Category / REF Subjects

Alternative paths to access finance for small and medium scale enterprises in the UK

BU research, conferences, Funding opportunities

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) form a crucial part of United Kingdom’s (UK) economy. However, limited/or lack of access to finance continue to hinder the growth of SMEs in the country. This situation has been the compelling factor behind Bournemouth University’s seminars series on “Access to Finance for SMEs”, of which the last was held at Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, London on 13 September, 2016. This final part of the seminar series was aimed at identifying alternative sources of finance for SMEs in the UK.

professor-stella-fearnley-first-from-left-with-the-keynote-speaker-sir-john-bourn-middle-and-the-principal-investigator-professor-jens-h%d3%a7lscher-first-from-right

Professor Stella Fearnley (first from left) with the keynote speaker Sir John Bourn (middle) and the Principal Investigator professor Jens Hӧlscher (first from right)

Experts at the seminar identified the following as the reasons why there is limited/or lack of access to finance for SMEs in the UK:

  • Lenders face difficulties in accurately assessing the viability of SMEs with limited track records because of information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders. This makes it difficult for lenders to secure the appropriate information they require to make an informed decisions on SME loan applications,
  • New SMEs often end up defaulting in debt repayment,
  • There is regional bias when it comes to SME access to finance in the country. For instance, London and the South-East often obtain disproportionately more funding than SMEs in other parts of the UK.

Are there alternative sources of funding for SMEs?

Consensus was broad-based among participants that alternative sources of finance for SMEs is growing in the UK —it grew by 75% to £1.26bn in 2015—despite the fact that only 3% of SMEs are aware of these other sources. Some of the alternative funding sources that were suggested include:

  • Equity finance

This is a method of raising capital through the sale of shares in an enterprise. A presenter at the seminar showed that equity funding has improved significantly in the UK, with seed stage flows growing 48% p.a. since 2012. Other participants also observed that SMEs are often skeptical of equity finance for fear of loss of control. But the fact remains that most of them use equity finance without even realising it. For instance, SMEs often rely on angels and venture capital to raise funds for their businesses.

  • Angels and venture capital

This form of equity finance may be undertaken directly by individuals or industrial companies; and indirectly through financial institutions or government agencies. Venture capitalists on the other hand usually invest in SMEs with high return prospects. Though SMEs’ awareness about venture capital in the UK continue to increase, only 22% of them know of a specific fund to approach.

  • Business Angels

They are private individuals who invest in new SMEs with good growth prospects, in exchange for a share of the company’s equity. Business angels often invest in business start-ups and also provide assistance in the form of consultancy (sometimes free) to the SMEs.

  • Family and friends

This source of finance has long been an important route for start-ups. However, there is always the need to maintain professionalism and a formal environment for business growth which may stand against the business owner’s informal relationship with the financiers. The big mistake many companies make is that they fail to formalise the funding arrangement with friends and family.

  • Crowdfunding

This is a method of raising finance by asking a large number of people to individually contribute a small amount of money to fund a project or venture, typically via the Internet. Though it is becoming the new ‘buzz’ going around in the investment game, existing SMEs, individuals, and startups are increasingly looking to raise funds through this method. One of the participants indicated that it is cheaper, faster and easier to access finance through this source. Another participant at the seminar showed that crowdfunding in 2015 amounted to 2.5 billion pounds in the UK.

Road map to SME access to finance

On the various alternative sources of SME funding identified, seminar participants were of the view that there is the need to critically examine each of them since it will unpack their appropriateness to different economies. You can check gold price today from the reliable sources and buy them from such sources. You will get immediate cash when you sell gold Adelaide in the market through the local jewellers or traders.

Apart from individual publications, there were also proposal for pathways to impact which will include one or two edited books and potentially a Special Issue of the International Small Business Journal, the leading UK and European Entrepreneurship journal, as deliverables.

