Category / Business & Management Studies

New submission to eBU

Publishing

Professor of Financial Economics, and Deputy Dean for Research in the Business School, Andy Mullineux has submitted a paper to eBU titled ‘Banking for the Public Good’.

The abstract is as follows:

Bank shareholders cannot be expected to provide good stewardship to banks because there is a conflict of interests between the shareholder owners and a non-mutually owned bank’s depositors; who provide the bulk of the funds in traditional retail banks and are willing to accept a lower return on their savings than shareholders, in return for lower risk exposure.  Regulation is required to protect depositors where deposit insurance schemes are at best partially funded and underwritten by taxpayers, who in turn need to be protected, and to deliver financial stability, a public good.  Once some banks become ‘too big (to be allowed) to fail’ (TBTF), they enjoy additional implicit public (taxpayer) insurance that enables them to fund themselves more cheaply than smaller banks, which gives them a competitive advantage.  The political influence of big banks in the US and the UK is such that they can be regarded as financial oligarchies that have hitherto successfully blocked far reaching structural reform in the wake of the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ and lobbied successfully for the financial sector liberalisation that preceded it. The TBTF problem and associated moral hazard has been worsened by mergers to save failing banks during the crisis and as a result competition within a number of national banking systems, notably the UK, has been significantly reduced.  Solutions alternative to making the banks small enough to be allowed to fail are considered in this paper, but it is difficult to be convinced that they will deliver banks that promote the common or public good.  It is argued that regulating retail banking as a utility and pooling insurance against financial instability using pre-funded deposit insurance schemes, with risk related premiums that can also serve as bank resolution funds, should be pursued; and that capital leverage ratios and/or Financial Activity Taxes might be used to ‘tax’ the size of banks.

This paper can be viewed, reviewed and commented on by following this link – http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/10 – alternatively when on campus just type in ‘ebu’ into your web browser address bar.

BU Research Blog Exclusive: Design & Look of eBU leaked

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

The first screenshot of the eBU interface has been exclusively leaked to the BU Research Blog, and is expected to go viral across the BU community over the next week.

eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025.

Business School Arrivals

The Business School has seen the arrival of its new Deputy Dean of Research, Andy Mullineux (formerly University of Birmingham) as Professor of Financial Economics. Additional to his wisdom he comes with an AHRC Research Award worth £687K. End of April he will be chairing a session and give a paper at the International Conference on the Global Financial Crisis in Southampton. At the same time the new Head of Department of Accounting, Finance & Economics, Jens Hölscher (formerly University of Brighton), came to Bournemouth as Professor of Economics. He can draw on research funds won under the EU’s Jean Monnet programme and will chair a session and give a paper at a conference on The Pacific Rim Economies in Seoul, South Korea, at the end of April. Both of them have high aspirations to boost the research culture within the school.

Media School team wins US grant for CSR research

Awarded & submitted bids, REF Subjects, Research themes

A three-member Media School research team has been awarded a grant for research into Corporate Social Responsibility communication amongst employees.

Dr Tasos Theofilou, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Prof Tom Watson (L-R) gained the grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication, a research center at the Penn State College of Communications.

They will be conducting a study in the UK and Romania to link with a previous study undertaken in Greece by Dr Theofilou. The study supports travel and the employment of research assistants for research in summer this year. Prof Watson, the project PI, has been named as a Page Legacy Scholar for 2013.

“Within the Media School’s Public Relations Research Group (the PRRes Gang), there is considerable expertise in CSR,” said Prof Watson.

“Dr Grigore is an organiser of an international CSR conference to be held at BU in the autumn, whilst Dr Theofilou is pioneering research into harnessing ‘scepticism’ as a factor in developing effective CSR communication within corporate organisations.

“This grant is very positive recognition of BU’s standing internationally within public relations and corporate communications research.”

# Arthur W. Page was a highly respected pioneer of public relations and corporate communications in the US from the late 1920s to the late 1940s at the telecoms giant, AT&T.

(L-R) Dr Tasos Theofilou, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Prof Tom Watson

 

Business School’s Ven Tauringana wins award for outstanding reviewer!

