Event Details

Productivity Connections is a series of three workshops which will build network connections between policy, business, and academic stakeholders in addressing aspects of the productivity gap, both nationally and in the Northwest.

The series will be led by the Centre for Productivity & Efficiency (CPE) at Lancaster University Management School, in conjunction with the Work Foundation and the North West Business Leadership Team.

The CPE researches the measurement, analysis, management and improvement of productivity. A core principle of our Centre’s work is that productivity must be understood at multiple levels: individual activities, firms, supply chains, sectors and localities. This is especially relevant in the development of place-specific industrial strategy and in harnessing digital technologies that have the potential to intimately link together firms in business networks and supply chains. The aims of the Productivity Connections series are:

• to build consensus on the agenda for action in key areas of productivity, and
• to connect academics to other stakeholders with a view to developing projects and funding bids for knowledge exchange, collaboration and research activities.

The first workshop will be Management, Leadership and Productivity.

Management capability is a crucial element in productivity. ‘Management practices’ are a particular focus of work on productivity by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and the Productivity Through People leadership development programme at Lancaster aims to improve management and employee engagement for better productivity. Management in SMEs is of particular concern, as SME productivity tends to be worse than that of large firms.