New paper Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD in Nepal

BU research, Centre for Excellence in Learning, Featured academics, Fusion, international, Knowledge Transfer, open access, Publishing, Research news, Training, writing

nnaCongratulations to Dr. Catherine Angell (FHSS) who just had her paper ‘Continual Professional Development (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal’ accepted in Health Prospect.   The paper is co-authored with BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada  both based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Dr. Rose Khatri  and Dr. Sean Mackacel-logo-weby (also at LJMU), Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery and Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), and our colleagues in Dr. Sujan Marahatta and Associate Professor Chandra Kala Sharma. Ms. Chandra Kala Sharma is also the president of the Nepal Nursing Association (left in photo).  Health Prospect is an Open Access journal, hence freely available to anybody in Nepal (and elsewhere in the world).

dsc_0124This paper is first of several based on a study aiming to improve CPD in Nepal and it is partly funded by LJMU and partly funded by BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL).  The CEL-funded part of the project centres on focus group research with representatives of the Ministry of Health & Population, the Ministry of Education, the Nepal Nursing Association and the Nursing Council, and Higher Education providers of Nurse Education (both form Government-run universities and private colleges). The focus group schedule will include starter questions to initiate discussions around the kind of CPD nurses in Nepal need, its format, preferred models, the required quality and quantity, and ways of  checking up (quality control). In addition we will be asking a subgroup of nurses registered in Nepal about midwifery skills as midwifery is not recognised as a separate profession from nursing in Nepal. Hence there will be three focus groups specifically about midwifery CPD: one at MIDSON (the Midwifery Organisation of Nepal), one with nurses providing maternity care in private hospitals and one with nurses doing this in government hospitals.

The research is a natural FUSION project in the field of nursing & midwifery as it links Research in the field of Education to help improve Practice in Nepal.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal, Health Prospect (Accepted) 

 

 

BU at ATLAS annual conference

BU Challenges, BU research, conferences, Events, Research communication, Research news

BU had a strong presence at the ATLAS (Association for Tourism apic1nd Leisure Education and Research) annual conference which took place in the historic town of Canterbury, between 13-16 September, on “Tourism, Lifestyles and Locations”.

BU has been a member of the ATLAS network for many years and Dr Lenia Marques was one of the founders of the Special Interest Group on Events back in 2010. The group is very active and has several ongoing projects and collaborations amongst its members.

Several BU academics presented and discussed their research in Canterbury. Dr Hanaa Osman and Dr Lorraine Brown presented a piece of research which touches upon the status of women in tourism and which provoked debate on intercultural issues. Dr Anya Chapman presented her work on piers, which are so important for UK coastal destinations, such as Bournemouth. Dr Jaeyeon Choe presented her research on tourism and quality of life in Macao and we should congratulate her on her first attendance as the ATLAS Asia representative on the board.

Dr Lenia Marques presented her research on events and communities and practice among expats in a panel organised together with the Department of Events and Leisure and the Department of Tourism and Hospitality dedicated to “Lifestyle and communities: sharing in the digital era”. The panel, put together by Dr. Lenia Marques, Juliette Hecquet and Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis, aimed at discussing new trends in the fields of leisure and tourism connected to lifestyle and the sharing economy.

Overall, the discussions at the conference were animated and friendly, raising some of the big issues of our time. Collaborations, projects and further developments will surely continue in the run-up to the next ATLAS annual conference to be held in Viana do Castelo, Portugal (12-16 September 2017) under the theme “Destinations past, present and future”.

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Horizon 2020 Funding for virtual factory research at BU

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, EU, international

European Union - Horizon 2020Uber, Amazon, AirBnB, Netflix… The Internet has had many impacts to the economy. Not only to the consumer market, but widely across the service sector. There is a large amount of integration and automation to enable things like instant order confirmations. Work in these aspects of business processes is quite well established in the service sector.
Manufacturing is a key part of the economy. To remain competitive or become even more so, automation that supports innovation is also essential for the manufacturing sector. BU will be leading, under direction of Drs L. Xu and P. de Vrieze, an international consortium on a project receiving €1.2 mln in funding to address these challenges.

