories as a means of understanding the absence and presence of women. We develop the argument that narrative is constructed in the historical research process, and note the implications of this for our understanding of business history as product and practice. We suggest that business historians work with a distinction between stories in description, generated by participants as found in traces of the past, and narration through analysis, created by historians writing in the present. We suggest that business historians can work productively with this differentiation, and that histories will be better able to consider the position of women in both forms of narrative. We conclude with reflections on the nature of the archive and feminist perspectives on history to outline a research agenda that would develop our argument empirically and conceptually.
Ferran Vendrell-Herrero, haspublished a paper in the International Journal of Production Economics.
Lafuente, E., Vaillant, Y. and Vendrell-Herrero, F. (Forthcoming) ‘Territorial Servitization: Exploring the virtuous circle connecting knowledge-intensive services and new manufacturing businesses’, International Journal of Production Economics, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.12.006
Abstract: This paper focuses on the internationalization of SMEs located in geographically isolated contexts like Latin America. We argue that strategic priorities towards foreign markets, Foreign Market Focus (FMF), as well as “Outward Looking Competences” (OLC) are important factors in enhancing productivity, and ultimately achieving a sustainable competitive presence abroad. FMF and OLC lay the foundation for setting better international business relations with foreign clients and increase opportunities for learning and attaining economies of scale. Results demonstrate the significance of FMF as a means of enhancing productivity only in manufacturing firms. OLC positively moderates the relation between FMF and productivity.