To promote innovation in management education and to inspire evidence-based excellence in our pedagogy in response to the changing nature of learning.
Mission
To become an international leading centre for enquiry into the theory and practice of management education, empowering colleagues to develop research and evidence-based practices that have an impact on one’s own practice, and beyond.
Purpose
To develop a collaborative and interdisciplinary space through which we will explore the future of teaching and scholarship in management education. The centre focuses on promoting and establishing recognition of scholarship and research in teaching and learning underpinning LUMS’ commitment to nurture a diverse academic community and further advance scholarship-focused pathways to promotion. This centre fulfils the school’s ambition for teaching and learning excellence, contributing to global accreditations and rankings and enacting our PRME commitment. The centre is a beacon in nurturing an interdisciplinary field of sustainability encouraging the use of novel methods and ambitious systemic approaches to combine our understanding of organizations and interdisciplinary knowledge of ecosystems and planetary boundaries.
Aims
The centre focuses on the enhancement of teaching and learning through scholarship, research and learners’ engagement, encouraging colleagues to reflect on their own practice, lead debates in the pedagogy of their own discipline and impact wider education communities through globally recognised scholarship outputs.
We aim to:
Create a community of practice that co-creates innovative advancements of management education delivered in Lancaster as well as our overseas campuses to a wide range of learners delivering our degree programmes and our bespoke executive provision
Support colleagues to take their scholarship to the public domain in order to develop high-quality scholarly outputs such as pedagogic journal articles, book chapters, case studies, blogs, articles in professional magazines, published case studies and presentations at conferences
Identify innovative responses to the changing nature of learning and learners’ needs to develop new ways of engagement for learners with the School’s expertise through novel modes of delivery encompassing technology attracting new funding streams
Develop a critical evaluation framework for LUMS pedagogy praxis challenging what counts as scholarship and the methods we use to advance understanding of learning and teaching across a range of traditions and contexts
Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education launch event
Management School scholars and colleagues from the University's education development teams attended the Launch Event of the Centre. The Centre's work is around the enhancement of teaching and learning through intentional enquiry into the changing needs of our learners and advancements in pedagogy. It encourages colleagues to reflect on their own practice, lead debates in the pedagogy of their own discipline and impact wider education communities through globally recognised scholarship outputs.
Projects
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Erasmus+ project led by Karen Verduijn (PI), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Professor Sarah Jack, Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Co-Investigator
The TrEE project is about creating the resilience that is needed to deal with the major crises of our times and the growing complexities of the societal challenges that come with them, both ecologically as well as socially. Entrepreneurship has the potential to contribute to solving as well as worsening some of such contemporary societal challenges.
In this project, we propose to decouple EE from the creation of (high-growth) businesses and instead put its (creative) potential to work to help enact more just futures for 'people' as well as 'planet'. This entails shifting towards innovating without exhausting planetary resources, addressing social inequalities, and becoming more inclusive. In short, this entails a justice for all life; human and more-than-human. This means making changes in the way we currently enact EE, finding new pedagogical premises, and developing new course formats, materials, and assignments and also thinking through how things play out in the places in which they happen.
The project is designed to host a number of workshops titled Growing Roots, Green Shoots, First Fruits, New Buds, Early Blossoms, and Branching Out. Further information about these events can be found at: https://www.transformingee.eu/events
Building on Alistair Anderson’s work, this paper proposes transforming enterprise education to deeply address questions of sustainability, social justice and hope in our time of multiple and complex crises. New pedagogies, practices, vocabularies and connections help us to enact crises in entrepreneurial, ethical and creative ways, enabling us to remain hopeful in the face of unknown horizons.
LUMS funded project
Dr Marian Iszatt-White, Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Principal Investigator
In the 20 years since its launch in 2004, the ESG movement has grown into a global phenomenon, representing more than US$30 trillion in assets under management, as well as being a widely recognized umbrella term for a range of ethical/responsible business practices. Building on LUMS' commitment to PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education), this interdisciplinary project aims to leverage existing innovative management education interventions within LUMS as a platform for reshaping the School’s wider curriculum towards a broad ESG focus. The core output will be a proposal for a radical redesign of our management education curriculum, grounded in a core focus on ESG. The proposal will be based on innovative, impactful, research-led teaching and learning interventions that better prepare our students to become the next generation of responsible leaders, managers and entrepreneurs. We will also develop impact case studies and disseminate our findings at conferences and in leading management journals.
The research will engage with our management education students and alumni, with a particular focus on the core strategic themes of:
sustainability in business;
social justice at work, in organisations and in society; and
innovation in place.
Participants will be drawn from School programmes such as the full-time MBA and the Good Growth programme, as well as drawing insights from programmes and colleagues situated in Educational Research.
