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 needed to deal with the major crises of our times and the growing complexities of the societal challenges that come with them, both ecologically and socially. Entrepreneurship has the potential to contribute to solving as well as worsening some of these 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 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: Transforming Enterprise Education (TrEE)

Publication:

Transforming enterprise education: sustainable pedagogies of hope and social justice

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 recognised umbrella term for a range of ethical/responsible business practices. Building on LUMS' commitment to PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education), this interdisciplinary project aimed 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 research engaged with our management education students and alumni, with a particular focus on the core strategic themes of:

1. sustainability in business;
2. social justice at work, in organisations and in society; and
3. innovation in place.

Participants were drawn from School programmes such as the full-time MBA and the Good Growth programme, as well as insights from programmes and colleagues situated in Educational Research.

The qualitative research design explored

1. how our existing ESG-focused modules raise awareness or change perceptions;
2. any disconnects between the themes of these modules and others on the same programme;
3. how the modules influence future career choices or result in changes to personal/organisational practice and
4. how participants deal with any disconnects they face when applying their learning in the workplace

Publication:

Fifty Four Degrees article: Do we need a new umbrella? The rise (and fall?) of ESG standards as a working umbrella term for ‘good’ business, by Dr 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 the dissemination of our practice. It is envisaged that 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.

Funded by Henley Business School

Emma Watton, Lancaster University, Co-Investigator

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.

Krista Court and Jo Greenwood, Executive Education, LUMS

LUMS 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, requiring a more creative and collaborative approach to research. This action research project, conducted in collaboration with a local authority partner, aimed to explore the meanings and dimensions of impact from the perspectives of apprentices and organisations, ensuring sustained impact beyond the programme and enhancing 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.

Publication:

Action Research in post-experience management education: a powerful mechanism for developing leaders

Neil Ralph, Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, LUMS and Dr Marian Iszatt-White,
Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, LUMS

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 organisational 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.

Funded by the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education

Sarah Robin, Learning Developer (LUMS Postgraduate) and Joanne Wood, Learning Developer (Library)

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 for 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 co-create academic writing development with our students. This project seeks to articulate and better understand how this co-creation impacts students who work as co-creators 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 - Professor Radka Newton and Phil Devine

We received a Collaborative Development Fund Grant from Advance HE to explore people-centred design as an enabling capability for university educators. Our aim was 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 was a period in HE history when staff morale and wellbeing were at a low. We were committed to non-extractive ways of work that created value for participants. Our project was designed to be enjoyable and professionally nourishing for participants. They were able to participate in creative and thought-provoking activities and develop their knowledge and networks.

Action Research in post-experience management education: a powerful mechanism for developing leaders

Funded by the British Council's Climate Skills Global Collaboration Grant.

Dr Hina Khan, Principal Investigator
Dr Eman Gadalla and Professor Ahmad Daryanto, Co-Investigators

In partnership with: AI Labs Indonesia and INCREASE Indonesia

The iGrow: Green Careers project is a British Council-funded UK-Indonesia initiative that aims to equip young people from underrepresented communities across the Northwest UK and Indonesia with critical green, digital, and employability skills aligned with the green economy.