Category / Business and economic sustainability

FoM academic Mary Beth Gouthro contributes to 2019 MICE Leadership Summit

Business Engagement

Mary Beth Gouthro PhD of the Faculty of Management was invited to join an expert panel for the MICE Leadership Summit 2019 this September at the May Fair Hotel (Edwardian Hotels Group) in London.  Now in its second year, the one day Summit was attended by 200 agents working in the event industry and came from UK, South Africa and Israel.

The MICE (Meetings Incentives Conferencing & Exhibitions) Summit consisted of speakers, the panel and workshop content that addressed the opportunities and challenges of the industry go forward, through to 2025.  The events sector is worth £39.1 billion to the UK economy in terms of direct spend by event delegates, attendees and organisers (BVEP).  Nurturing talent in the workforce as well as issues related to sustainability were key themes covered on the day.

Joining Mary Beth on the panel providing insights to the future proofing for the events sector were Tracy Halliwell MBE, Director of Tourism, Conventions & Major Events for London & Partners; Jamie Vaughan, Head of European Sales for Cvent and Michael Begley, Managing Director of venuedirectory.com.  The panel was chaired by Max Fellows, Director of Client Services at MCI Experience.  The value and role of degree education in the field of events management was furthermore highlighted.  Post-secondary education in the field underpins the economic sustainability of  the International Business Events Action Plan published by DCMS alongside of the Tourism Sector Deal in summer 2019.

The next Summit is planned for September 2020 and plans to incorporate a bigger presence of HE education in event management, ie to include BU students & alumni.

New paper published: Rihova, I., Moital, M., Buhalis, D. and Gouthro, M. (2019), “Practice-based segmentation: taxonomy of Customer to Customer (C2C) co-creation practice segments”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,  https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-01-2018-0096

New paper published: Rihova, I., Moital, M., Buhalis, D. and Gouthro, M. (2019), “Practice-based segmentation: taxonomy of Customer to Customer (C2C) co-creation practice segments“, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,  https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-01-2018-0096

Abstract

This paper aims to explore and evaluate practice-based segmentation as an alternative conceptual segmentation perspective that acknowledges the active role of consumers as value co-creators. Data comprising various aspects of customer-to-customer (C2C) co-creation practices of festival visitors were collected across five UK-based festivals, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with naturally occurring social units (individuals, couples and groups). Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic analysis procedure within QSR NVivo 10. Private, sociable, tribal and communing practice segments are identified and profiled, using the interplay of specific subject- and situation-specific practice elements to highlight the “minimum” conditions for each C2C co-creation practice.

C2C

Unlike traditional segments, practice segment membership is shown to be fluid and overlapping, with fragmented consumers moving across different practice segments throughout their festival experience according to what makes most sense at a given time. Although practice-based segmentation is studied in the relatively limited context of C2C co-creation practices at festivals, the paper illustrates how this approach could be operationalised in the initial qualitative stages of segmentation research. By identifying how the interplay of subject- and situation-specific practice elements affects performance of practices, managers can facilitate relevant practice-based segments, leading to more sustainable business. The paper contributes to segmentation literature by empirically demonstrating the feasibility of practice-based segments and by evaluating the use of practice-based segmentation on a strategic, procedural and operational level. Possible methodological solutions for future research are offered.

C2C

An advanced manufacturing supported supply chain – Enhancing the efficiency of the RNLI

Business Engagement, Fusion, HEIF, Industry collaboration, Knowledge Exchange

 

September will see the completion of a 2 year HEIF project which has been investigating the potential of introducing additive manufacturing (3D Printing) into the RNLI to disrupt the supply chain and enhance engineering design.

The findings of the project will be disseminated at a Business Breakfast to be hosted by the RNLI on 5th September.  The event will also be attended by local engineering businesses.  If you are interested in the project and/or networking with engineering businesses, please sign up to attend the breakfast here.

For further information on the project please contact either Phil Sewell (psewell@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Abi Batley (abatley@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

Sustainability changes everything

Sustainability as ‘an outcome of conscious thinking’ was discussed at the Faculty of Management’s ‘Sustainability Symposium’ recently.  The event was organised by Dr Karen Thompson and Professor Janet Dickinson in collaboration with the Association of Sustainability Practitioners and we began exploring ideas for new research on sustainability.

Changing economies across the globe to low or no carbon will require new understandings of the relationships between profit, people and the planet.  The new understandings are needed to inform development of new models and ways of doing business that reflect the complexities of social practices.  Three characteristics for research on sustainability issues were identified during the event:

  1. Incorporate partnerships building with practitioners and stakeholders
  2. Cross-disciplinary thinking that seeks to understand the complexity of social practices
  3. Fundamental re-thinking of existing models and ways of doing business.