The qualitative research design will explore
how our existing ESG-focused modules raise awareness or change perceptions;
any disconnects between the themes of these modules and others on the same programme;
how the modules influence future career choices or result in changes to personal/organizational practice and
how participants deal with any disconnects they face when applying their learning in the workplace
Publication:
Forthcoming in the October issue of Fifty Four Degrees: Do we need a new umbrella? The rise (and fall?) of ESG standards as a working umbrella term for ‘good’ business, by Marian Iszatt-White
LUMS funded project
Professor Radka Newton, Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Principal Investigator
The Good Place Innovators team is working on developing an innovative, engaged and digitally enhanced dissertation framework for Postgraduate (PG) dissertations. The project addresses the need for greater authenticity and relevance of PG dissertations and demonstrates a direct commitment to LUMS’ Innovation in Place and responsible management education agenda. At the University level, we contribute directly to the University Civic Charter and the government’s Levelling Up agenda and address local policymakers' concerns over the graduate talent retention shortage in Lancashire.
The team has a reputation for collaborative engagement with external stakeholders, which forms the foundation for co-creating curricula focused on place-based challenges. Our external partner, Groundswell Innovation, commits to fostering engaged and impactful knowledge exchange and facilitates meaningful links to local communities and dissemination of our practice. It is envisaged students will work on local community innovation challenges identified by Groundswell Innovation that are aligned with relevant UN SDGs that impact the regional ecosystem. Civic engagement ensures the dissertation themes are co-created with the local community, delivering true impact and enhancing the campus connection with the city and the region.
We aim to provide an authentic assessment that is relevant to students’ future aspirations as responsible leaders advocating the career development and University employability agenda. The engaged dissertation embraces creative research methods, such as ethnography, non-participatory observation, and videography, essential for students’ development of systems thinking and empathy. Digital enhancement is a core opportunity to enable accessibility, inclusivity, and independent learning and to advance innovative integration with LinkedIn learning.
Principal Investigator - Dr Elizabeth Houldsworth, Associate Professor of Leadership, Organisations and Behaviour at Henley Business School
This is a collaborative project between Henley Business School and Lancaster University Management School reviewing the personal development (PD) modules used on the Senior Leader Apprenticeship programmes. Workshops and focus groups have been held at both institutions to hear learners' reports on the PD module's impact on their development as reflective practitioners. An exploratory empirical study was designed using Henley students to consider the relative degree of reflective thinking displayed by learners in their PD assignments and whether there was a correlation between the level of reflective learning and the overall academic achievement of learners. The initial pilot phase with Henley students has been completed, and we are now looking to expand the study to review a wider number of participants at both Henley and Lancaster.
The approach was informed by SoTL frameworks by Boyer and Kern et al. and in particular, the need to ‘go public’ about the study. The collaborators reflected that the study had an unexpected positive impact on their own personal development as reflective practitioners. As researchers, we have engaged in a reflective process ourselves using a letter-writing methodology to capture our experience of applying SoTL and the research project itself.
Conference papers:
Houldsworth, L. and Watton, E. (2023). ‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be’- William Shakespeare: Taking a SoTL approach to self-reflection and reflexivity. British Academy of Management Conference, Brighton.
Houldsworth, L. and Watton, E. (2023). The ‘challenge’ of SoTL: what does it take to go public? Advance HE conference, Keele.
Houldsworth, L. and Watton, E. (2023). To what extent do levels of learning exhibited on personal development assignments translate into learning and attainment outcomes for senior leaders on management education programmes? Research in Management Learning and Education Conference, Banff.
Houldsworth, L. and Watton, E. (2022). A SoTL based study of Senior Leader Apprenticeships: time well served in developing reflexive practitioners? British Academy of Management Conference, Manchester.
CeTAD has delivered the SLMDA since September 2018, underpinned by the pedagogical principles of work-based learning, action research and critical reflection to develop the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) of leaders from our partner organisations. Ofsted’s requirement to measure ‘impact’ dovetails with our own desire and quality assurance demands to do the same; however, defining ‘impact’ beyond the attainment of KSBs remains elusive. Collecting quality data from busy professionals operating in a VUCA environment is also a challenge and has required a more creative, collaborative approach to research. This action research project with a local authority partner sought to explore meanings and dimensions of impact from the apprentices’ and organisations’ perspectives in order to help ensure impact is sustained beyond the programme and to enhance our executive education provision.
Using Co-operative Inquiry, six graduates from one partner organisation worked with us to develop an understanding of what impact might mean and what it looks like to them. The inquiry group engaged in dialogue around capstone action research projects, the apprenticeship standards and current practice/outcomes, negotiating knowledge and understanding through cycles of inquiry, action and reflection. This research study offers an account of the inquiry group’s journey, highlighting key themes as identified by the group, including the power of capstone action research projects to engender engagement and wider organisational learning; the cyclical nature of impact; the importance of taking ownership of one’s own leadership practice; and the wider influence of VUCA/pandemic-related factors on practice.
