The Business and Management Research Institute (BMRI) held its annual Day on 20 January 2016. It consisted of series of brief talks to increase awareness of BMRI initiatives and policies to staff and encourage them to be more research active. About 35 participants (academic staff and PGR students) attended the event.

Prof Ram Ramanathan, Director, BMRI started the event by providing an overview of BMRI, its objectives, achievements in the previous year, and plans for the current year. This was followed by brief presentations by leaders of research centres.

Prof Yanqing Duan discussed the achievements and activities of the Business and Information Systems Research Centre (BISC). Dr Syamarlah Rasaratnam discussed the activities of the Centre for Research in Contemporary Accounting and Finance (ResCAF) with a proposal to include “Economics” in the centre’s name to reflect the new expertise.

Dr Silvia Borelli presented the activities of the Centre for Research in Law (CRiL) and briefly presented highlights of Law School’s performance in REF 2014. Dr Christina Schwabenland briefly discussed the history of Centre for Leadership Innovation (CLI) and its activities. Details of activities in the Centre for Advances in Marketing (CAM) could not be presented as the research leader for this centre, Dr Barbara Czarnecka, was ill and could not attend the event.

Professor Ramanathan presented the new REF2020 strategy (prepared with inputs from Professor Peter Burns, Professor Andrew Holder, Professor Yanqing Duan and the Executive Dean) for consultation with colleagues BMRI colleagues. The strategy included preparations needed from individuals and also by BMRI (and INTOUR) to achieve a good performance in REF2020. Timeline of activities needed to be carried out in various quarters of years leading to 2020 was presented for discussion. There were interactions from the audience on the structure of impact cases. Some colleagues expressed that a workshop on how to prepare good impact cases would be useful.

Professor Ramanathan then presented a research presentation entitled “Adoption of business analytics and impact on performance: A qualitative study in retail firms”, where he introduced the ideas of Big Data and its relevance to the retail context, his experience of conducting a qualitative study, and also presented findings. The session was interactive.

Finally, Mr Emmanuel Mogaji, a PhD student from CAM, presented his research titled “Why we would not bank with you: consumers’ attitudes towards UK banks advertisements”. He discussed the motivation, methodology and findings of the study. Members of the audience provided good feedback for his work.

The event ended with thanks from the BMRI Director.