New approaches to research will be required to address the challenges that face society today and will need to incorporate partnership building.  Derek Robbins, Faculty of Management, is already doing this in his research with bus companies on developing smart apps.  Dr Karen Thompson and Dr Nigel Williams shared their example of using social learning to collaborate with practitioners to develop the new concept of Responsible Project Management.

Their work has recently been shared with local councillors and they are exploring the possibilities for using a framework based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals to promote better decision-making.

Research will also need to be cross-disciplinary.  New models of business that link social practices with the possibilities arising from technological innovation, such as driverless electric cars, are required.  One participant commented:

“this is a really important topic and it was useful to have people here from multiple disciplines because they have different views and are prepared to challenge.  Personally I found I learnt a lot from the other speakers even though I’ve been working in this area for quite some time, so thank you very much.” (EC)

Research that seeks incremental improvement is unlikely to deliver enough change quickly enough.  Re-thinking existing economic and business models from the bottom-up is required, and new models must balance the need for environmental restoration, reducing conflict between communities as well as being economically viable.

As well as the dependencies between economy, people and planet, there are other dependencies to be understood.  There are internal dependencies that underpin our actions and determine outcomes.  Values and information underpin the choices humans make, and our choices determine our actions and the outcomes.  Understanding and, ultimately changing values, will clearly be very challenging.

Four sustainability ‘mindsets’ have been identified and the challenge is how to move society towards the top right quadrant of conscious awareness.  Research is urgently required on understanding what will work and what are the barriers to change.  Researchers will need to work closely with practitioners and businesses to experiment and evaluate alternatives, and they urgently need to do so.

 

 

For further information, or to discuss how these models can be used, please contact Dr Karen Thompson, Dr Nigel Williams or Professor Janet Dickinson, all from Faculty of Management.

Can sustainability be taught?

Centre for Excellence in Learning

At the FoM ‘Sustainability Symposium’ yesterday, we explored what sustainability means for teaching and learning.

Sustainability is high on the list of priorities for BU, with KPIs for aligning all courses and research with one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the launch of a Strategic Investent Area for ‘Sustainability, Low-Carbon Technology and Material Science’ last week.  Yesterday an audience of academics, students, professional services colleagues and external practitioners came together to better understand the crises facing humanity today.

Gwyn Jones, Director of Association of Sustainability Practitioners, argued for sustainability to be viewed as the outcome of conscious thinking.    Accordingly, sustainability is experienced and practised rather than learnt in a classroom and is enacted as a mindset.

Four mindsets have been identified and our challenge is to move society and our learners towards the top right quadrant of conscious awareness.

 

The question we asked was ‘What does extinction mean for business?’   It became clear that the question is relevant not only to the Business School, but for all disciplines at BU as indicated by a comment from one participant “I found it really interesting and frankly rather scary (and I’m informed) … I’m keen to try to do something similar [in my Faculty] and be active in this agenda more broadly” (FC).

Most models of business are based on assumptions that value profit and growth above all else.  Many of these models were developed during the industrial revolution and are now contributing to the destruction of our environment and society.  According to Gwyn, those who claim to have answers to sustainability, don’t understand the problem.

We discussed new business models and case studies that are based on understandings of purpose and decision-making that balances competing priorities.  One student who was with us for the day commented “I am very excited to interact with all the bright minds in the room discussing sustainability … it was a great day for me” (Sacha, MBA student).

So, what does this mean for programmes and pedagogy?  We can no longer rely solely on text books because we are only just starting to uncover the questions we need to ask.  Understanding how we can live sustainably with ‘enough for everyone, forever’ has not been addressed before and we do not have answers yet.  We need to be comfortable asking difficult questions and seeking answers in novel ways.  Social learning is one approach being used to develop new concepts.  Dr Karen Thompson and Dr Nigel Williams have been collaborating with practitioners to ask novel questions and develop new resources for education, research and practice of Responsible Project Management.

An argument made by Karen is that sustainability should not be seen as an ‘add on’ to the curriculum, rather it should be used as a lens through which we view all aspects of our discipline.

Experiential learning will be important for developing a sustainability mindset among learners.  ‘Living Labs’ are recognised in BU2025 and can be expected to play a useful role for both education and research in the future.  We need to develop learners’ sense of agency and confidence that they can make a difference in the world.  Virtual reality may have a role to play in developing the capabilities for managing more responsibly.  Lastly, we need to encourage our graduates to become advocates for better decision-making in the organisations they will work in.

For further information, or for advice about running your own sustainability event, please contact Dr Karen Thompson or Professor Janet Dickinson, both from Faculty of Management.