Advanced ICT supported manufacturing is currently gaining a lot of traction with initiatives such as Industrie 4.0 in Germany, Factory of the Future in Italy and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult the UK. Part of this development is advanced coordination of manufacturing allowing for increased flexibility and reduced costs. A virtual factory ensures exchange of data between smart machines, systems, software and design within the manufacturing chain. Manufacturing processes become more simple through plug-and-play techniques.

To enable this, the “vF Interoperation suppoRting buSiness innovaTion” (FIRST) project provides new technology to describe manufacturing assets and to compose and integrate existing services into collaborative virtual manufacturing processes. The project will see collaboration between internationally recognised academics and industry in Europe and China. As such the consortium will take advantage of it various backgrounds to address the issue from a variety of perspectives.

The FIRST consortium is a competitive consortium with large know-how and expertise in complex software systems and manufacturing automation. The research base of the academic partners will be used as foundation for innovations to contribute to virtual interoperation of smart manufacturing in the area of Factory of the Future/Manufacturing 2.0 to improve the competiveness of our industrial partners and sustainability of the European manufacturing sector. Within this research programme, 6 industrial researcher will get the opportunity to gather knowledge in academia while 22 academic researchers will absorb knowledge in industry. The consortium will provide new knowledge for GK, an enterprise software vendor and KM, a manufacturing software vendor, inform newer training in the area of big data, cloud computing to both GK and KM, and promote innovation, while the academic partners will translate their research to facilitate better understanding virtual factories.

New sociology book by Prof Ann Brooks

Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, Women's Academic Network

Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies, and Desire: Theories of Changes in Emotional Regimes from Medieval Society to Late Modernity (Hardback) book cover

Congratulations to Prof. Ann Brooks in FHSS on the publication of her latest book Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies and Desire: Theories of Changes in Emotional Regimes from Medieval Society to Late Modernity. The book has a Foreword by David Konstan (NYU) and it is published by Routledge. 

 

Fusion Investment Funding helps to expand our conservation research in northern Sumatra

Fusion Investment Fund

A series of Fusion Investment Funds since 2013 has enabled Amanda Korstjens and Ross Hill (Department of Life & Environmental Sciences) to develop a multi-stakeholder network in Sumatra and the UK, and establish a multi-cultural learning platform which provides BU staff and students with unique access to research, professional practice and education opportunities in tropical ecology and conservation. This began with an emphasis on primates, however further Fusion Investment Funding over 2015-16 has enabled us to expand this to include the critically endangered Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus), focusing on human-wildlife conflicts and mitigation, and thus broadening the scope, sphere of influence and practical applications of the network and its learning platform.

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Human-elephant conflict is a major issue in northern Sumatra resulting from habitat loss and fragmentation. A key factor that decides the potential for conservation and for mitigating Human-elephant conflict is the availability of suitable habitat, and therefore it is critical to determine how elephants are responding to the degradation and rapid loss of their habitat. In order to do this, we need to have a better understanding of their home ranging, habitat use patterns and foraging strategies to understand their response to habitat change. We also need to understand the perception and values of local communities, and to identify positive means of providing support to help balance human-elephant relationships. An opportunity related to this is the potential for ecotourism development in the region. Ecotourism is a sustainable, non-invasive form of nature-based tourism that focuses primarily on educative experiences for visitors and direct economic benefit for local people. This FIF funded Staff Mobility Network project involved funding for Ross Hill, Amanda Korstjens and Susanna Curtin to visit Sumatra to establish a new collaborative network for Human-elephant conflict mitigation work, and to publicise our work via workshops and international conferences.

We made a highly successful two-week visit to Indonesia during January 2016. We held meetings with the Head of International Affairs at both Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, and University Sumatra Utara in Medan, to cement institutional relations and start the process of establishing a Memorandum of Agreement between our universities. Such was the level of support and interest from Syiah Kuala University that we also met both the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs (Dr Sofyan) and Rector (Prof Rizal), and after our visit they posted a very positive report on social media (click here).

