Business Engagement Project: Hearing the voice of industry

Project Description

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is committed to increasing its engagement with the business community. The overarching purpose of this project is to contribute to the ESRC’s and the management academic community’s better understanding of contemporary and perceived future issues, themes and priorities demanding the attention of managers in UK organisations. The project is conceived to give organisations the opportunity directly to influence ESRC’s future research agenda and the research agendas of management academics.

Initially, the project will focus on eliciting management priorities in the following areas:

  • Creative Industries
  • Financial Services
  • Management Consultancy
  • Marketing Practice
  • Retail Sector

To develop these lists of priorities, AIM Scholars are meeting with and interviewing a number of leading practitioners and association leaders in each of the sectors.

Later in 2007 and into 2008, we will be establishing a Business Engagement Forum for each sector/area of practice. The creation of sustainable Business Engagement Forums is a key element of the project. Managers will be invited to participate in and contribute to the ongoing development and refinement of the list of priorities so that it remains valid and directly informs Research Councils’ and academics’ research agendas. The first of these, for Creative Industries and the Financial Sector will run in November and December 2007. Business Engagement Forums for Management Consultancy, Marketing Practice and the Retail Sector will run early in 2008.

At each event, numbers will be limited, for further information please contact Richard Adams. The Business Engagement Forums could also act as a conduit through which research results can be communicated back to the management community.

Concurrently, project team members will be mapping recent and previous academic research onto the emergent themes and assessing the extent to which it addresses each of these themes and where gaps remain. For this exercise we will draw principally on the research output from the first phase of the AIM initiative, but not wholly to the exclusion of other important work in the field.

For further information on the Business Engagement Project, please contact Dr Richard Adams

PROJECT MEMBERS

PROJECT LEADER

Professor Andy Neely, AIM Deputy Director, Cranfield University

PROJECT COORDINATOR

Dr Richard Adams, AIM Associate Director Business Engagement, Cranfield University

PROJECT MEMBERS

Creative industries: Dr Jonathan Sapsed, AIM Innovation Fellow, University of Brighton

Marketing practice: Dr Deborah Roberts, AIM Scholar, Nottingham University Business School

Retail sector: Dr Steve Wood, AIM Scholar, University of Surrey

RESEARCH OUTPUT

The project is still at an early stage. Anticipated outputs include:

  • Summary reports detailing emergent management themes (not yet available)
  • Reviews of the literature addressing themes on a sectoral basis (not yet available)
  • Review of literature addressing themes that cut across sectors (not yet available)

 

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