Category / Business & Management Studies

Re-elected to the Board!

Dr John Oliver, from the Advances in Media Management research cluster (FMC/FoM) has been re-elected to the European Media Management Association Board. Following his election at the association’s recent Annual General Assembly in Ghent, Belgium, Dr Oliver will now serve a 3rd term on the board and be responsible for the Doctoral Summer School in 2018.

The European Media Management Association Conference

Graham Goode, from the Advances in Media Management (AiMM) research cluster recently presented his doctoral research at the European Media Management Association conference in Ghent, Belgium. Under a conference theme of “collaboration in the value chain”, Graham presented data from a multi-year content analysis of strategic collaborations of UK broadcast, production and distribution organisations between 2010 and 2016. The findings show that equity participation, a form of collaboration, where one partner provides finance and expertise to gain access to the other partner’s capabilities in content, formats, talent, people and production facilities, accounted for a substantial and growing proportion of collaborations over the last three years, replacing acquisitions, as the here-to (since 2010) main form of collaboration.

AiMM Awarded Doctoral Summer School!

The Advances in Media Management (AiMM) research cluster have been awarded the European Media Management Association’s Doctoral Summer School 2018.

AiMM is a cross faculty research collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Communications and the Faculty of Management and this award follows on from AiMMs success in hosting the association’s annual conference at BU in 2013.The Doctoral Summer School will be held at BU between the 2-4th July 2018 and is targeted at PhD students at all stages of their research, as well as early-stage post-docs.

Congratulations go to the bid team: Dr John Oliver, Dr Chris Chapleo, Dr Joyce Costello, Graham Goode, Melanie Gray and Conor O’Kane.

What is FoMO and how do you deal with it?

Student Engagement, student research

Students and staff attended 14:Live in the Student Centre, on Tuesday afternoon to hear from Dr Miguel Moital about FoMO.

FoMO is a fairly new area of research which looks into the psychology behind the ‘Fear of Missing Out’.

With the upcoming festival season, the session looked at FoMO in relation to festivals and marketing tactics used to convince consumers to attend.

Much of the research has been conducted by events management undergraduate students Ellie Taylor and Helena Jarman who previously worked on the topic as part of their dissertation.

Ellie was the pioneer conducting the first dissertation on the topic, whilst Helena worked with Dr Miguel Moital during June-July 2016 as a Student Research Assistant. Helena collated and organised material around FoMO in events leading up to the organisation of a workshop for local event professionals. The students created and provided a large amount of material for 14:Live.

The fear of missing out is a psychological fear that comes from a heightened sensation that everyone but us appears to be having more fun. Social media can often make us feel as though we’re missing out on socially driven events and experiences, because of posts from friends, family or even strangers.

FoMO appeals are often used by marketers to sell an event or product to consumers. Marketers often use specific communication tactics which play on someone’s emotions. This can include using ‘highlights videos’ and using techniques such as ‘75%’ sold out. This then encourages you to book early or attend at the risk of ‘missing out’ on the event.

Dr Moital commented “We looked at the types of emotions felt when experiencing FoMO, what it is people miss out on, how people may behave when they feel FOMO, the types of communication tactics that can be used when designing FoMO event marketing appeals, and what strategies can individuals reduce the levels of FOMO,”

“The session was very interactive and it was great to see a mix of colleagues from faculties and professional services, as well as a number of very engaged students.”

If you’d like to hear more about FoMO please contact Dr Miguel Moital.

14:Live is monthly lunchtime session, that discusses the different areas of research being undertaken here at BU. If you’d like to hear more about 14:Live please contact Hannah Jones.

‘How boards strategize’ explored in new student-staff study

student research

Marg Concannon

The strategy work of boards of directors has been a puzzle in the corporate governance literature for a long time. But the picture is becoming clearer, thanks to a paper soon to be published and co-written by a Master’s graduate and staff member in the Faculty of Management at BU.

After the financial crisis the work of boards became especially pertinent, for companies and public policy. Some boards — think of Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS — manifestly failed both in strategizing  and in monitoring the performance of managers. The shortcomings contributed to a long, global economic malaise. Margaret Concannon earned an MSc in Corporate Governance with Distinction at BU in 2015 with a dissertation that examined how the work of boards has changed. Now, writing with Donald Nordberg, Associate Professor of Strategy and Corporate Governance, her study has become a journal article, due to appear soon in European Management Journal.

Donald Nordberg

Their paper, “Boards strategizing in liminal spaces: Process and practice, formal and informal,” shows how the theory of liminality, developed in anthropology to study rites of passage and adapted in organisation studies, can explain how, after the crisis, the increasingly hierarchical nature of the monitoring work of boards has pushed often strategy off the formal agenda. But strategizing has emerged again in new, informal settings and spaces, where the creativity possible in liminality can reassert itself. The paper explores what benefits that brings — and what risks.

British Academy Visit – reserve your place now!

Funding opportunities

british_academy_logoThe British Academy is returning to BU on 8 March 2017.  This is an invaluable opportunity to find out more about the international and domestic funding available through the organisation.  For those of you who are not familiar with the British Academy, it is the UK’s leading independent body for the humanities and social sciences, promoting funding, knowledge exchange and providing independent advice within the humanities. 

The session will last just over  1 hour (13:00-14:15) and will comprise a presentation focusing on international and domestic funding opportunities along with an overview of the British Academy, followed by a Q&A session.