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We also visited the regional offices of HAkA (Hutan, Alam dan Lingkungan Aceh) in Langsa, in order to establish a working relationship and research plan for elephant habitat modelling and mitigation of human-elephant conflict. We met with Rudi Putra (Chief Conservationist) and Tezar Pahlevie (Regional Manager) to identify a field site and protocol for elephant tracking by GPS collar, and were invited to attend the opening ceremony of the Conservation Response Unit field site at Serbajadi, Aceh Timor. This was attended by dignitaries including the District (Aceh Timor) and/or Provincial (Aceh) Heads of Forestry, Conservation, Police, Military, Public Prosecution, and the Mayor. This event received considerable local coverage in the media (and through social media), helping to establish BU at the centre of activities and generating considerable good will. We have established this field area as the focal study site for our developing human-elephant conflict project, and our post-doctoral researcher (Gaius Wilson) is there now beginning the process of data collection.

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In addition to putting in place the network and working relationships for our elephant project, we also met with our collaborators at the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Programme (SOCP), including Ian Singleton (Director of Conservation) and Matthew Nowak (Director of Biodiversity Monitoring) to discuss research plans for our PhD and MRes students. We also made a successful field reconnaissance visit at our Sikundur field site, travelling up the Besilang River into primary rainforest to establish the potential of extending primate research into undisturbed forest. In Medan we visited the SOCP orang-utan quarantine and rehabilitation centre (The Sanctuary), meeting with Jess McKelson, the Quarantine Director and Project Manager of the Orang-utan Haven and Wildlife Conservation Education Centre, establishing possibilities for both research and professional practice student placements.

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Finally, we also visited the tourist area of Bukit Lawang to experience the role that tourism currently plays in orang-utan conservation to identify possibilities for an eco-tourism approach. We visited key sites and interviewed Zefri Chandra, Operations Manager of the only eco-lodge in the area, to gain an understanding of the difficulties and wider context of fulfilling an eco-tourism ethos in an environment where surrounding lodges and even the visiting foreign tourists do not particularly uphold or value this approach.

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A second successful visit to Sumatra took place during June 2016, with a mostly educational focus, but tying in with the research and conservation practice aims of the learning platform. A previous research blog describes this international field trip (click here). Also during this visit to Sumatra, as a separate activity to the under-graduate field course, I was able to receive training from Graham Usher (SOCP) in the flying and configuration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for remote surveying of field sites at a landscape scale. This was part of the two-way knowledge exchange at the heart of the learning platform that this and previous FIF SMN awards have helped to establish.

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In order to publicise our conservation research work at Sikundur, Amanda Korstjens attended the joint meeting of the International Primatological Society and the American Society of Primatologists, in Chicago, during August 21-27, 2016. She presented a poster on the LEAP project which was well received. For a brief report on the IPS-ASP conference, click here).

Please contact us if you would like to know any more information about our work in northern Sumatra, relating to primates, elephants, human-wildlife conflict or eco-tourism. Further information can be found on our LEAP project website (http://go-leap.wix.com/home).

Human Henge: Historic landscapes & mental health at Stonehenge

BU research, Research news

Stonehenge in the sunshineCongratulations to colleagues on the recently funded project “Human Henge: Historic landscapes and mental health at Stonehenge”.  This research led by the Restoration Trust. The project has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage Trust and Wiltshire County Council and has multiple partners and contributors including Wiltshire County Council, Richmond Fellowship, English Heritage Trust and Bournemouth University. From BU, Prof Tim Darvill (Director Centre of Archaeology, Faculty of Science & Technology) and Dr Vanessa Heaslip (Faculty of Health & Social Sciences) are engaged in this project.