Presented at the CABS Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Conference May 2023 and currently being written up for publication.
This research recognises Gallos’ (2008) portrayal of leaders as ‘toxic emotion handlers’, Heifetz (1994) view of leaders as creating holding environments for their followers, and Obholzer’s (1994) work on how whole institutions can act as containers in times of organizational change. It asks the question: while managers are acting as ‘containers’ for their staff, how – and from whom – can they receive similar support for themselves?
We argue that leaders would benefit from the establishment of ongoing support networks that replicate the functions of coaching supervision (Proctor, 1986) - namely normative, formative and restorative - in helping leaders to process and learn from the difficult emotions and experienced anxieties associated with their role. Such functions/interventions could usefully be incorporated into leadership development programmes. In addition, we suggest that such interventions have the potential to support practising leaders in developing their ongoing capability and capacity in this area by raising their self-awareness as to when they need further ‘supervision-like’ interventions and for increasing their resources for seeking/creating it.
In exploring this topic, we are working with ‘True North’-style peer support groups, taking place as part of the Core Capabilities module within the LU full-time MBA programme and comprising practising leaders and managers, to understand what psychological and emotional support senior leaders seek, and how leadership learning interventions can help participants develop ongoing personal resources in dealing with the emotional and psychological challenges they will face as practising leaders.
Sarah Robin, Learning Developer (LUMS Postgraduate) and Joanne Wood, Learning Developer (Library) Funded by the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education
The project involves interviewing past and present writing mentors in the Management School and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Existing studies have successfully proven the value of peer writing support on those students who access relevant schemes, but this project will explore the impact on the mentors themselves. Peer writing support is a clear example of how we can cocreate academic writing development with our students: this project seeks to articulate and better understand how this cocreation impacts upon those students who work as cocreators with teaching staff.
Advance HE Collaborative Development Project – Growing HE Workforce Lead Institution: Professor Sarah Dyer, University of Manchester Partner Institutions: University of Leeds – Tony Morgan, Dan Trowsdale and Iria Lopez; Lancaster University - Radka Newton and Phil Devine
We have received a Collaborative Development Fund Grant from Advance HE to explore people-centred design as an enabling capability for university educators. Our aim is to articulate the processes and values of Design Thinking (DT) in the language of the UK PSF and provide ‘ways in’ for educators to embrace DT in a practical and pragmatic manner. This is a period in HE history when staff morale and wellbeing is at a low. We are committed to non-extractive ways of work which create value for participants. Our project is designed to be enjoyable and professionally nourishing for participants. They will be able to participate in creative and thought-provoking activities and develop their knowledge and networks.
We are looking for participants who come from different perspectives from each other. Do you work for a university and have experience applying for HEA fellowship? Are you an academic or professional service colleague who supports others to apply for fellowship (either through professional recognition or accredited programmes)? Do you have experience of using people-centred design (DT, service design) in a university setting?
We are running three in-person workshops and hoping most participants will be able to come to all three workshops – we realise this is a big ask! Please apply whether you can or not. There will be opportunities to engage at each stage asynchronously online. We are calling our workshops ‘collaboratories’ to highlight the value we are placing on collaboration and experimentation.
Collaboratory 1 – 25th March, 11-3pm - University of Leeds DISCOVERY: This workshop will introduce people-centred design, not least through how we run the workshop. We will build empathy for the experience of working with the Professional Standards Framework and explore people-centred design as an approach to the framework.
Collaboratory 2 – 24th April, 11-3pm – University of Manchester INSIGHT: In this workshop we will test our synthesis of the Discovery phase findings. The group will identify and assess examples of effective approaches and interventions and prototype ‘off the peg’ CPD material.
Collaboratory 3 – 4th June, 11-3pm – Lancaster University ACTION: In this workshop, we further develop a portfolio of DT experiments identified in Collaboratories 1 and 2, and outline a plan of action for further potential to champion DT as a mindset, as well as dissemination activities.
Sophie is an Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy. She holds a BSc (Hons) in psychology and an MSc in Management from Lancaster University. Sophie earned her PhD in Management Studies, entitled ‘Women’s Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia- Bargaining with a Patriarchal Society’from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, United Kingdom, in 2013. In 2014 she took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Stockholm Business School in Sweden, before commencing her lectureship at Lancaster University in 2016.
