October 2011

Maria Obeso passed her viva voce

Maria Obeso - our Visiting Scholar from the University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain, successfully passed her viva voce on Thursday, 6 October 2011. Her European PhD thesis was entitled ‘Knowledge Geostrategy: Analysis of strategic behaviour in order to obtain organisational success parameters’. The thesis is a quantitative study that relates knowledge factors with national econometric data to categorise nations with regard to how they manage knowledge. As a European PhD, the thesis was presented in both English and Spanish. Maria's supervisor Dr Elly Philpott joined the University panel which oversaw the viva.

Maria thanked Dr Philpott, Prof Yanqing Duan and Prof SJ Perkins in the acknowledgements section of her thesis. Maria will now be taking up a post as Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration in the University of Cantabria.

September 2011

Research on knowledge transfer and development - BISC researchers presented their findings at ECKM 2011

BISC researchers, Professor Yanqing Duan, Dr Markus Haag and Mr Meysam Poorkavoos, attended the 12^th European conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM) hosted by the University of Passau, Germany. The ECKM conference was held on 1- 2 September and welcomed researchers and practitioners in different areas of knowledge management from all over the world.

The conference provided a communication forum bringing together academia and industry for discussing the progress made and addressing the challenges faced in organisations. Building upon existing work on knowledge management and organisational learning, the conference promoted interdisciplinary approaches from computer science and information systems, business, management and organisation science as well as cognitive science.

Yanqing chaired a session on knowledge management in SMEs. Meysam presented his research on “Understanding inter-firm networks and types of innovation in SMEs: A social network perspective”. The presentation was about the impacts of different social network characteristics on radical and incremental innovations in SMEs in high-tech sector. Meysam is a PhD student at BISC, supervised by Professor Yanqing Duan and Professor John Edwards (external).

Markus’s presentation was on “Understanding Personal Knowledge Development in Online Learning Environments: An Instrument for Measuring Externalisation, Combination and Internalisation”. Markus received his PhD earlier this year under the supervision of Professor Yanqing Duan, Professor Brian Mathews and Professor John Edwards.

June 2011

Obaid Almalki attends prestigious conference

BISC PhD student Obaid Almalki attended a prestigious conference hosted by WMG at the University of Warwick, 23-25June 2011 . The 5^th Saudi International Conference 2011 (SIC05)  welcomed HRH Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom, who visited the conference on Friday 24 June.

The conference was multidisciplinary with research papers from international academics and Saudi postgraduate students covering the subjects of Medical Science, Health & Social Studies, Engineering, Applied Science, Business and Economics, Politics and Law, Education and Linguistics, Humanities and ICT. The conference was organised by the Saudi Students' Clubs in the UK and Ireland. The programme included paper and poster presentations, professional training workshops, plenary panel discussions and a Saudi exhibition day.

Accepted papers were published in the conference proceedings, under an ISBN reference. Presenters of outstanding papers and posters were singled out according to scientific committees and judges’ arbitration in each field.

Obaid presented his research on "developing a framework for evaluating e-Government success". He is supervised by Professor Yanqing Duan and Dr Ingo Frommholz.

April 2011

Voice & Value 2011

The University cooperated with colleagues at the CIPD and LSE to run the 11th in the Voice & Value series on 1 April. This year's theme turned the spotlight on public services to examine the role employee voices can play at a time of renewal in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that began in autumn 2008.

Commenting on the day co‑convenor of the event, BMRI director Prof. Stephen J. Perkins said: "We had the usual high turn‑out, high octane intellectual mix of policy shapers, businesspeople and leading trade unionists joining in dialogue with academics from a range of high profile institutions.

"A key take‑away was that while public services are experiencing the beginning phase of paradigm shifting change, with a government set on distributing erstwhile state activities among a public‑private‑voluntary organisational cocktail, sustaining employee goodwill is a prerequisite".

While views from researchers, policy analysts, and organisational decision takers differed on the 'how' and pace of change, a common theme was that managerial innovation will be demanded to rebuild trust and co‑operation among a workforce increasingly reluctant to be led without buy‑in to the goals, trust in the change agents, and opportunities to have a real say in the detail of what gets done.

A complete set of notes recording ideas and evidence, as well as the day's 'great debate' will be available online soon. Watch this space for download details.

March 2011

Workshop for the Saudi Society

Around 100 members of the Saudi Society, comprising individuals currently studying at undergraduate and postgraduate level at UK universities, attended a three‑hour workshop today in the Luton Campus Centre main lecture theatre. At the request of the Society's organisers BMRI director, Prof. Stephen J. Perkins spoke to a very receptive audience on the topics of leadership and managing people. Questions raised by participants ranged around the role of line managers in people management, leadership characteristics and developments, and top tips for those seeking generalist and specialist careers involving leading and managing others in all types of organisational settings.

January 2011

JISC bidding success

A research proposal submitted by the team in BMRI’s Business and Information Systems Research Centre (BISC) has been selected for funding by JISC subject to two conditions. The project entitled “Supporting institutional decision making with an intelligent student engagement tracking system” demonstrated how the adoption of a student engagement tracking system (intelligent engagement) can support and enhance institutional decision making.

To achieve this aim, the project will:

• Assess the current and expected institutional BI maturity level in the three chosen BI data subject categories in general, and the intelligent engagement system in particular
• Work closely with the BI provider SSP to make better use of student tracking data in support of institutional decision making through developing a BI decision support toolkit using data collected by the student engagement tracking system and other internal and external data sources
• Promote the use of JISC infoNet BI resources in the institution and explore the possibility of integrating the student engagement tracking system with JISC infoNet BI resources
• Showcase examples in relation to the realisation of a successful BI implementation (intelligent engagement) in the University of Bedfordshire and promote wider adoption of BI in the UK Higher Education sector

The project will be led by Dr Stephen Jackson and supported by the University’s Knowledge Hub and research development office. Key team members include Professor Yanqing Duan and Dr Vincent Ong in BISC. Senior management staff in the university will also be involved in providing decision support needs, user specifications and piloting the toolkit.

The initial bidding success is an excellent example of the collaboration at the university level involving academic staff in the Business School, the innovation director and research development manager in the Knowledge Hub.

More information: about the project