BU’s Business School’s Dr Ven Tauringanahas been chosen as an Outstanding Reviewer at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Each year Emerald names and rewards the Outstanding Reviewers who contribute to the success of the journals.  Each journal’s Editor nominates the Reviewer they believe has been that title’s most Outstanding Reviewer. This year Ven received this nomination due to his role as Reviewer for the Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies throughout 2011, his efforts described as ‘very impressive’ and making a ‘significant contribution’.

Well done Ven!

ESRC Call for Evaluating the Business Impact of Social Science

Funding opportunities

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is seeking to commission an evaluation study to assess the ways in which social science research and the knowledge and skills of social scientists can have impact in business. The study will begin by assessing the business impact of social science through the work of a small number of Business/Management Schools. It will then track the career paths of social science doctoral graduates from these Schools, and investigate in greater depth the contributions of those working in business.

The aims of the evaluation are as follows:

Part 1 – Impact of Business/Management Schools

  • identify the range and nature of business impacts resulting from the work of the Business/Management Schools
  • evaluate the processes through which business impacts may be or have been generated, through research and related activities (including academic/business collaborations, knowledge exchange and business engagement initiatives, networking and dissemination)
  • develop an understanding of the contributions of social science within local, regional and national contexts, and the factors that promote or inhibit impact within these contexts
  • identify and analyse the determinants of the impacts identified (ie why and how impact has been generated)
  • identify good practice and lessons learned, to support the development of impact generation within the business sector
  • inform the development of methodology for future impact evaluation studies in this area.

Part 2 – Impact of social scientist with PhDs working within business

  • identify the employment destinations of social science doctoral graduates from the three Schools
  • identify the range and nature of impacts that social scientists with PhDs working in business have contributed to
  • identify and analyse the determinants of the impacts (ie why and how impact has been generated)
  • explore impact processes and potential impacts, and identify any barriers to impact generation
  • develop an understanding of businesses’ appreciation and need for the higher level skills associated with PhD training
  • identify good practice and lessons for enhancing the contribution that social science doctoral graduates can make to business
  • inform the ESRC’s investment in PhD training with a view to maximising future impacts.

Further details, and a copy of the full specification are available from the Research Councils UK Shared Services Centre Ltd. Please contact Jonathan Smith by email: jonathan.smith@ssc.rcuk.ac.uk or by telephone: 01235 446394 (Ref PS120008).

The deadline for submission of bids is 11.00 on 11 June 2012.

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

4th World Business Ethics Forum – 16-18 December 2012, Hong Kong

Funding opportunities, Research Ethics

The 4th World Business Ethics Forum (WBEF) will be held from 16 to 18 December 2012 by the School of Business of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).  BU have received an invitation to submit papers for presentation at the Conference.

The theme for this 4th WBEF is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability.  HKBU welcome research papers related to this broad theme.  Suggested topics include:

Dimensions and theories of CSR; CSR and risk management; CSR and business ethics; CSR and strategic management; CSR and corporate sustainability; CSR and corporate governance; CSR reporting and capital market; Corporate sustainability management; Legal issues of CSR; CSR in Asia; CSR in China; CSR education; CSR case studies; CSR in western perspectives; and other related issues.

They anticipate that over 150 scholars and professionals across the world will attend the Conference.  Selected papers from the Conference will be published in a special issue of Journal of Business Ethics.

The deadline for paper submission is 30th June 2012.  Please submit the full paper and enquiries to the Conference Secretariat at wbef@hkbu.edu.hk.  Email submissions in Word format are strongly preferred.  Submission of full paper for review indicates that it or a similar version has not been previously published or is not simultaneously under review elsewhere.  Each submission should include FULL contact details, including the author(s)’ brief bio, institution affiliation, mailing address, telephone and fax number, e-mail address, topic area (up to three topics selected from the above).  Full paper should not be more than 40 pages in double-line spacing (all inclusive) and must follow the style guidelines of the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE).

For more details of the Conference, please visit the web site at http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~wbef.  The Conference Committee will select full papers on a competitive basis, and author(s) will be notified by September 2012.