Sustainability Symposium

The Faculty of Management held a “Sustainability Symposium” yesterday as one response to the challenges facing businesses today. Organised by Dr Karen Thompson in collaboration with Professor Janet Dickinson and Gwyn Jones, a Director of the Association of Sustainability Practitioners, the event brought together over 50 participants, including academics from a range of disciplines, students and external practitioners.

Sustainability is not just about technology, as Professor Janet Dickinson explains:

“The Committee on Climate Change suggest the UK could achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  Technology is expected to produce 38% of the reduction, societal/behavioural change delivering 9% and the remining 53% coming from a combination of both.”

Clearly, social scientists and business experts will need to work with the technologists to develop solutions and change society if we are to achieve this target.

Nor is sustainability just an issue for future generations.  The impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are here today and, according to the latest models, we only have a very short window of opportunity before the planet reaches a ‘tipping point’ beyond which we will be unable to reverse progress towards an uninhabitable planet.  “Being less unsustainable is not the same as being sustainable” (Hugo Spowers, Founder & CEO of Riversimple).

Sustainability is high on the list of priorities for BU.  Our BU2025 vision includes KPIs for all our research and education to be aligned with one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and a new Strategic Investment Area has recently been launched in ‘Sustainability, Low-Carbon Technology and Materials Science’.

Business is one of the greatest forces on the planet.  Emerging research suggests that companies who proclaim their ‘green’ credentials most loudly often perform the worst, not just in terms of the environment but also in terms of profits and shareholder value over the long term.  Trading-off between the short term and the long term, or between domains, does not produce sustainability for a business.

One of the questions posed by Gwyn Jones was ‘What are we trying to sustain?  He suggested that what we are aiming to sustain is life.  And the question we do not yet have an answer to is ‘How can 10 billion people live in harmony and peace, equitably by 2050?’

Seeking answers to this question in a business context involves developing our understandings of the dependencies among profit, people and planet.  In other words, every business depends upon a community, and all communities depend on the natural environment.

All businesses draw resources from and have impacts, both beneficial and detrimental, on the other domains.  Awareness and understanding of these dependencies will be required if we are to make progress.  The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals can provide a useful framework for analysing impact and are mapped against the biosphere, society and the economy.

Sustainability has profound implications for both education and research.

We explored the question ‘Can sustainability be taught?’ (see a separate post on this).

Research on sustainability is likely to require one or more of the three characteristics identified during the event:

  1. Cross-disciplinary thinking that seeks to understand the complexity of social practices
  2. Fundamental re-thinking of existing models and ways of doing business
  3. Partnerships with practitioners and stakeholders representing the interests of all domains.

Further thoughts on the implications for research are discussed in a separate post (see ‘Sustainability changes everything’).

For further information please contact Dr Karen Thompson or Professor Janet Dickinson, from Faculty of Management.

New publication: Job Satisfaction and Employee Turnover Determinants in High Contact Services: Insights from Employees’ Online Reviews,

NEW PAPER: Stamolampros, P., Korfiatis, N., Chalvatzis, K., Buhalis, D., 2019, Job Satisfaction and Employee Turnover Determinants in High Contact Services: Insights from Employees’ Online Reviews, Tourism Management,  Vol.75, Dec. pp.130-147, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2019.04.030

Abstract

We explore a special case of electronic word of mouth that of employees’ online reviews to study the determinants of job satisfaction and employee turnover. We perform our analysis using a novel dataset of 297,933 employee online reviews from 11,975 US tourism and hospitality firms, taking advantage of both the review score and text.

Leadership, good custom uniforms, and cultural values are found to be better predictors of high employee satisfaction, while career progression is critical for employee turnover. One unit increase in the rating for career progression reduces the likelihood of an employee to leave a company by 14.87%.  Additionally, we quantify the effect of job satisfaction on firm profitability, where one unit increase leads to an increase between 1.2 and 1.4 in ROA.

We do not find evidence supporting the reverse relationship, that growth on firm profitability increases job satisfaction. The feedback to management in employee reviews provides specific managerial implications.

Highlights

•We use online reviews to evaluate job satisfaction and employee turnover factors for tourism and hospitality firms.
•297,933 employee review ratings and texts for 11,975 U.S tourism and hospitality firms from Glassdoor are analyzed.
•A recent extension of probabilistic topic modeling the Structural Topic Model (STM) is used for the text analysis.
•A one unit increase of the rating for career opportunities decreases the likelihood of an employee to leave by 14.87%.
•An increase by one star in the overall rating of a company is linked with an increase between 1.2 and 1.4 of ROA.