The Human Henge research project is a therapeutic sensory experience of Stonehenge for two facilitated groups, each of up to 16 local people with mental health problems, plus carers, support workers, volunteers and staff. Over ten weekly three-hour sessions, one at night, each group walks the landscape, reaching through time to other humans whose traces are illuminated by accompanying pre-historians, curators and artists. Individual experiences cohere in a shared spoken epic which is augmented from session to session. The groups arrive inside the Stone Circle near the winter solstice and spring equinox; collaborating with their chosen artist, they decide what they do there.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Understanding disabled women’s experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting

BU research

Birthrights, a national charity for the rights of women during pregnancy and childbirth has today launched the interim report of a study undertaken by staff from Bournemouth University and the University of Liverpool, about the experiences of disabled women during pregnancy, childbirth and early parenting.

The current work arises following their 2013 Dignity in Childbirth survey which highlighted less positive experiences of women who identified themselves as disabled (Birthrights 2013). In response, Birthrights commissioned research to explore the experiences of disabled women throughout pregnancy, childbirth and the first few post-natal weeks (the pregnancy continuum). A multidisciplinary team, comprising of Dr Jenny Hall, Jilly Ireland and Professor Vanora Hundley from CMMPH and Dr Bethan Collins from the University of Liverpool, have just completed the first phase of the study, which has been released by Birthrights as an interim report today. This first phase of the study used an online survey to identify experiences of women in the UK and Ireland with physical or sensory impairment or long term health conditions during the pregnancy continuum.

Although overall satisfaction with services in general was scored highly by most women, challenges were described in women’s experiences. These included lack of continuity of carer, meaning that women needed to repeat their information again and again; women feeling that they were not being listened to, which reduced their feeling of choice and control; feeling they were treated less favourably because of their disability. More than half of the women (56%) felt that maternity care providers did not have appropriate attitudes to disability. Accessibility of services was also highlighted as poor, in some situations.

These findings resonate with recommendations from the recent maternity services review (National Maternity review 2016), which highlights the importance of personalised care, that is woman-centred, with opportunity for choice and control, and continuity of carer for everyone. The current study highlights how imperative this approach is for disabled women.

A follow-up qualitative study is underway to establish in-depth views and experiences of human rights and dignity of disabled women during the pregnancy continuum to develop our understanding of how best to enable this group. This second phase is due to be completed in Spring 2017.

The Interim report outlining the results from phase 1 is released today by Birthrights and may be found on the CMMPH web site.
https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Interim-Report-Sept16.pdf

FHSS seminar Prof McKie

BU research, Publishing, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research Training, Women's Academic Network, writing

linda-mckie-2016Prof. Linda McKie who is professor of Sociology at Durham University gave an excellent paper today in FHSS on Revitalising Spatial and Temporal Frameworks in the Analysis of Unpaid Care and Paid Work.  Her paper highlighted that published data have documented the persistence of the gender pay gap for all women with evidence of a deepening gap following maternity leave. These data generated numerous analyses on segregation and discrimination in education and working life and the many ways in which unpaid care for children, family members and elders remains a dominant factor in everyday gendered inequalities. Often little comment was made on women’s crucial role in reproducing generations many of whom will fund future pensions and services through their taxation. These intergenerational reciprocities are generally ignored in favour of the immediate time considerations for employers, workers and families with the need to generate profit, or income and resources for household or business survival.

In her seminar Prof. McKie revisited the analytical frameworks of ‘caringscapes’ and ‘carescapes’. In earlier work, it was asserted that both offer analytical potential to enhance analyses of the temporal and spatial dynamics of caring and working over the lifecourse in different places. Caring, critical to human flourishing and evident in many aspects of women’s lives, is captured in ‘caringscapes’. The framework of ‘carescapes’ explores the relationship between policies and services as determined by employers, the state and capital. Both frameworks are informed by feminist theorising and spatial and temporal perspectives on identifying and analysing how women perceive, engage with, and reflect on, the demands and pleasures of combining informal caring and paid work. ref-world

Yesterday Prof. McKie led a well-attended workshop for FHSS staff on preparing for the REF.  She offered insight into various REF processes as well advise on strategic planning and the importance of networking.   Prof. McKie has been a sub-panel member of the Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF) Sub-panel 23: Sociology for the period 2010-2014.