Sophie has a keen interest in transnational feminist perspectives, methodology and the ethics and politics of knowledge-making in the social sciences. Her research focuses on the intersectionality of gender, entrepreneurship, empowerment and poverty alleviation, and their collective impact as a catalyst for socio-political change and sustainable development in a global context. Within this research area, Sophie has worked on women’s entrepreneurship as empowerment and emancipation in the contexts of Saudi Arabia and Sweden. She is currently focusing on Syrian women refugees’ cultural heritage entrepreneurship through craftwork as a means of economic survival and cultural revival in the contexts of Jordan, the Zaatari Refugee Camp and the UK.
Sophie has achieved numerous small and large grants, and worked on cross-disciplinary projects, including on the European Commission’s H2020 SIMRA project(2016-2020) with over 20 project partners from Europe, the Middle East and North African region. Her research on SIMRA focused on investigating social innovation as a means of poverty alleviation for socially disadvantaged women in rural areas of North West England. She is currently a co/investigator on the European Commission’s H2020 TARGETED-MPI project (2020-2024), focusing on researching gender equality in higher education institutions and research organisations to implement Gender Equality Plans in business schools across the UK, Greece, Sweden, Belgium and Lebanon.
Sophie has a passion for teaching courses on gender, work and organisation, and on research philosophies and method to undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA students. She is currently the course convenor for Gender and Entrepreneurship in a Global Context and Entrepreneurial Mindset. Subsequently, she has won two awards; They British Academy of Management’s Management Education Practice Award (2019) for ‘Recognising the Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Education Pedagogy and Practice’, and theLancaster University Management School Dean’s Award (2019)for mainstreaming gender and diversity in LUMS’ programme portfolio through challenging conventions, embracing different perspectives and critical thinking across LUMS’ teaching, research and knowledge exchange community.
I specialise in the area of Macroeconomic control policy, with my research rooted in the analysis of monetary and fiscal policies. I investigate optimal policy strategies and the dynamics of policy interaction, employing Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models as the cornerstone of my analytical framework.
My research interests are centred on the organization and management of work. I am particularly interested in understanding how marginalized groups within society experience power, people management, interpersonal relations, and management control within employment contexts through a Bourdieusian framework of analysis.
The historical development of management (education). Pedagogical approaches to management education. Business ethics and the wider ethos of liberal capitalism. The relationship between theories of organisation and consulting practice.
My research interest lies in international HRM, particularly national cultural factors in employment. The main focus of my research is to investigate the impact of Chinese cultural values on the Western Transnational Corporations’ HR policies and practices in their Chinese subsidiaries.
My primary research focus is on advancing scholarship in management education, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in teaching and learning. My expertise is in implementing human-centred design principles to education and work with students as partners to co-design engaging learning experiences. I champion experiential and engaged learning and inquire into opportunities for students to become involved in the university civic agenda, binging positive change to local communities. I focus on developing students' skills for life through reflective practice encouraging curiosity and criticality. My scholarship explores the application of design thinking in delivering responsible and sustainable curriculum. I also explore aspects of developing educators with creative capabilities adapted from design thinking that promote collaboration.
Professor Panteli's research interests lie in the fields of digital transformation, digital platforms and online communities. Within these areas, she has been researching issues on trust, leadership, identity and power dynamics. She also has an interest in the social and organisational aspects of cybersecurity and a long standing interest in gender dynamcis within the high tech sector.
I specialise in the use of radionuclide tracers (234Th, 210Po, 210Pb, 137Cs, 7Be, 222Rn) to study marine and freshwater processes. My PhD was on the development of a method for determining 234Th in marine matrices. I subsequently worked in the Mediterranean on a series of projects which variously highlighted the roles of atmospheric deposition, advective transport and sediment resuspension in controlling the distribution and fate of pollutants and nutrients. My freshwater work includes studies of groundwater surface water interactions, palaeolimnology and contaminated groundwater.
My interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection between literature, philosophy, history, technology studies and social science. I also conduct practice-based research relating to digital marketing and reflective practice / work-based learning.
I am particularly interested in the impact of new technologies, and the philosophical relationship between humans and machines.
My current research interests are based around youth employment and unemployment, skills and transitions. My PhD research explored the self-identities of young people on a course for those who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).
I previously worked as an Educational Research Intern on the 'Opening Doors' project run by the School of Education and Centre for Labour Market Studies at the University of Leicester. The project explored the learning transitions of students taking the Access to Higher Education diploma (a qualification which prepares people without traditional qualifications for study at university).
Monetary Policy, Macroprudential Policy, Financial System - Real Business Cycle Linkages, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models and Credit Market Frictions, Strategic Monetary and Fiscal Policies.
Centre for Consumption Insights, Centre for Family Business, Centre for Financial Econometrics, Asset Markets and Macroeconomic Policy, Centre for Health Futures, Centre for Marketing Analytics & Forecasting, Centre for Productivity & Efficiency, Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education, Centre for Technological Futures , Centre for Transport & Logistics (CENTRAL)