Creating a long term strategy in an uncertain digital environment

Industry collaboration, Knowledge Transfer

Developing organisational strategy in uncertain competitive conditions can be problematic. Dr John Oliver’s (FMC) research into media management tools and scenario planning provides an insight into the problems faced by firms operating in dynamic markets and has been used to create a number of instrument impacts of international reach and significance.

James Gater,a former partner at Bell Pottinger, one of the world’s leading communication consultancies and now a partner at Special Projects Partners Ltd, commented that “The ideas presented in Dr Oliver’s research into ‘Media Management Tools’ used by business executives and his follow-up research into Scenario Planning was used to good effect. Indeed, we developed a Senior Communicators’ Development Programme in which he personally briefed senior Middle Eastern clients. Of particular note, I personally conducted scenario planning exercises, based directly Dr Oliver’s approach, with a diverse range of clients helping them see how their communications functions may need to adapt to future strategic challenges. These have included several government organisations (in South Africa, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), a political party in Pakistan and an agribusiness in Liberia amongst others”.

Dr Oliver leads the Advances in Media Management research group, a cross faculty cluster that seeks to advance knowledge and create economic and societal impact.

Royal Academy of Engineering to Visit BU

Funding opportunities

Engineering matters. It underpins our daily lives, drives economic growth, plays a critical role in addressing major societal challenges and helps ensure our readiness for the future, from providing a sustainable supply of food, water and clean energy, to advancing healthcare, and keeping us safe and secure.

As the UK’s national academy for engineering and technology, the Royal Academy of Engineering brings together the most talented and successful engineers – our Fellows – to advance and promote excellence in engineering for the benefit of society.

We are excited that Research Programme Managers from the Royal Academy of Engineering will be visiting BU on Wednesday 15th May to provide an overview of:

  • Who they are
  • Their remit
  • Types of funding offered
  • Their decision-making processes
  • Time frames and planning a Royal Academy of Engineering application.

This will help our academics to learn more about the Royal Academy of Engineering, its remit and the type of funding offered, and will help them determine whether or not the Royal Academy of Engineering is an appropriate funder for their research projects.

To attend the presentation and lunch, please book here.

Please contact Alex Pekalski or Theresa McManus if you have any queries.

As if 15 years of oil price volatility was not enough… energy markets now need to deal with Brexit

The next in our series of Fusion inaugural lectures will take place on Tuesday 26 March in the Executive Business Centre on Lansdowne campus.  Professor George Filis from the Faculty of Management will be speaking.

During the course of this inaugural lecture, Professor George Filis will present recent developments relating to energy markets (with particular focus on the oil market). This will include some of the potential drivers behind the increase in oil price volatility over the last 15 years. Professor Filis will also look at the political economy of the oil market, with particular emphasis on the current status of the “petrodollar system”, the developments in Venezuela and whether Brexit could signal the onset of another turbulent period for the oil market.

Professor George Filis is a specialist in energy and financial economics. Currently, he is working towards the development of new modelling frameworks for forecasting energy prices. In particular, he looks at the predictive information of different asset classes on oil prices and oil price volatility. Professor Filis has also served as a consultant for the US Energy Information Administration and the Bank of Greece.

You can book your free tickets here.

Bournemouth University Professional development courses for tourism & hospitality 

Fusion, Industry collaboration, Knowledge Exchange, Training

18 March – 22 March  2019 Bournemouth University Professional development courses for tourism & hospitality https://tinyurl.com/BUProfessionalCourses

Join Bournemouth University Department of Tourism and Hospitality to learn how you can develop your potential and competitiveness through managing your staff, developing your product and service, understanding your customers and using digital marketing. You will also have access to our resources and networks to develop your competitiveness. The courses are delivered through interactive workshops and networking with leading academics and students and will support managers to develop contemporary knowledge of critical business aspects that influence their profitability and performance.

Part of our Fusion and BU2025 strategy at Bournemouth University the short courses run from 18 March – 22 March and can be booked individually or as a package at a discounted rate. Our series of half-day courses will be delivered through interactive workshops and networking with leading academics and students. They will support managers, supervisors and their teams in their operational and strategic thinking.

The courses will focus on the following cutting edge areas:

  • Digital marketing and branding
  • Finance & the economy
  • Tourism attractions and heritage
  • Conferences & events
  • Asian markets & culture
  • HR – managing & developing staff
  • Sustainable hospitality

View the full schedule of short courses and click below for more detail about each course.https://tinyurl.com/BUProfessionalCourses

 

During these courses we share and disseminate our research findings and we develop collaborations and engagement to develop the talent of the future. Please forward this message to your network and encourage them to participate