 

Prof.  Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Contesting corporate governance – research at BU

Research news, Research themes, Uncategorized

Prime Minister Theresa May has recently mooted a Germanic-turn for corporate governance in the UK, an echo of a heated debate over the shape of boards of directors in listed companies raging over the past 25 years. By coincidence, BU’s Donald Nordberg, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Management, has been examining the controversies over board design since the Cadbury Code was written in 1992, as investors, corporate chairmen and others wrestled with whether to recommend continuing with unitary boards or follow the German model of dual boards with worker representation. His paper, “Contestation over board design and the development of UK corporate governance,” has just won the prize as Best Paper in Management and Business History at the British Academy of Management conference in Newcastle. Could history be about to repeat itself? The conference paper is at http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/23744/.

Public Health England Physical Activity Tool

BU research, Research communication

downloadPublic Health England has launched a Physical Activity Tool which brings together data at the local level for the whole of England on physical activity, including walking and cycling, as well as data on related risk factors and conditions such as obesity and diabetes. The tool also presents trend data and enables easy comparison of local authority data, allowing users to compare regional neighbours and local authorities with similar characteristics. The tool aims to help promote physical activity, develop understanding, and support benchmarking, commissioning and service improvement.

The data is grouped into three domains:

  • Key indicators – a summary overview of physical activity including a number of key outcomes from the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF).
  • Related conditions – such as cancers, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and depression. Regular physical activity can reduce the risk of these.
  • Supporting information – population demographics, life expectancy and deprivation.

In addition PHE has also published a data spreadsheet: Physical activity levels among adults in England 2015, available on the PHE Obesity website. It presents physical activity measures (inactive, low activity, some activity and active) and key demographics from the Active People Survey at national, regional, upper and lower tier local authority and County Sports Partnership level.

Read more at: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/physical-activity

Are Sustainability Policies Good Indicators of Universities Commitment to Sustainable Development?

international, Research communication, Uncategorized

I have been invited to present as keynote on that question, at the opening of the “3rd World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities” (WSSD-U-201) at MIT, in Boston, this month. I will also be presenting a paper.

Organised by the Office of Sustainability at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Manchester Metropolitan University, the Research and Transfer Centre ‘Applications of Life Sciences’ at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, and in cooperation with the United National University initiative ‘Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development’ (RCE), the 3rd World Symposium takes the theme ‘Designing Tomorrow‘s Campus: Resiliency, Vulnerability, and Adaptation’, with a view to contributing to further development in this fast-growing field.

More information about the event can be found at https://sustainability.mit.edu/wssd2016

The conference builds on work that I have contributed to for over a decade; getting to present at MIT, after a fairly unusual career, is something that I had never imagined.

It was exciting four years ago, to be involved in the “1st World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities” (WSSD-U-2012) in Rio (2012), as a member of the Scientific Committee and a presenter. That first conference was a parallel event to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as “Rio+20”. “The Future We Want” (an outcome of Rio+20), outlined many of the measures that countries across the world should pursue and implement to address unsustainable development. Universities have a critical role to play in bringing about change but are not always doing enough of the right things – something I have been banging the drum about, since 2005.

I also contributed to the “2nd World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities” (WSSD-U-2014), which was held in Manchester, UK in September 2014. Various publications have resulted from these conferences. The Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme (which BU has signed up to) has also been established.

The third conference in Boston will result in a set of books published by Springer, as part of their award-winning “World Sustainability Series”. My role in blind-review papers, finding reviewers, editing and responding to authors etc. has been challenging. I am not a great fan of editorial work but I really have enjoyed communicating with academics across the world, about their research and sustainability projects. I am looking forward to meeting them in person when I get to Boston.

And the answer to the topic…. well, it depends!

But, at BU we are doing better than most – there is much further to go!!