Representatives of the British Academy will be available to answer any individual queries not covered in the presentation or Q&A session, and members of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office will be on hand should you wish to discuss BU’s processes for bidding to the organisation.

Places for this event can be reserved through Organisational Development here.

 

Wanted! External Bid Writers

Funding opportunities, Grants Academy, international, Knowledge Exchange, REF Subjects, Training

rkeo-dev-logo-banner

 

As part of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework, Bournemouth University is expanding its pool of external bid writing expertise, through a tendering process.

If you have worked with a good bid writer or, as an external subscriber to this blog, you have written successful research funding applications, please contactus in the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office

We are particularly interested in those who can provide short courses, one-to-one support, bid writing retreats, application review or a range of these and related activities.

Examples of key funders include:

  • British Academy
  • European Commission funds including Horizon 2020
  • Innovate UK
  • Leverhulme Trust
  • National Institutes of Health and other US Federal funders
  • Research Councils
  • Royal Society
  • Wellcome Trust
  • etc.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Fusion project leads to best paper award

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

Work by BU researchers examining the human aspects of Digital Rights Management has won a best paper award at the Fourth International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and IP Law. This is joint work carried out by Marcella Favale, Neil McDonald, Shamal Faily, and Christos Gatzidis.

This work, which resulted from research carried out during the FIF funded MADRIGAL project, examines the perspective of DRM from the perspective of content creators using qualitative socio-legal analysis.

In addition to this work, we were also invited to write an extended version of this paper for SCRIPTed, which is currently in press.

Well done Marcella and the rest of the MADRIGAL team!

ESRC Festival of Social Sciences

BRIAN, Business Engagement, innovation, Knowledge Transfer

Dr John Oliver, from the Advances in Media Management research cluster, recently delivered a keynote lecture at the Open Innovation Design Jam competition at the University of Glasgow. The event formed part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science programme of activities that ran from 5th-12th November across the UK.

The Design Jam also involved a number of short, intensive brainstorming sessions in which teams developed innovative solutions to challenges. This event was an opportunity for innovators and businesses to explore open, collective and user-led innovation.
Dr Oliver’s talk on media innovation strategies presented empirical data on how the innovation practices of UK media firms had transformed firm capabilities and corporate financial performance.

WTM eTourism: Disrupting innovations for Tourism and Hospitality

Fusion, international

Join Professor Dimitrios Buhalis on Monday 7 November, as part of the World Travel Market 7-9 November, in London.This discussion will take place in our Inspire Theatre, in Fusion, between 10:30am-12:15.

The event will host a series of speakers including: Kevin May, Tnooz.com; Mario Hardy Pacific, Asia Tourism Association, Thailand; Nathaniel Green, DUETTO Research, USA; Richard Hatter Hotel Icon, Hong Kong; Andy Owen-Jones, BD4Travel, Germany; and Matthew Gardiner, UnderTheDoormat, UK.

This session will  discuss how disrupting innovations generate significant market structure changes, modifying the operating practices, industry structure and dominant logic. This structural change is affecting the organisational networks and the services tourism players are supposed to use to perform well in markets. Both opportunities and challenges emerge for the whole tourism and hospitality industry. Relationships between players change as their respective roles change; this is driven by e-commerce / e-business and disruptive innovation. For instance hotels, thanks to e-business technological platforms, can now use algorithms to set yield and revenue management strategies, monitor competition in real time and allow consumers to use mobile devices to access several services. In the tourism industry, many innovations have been initiated from companies in the information technology sector. Generally, Information technology is revolutionizing products, services and markets.

For more information please click here.

The session is free however, to attend you must join the World Travel market, please click here.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis invited to the University of Pretoria

international

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis Head of Department of Tourism and Hospitality at Bournemouth University was invited to the University of Pretoria, on 9 September 2016, to deliver a keynote speech on Universal Accessibility for Tourism and meet the South Africa’s Minister of Tourism, Derek Hanekom.

The Department of Tourism and Hospitality, Bournemouth University is a partner with the University of Pretoria, one of the oldest and most established Universities in South Africa. Professor Buhalis had discussions with the Head of Department of Tourism Professor Berendien Lubbe and her colleagues about research partnerships that will cover a number of areas including eTourism, accessibility, destination management and marketing, and wildlife tourism.

During the Tourism Symposium Professor Buhalis had the opportunity to reflect on Accessibility as welcoming all everywhere any time and he explored several global best practice examples in accessible tourism. He contributed to the Symposium that included a range of important South African and global operators including SANparks, Sun International, Tourvest and SATSA.

Professor Buhalis had the opportunity to meet the Minister of Tourism of South Africa RH Derek Hanekom and to discuss accessibility issues as well as the marketing of South Africa as a destination and global issues such as Brexit, political uncertainty and emerging markets and how they can contribute to tourism and economic development.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, Bournemouth University and Derek Hanekom, South Africa’s Minister of Tourism

Professor Buhalis said “I am very glad to establish collaboration with the tourism team of the University of Pretoria South Africa. They are doing very interesting tourism research and a very challenging and rewarding environment. We look forward to develop our research and academic collaboration with the University of Pretoria and develop our research agenda and impact of our research globally. South Africa has unique resources and opportunities to develop tourism as well as challenges that need to be addressed for the benefit of all stakeholders.”