The Open University Business School is offering a number of research studentships (currently circa 15,000 per annum) from 1 October 2011. Funding is available for a range of research projects.
Areas
- Marketing
- Strategic management
- Human resource management, organization studies and organizational behaviour
- Finance
- Managing knowledge and innovation
- Public leadership and social enterprise
Strategic marketing as practice
Strategic marketing as practice is an emerging area of interest within both the marketing and strategy literatures. The research will focus on developing insight and knowledge about how one or a small number of organisations undertake strategic marketing. Strategic marketing is recognised as being multi-dimensional, involving various actors engaged in both formal and informal activities. We are particularly keen for the research to reveal more about the day-to-day, often mundane, but nevertheless important, micro acts individuals engage in. We also require that these micro activities are related to the broader macro themes the organization(s) are experiencing. We are also keen for the research to incorporate the study of the non-human artefacts that those involved in strategic marketing use, as the issue of sociomateriality is yet to be considered within this setting. This studentship would suit candidates who have an interest in qualitative and longitudinal research. We anticipate that data collection methods will include observation, interview and document analysis. We are prepared to discuss appropriate theoretical constructs with candidates, but anticipate that a broadly discursive approach will be adopted
Ethnic minority community’s engagement with other groups through consumption: resist, negotiate or succumb?
The 2001 census indicated that Britain's ethnic minority population had increased by 53% to 4.6 million people. This increase has been reflected in wider economic, political and social changes both within these groups and how they relate to each other. Current studies in marketing and consumer behavior literature have previously focused on how these groups acculturate to the dominant population, often reflected in how cultural adaption and negotiation (i.e. acculturation) manifests through consumption. However, no marketing studies have studied an ethnic minority community’s engagement with not only British White society but other ethnic groups. It is suggested that ethnic communities continually renegotiate, challenge, and repeat historical and cultural biases with other groups in their daily interactions, and use consumption opportunities to demonstrate this. This study aims then to explore how these biases operate on a daily basis, what perpetuates and what encourages these biases to manifest. This study lends itself to an ethnographic study of an ethnic minority community that engages with a variety of different ethnic groups. By understanding how they interact with others, through consumption, this study will contribute to our understanding of the wider economic, political and social challenges and opportunities that ethnic minorities face.
Dual heritage individuals: negotiating cultural identity through consumption
In 2007 it was estimated that 870,000 British citizens could identify themselves as dual heritage (i.e. having two parents from differing ethnic backgrounds). Reflecting Britain’s growing ethnic diversity, this group is expected to increase rapidly over the next twenty years both in the UK and in other countries. The consumption of products and services is one means by which individuals demonstrate their cultural conformity, with various studies having examined the role of consumption in constructing a cultural identity. Yet very little research has considered how dual heritage individuals negotiate and construct their cultural identity. Previous studies have focused instead on how factors such as language, behaviour and dress, shape ethnic minority groups that have clear and culturally distinct identities. However, individuals of dual heritage may be either unwilling or unable to identify with a specific ethnic group. This studentship would suit students with interests in marketing and consumer behaviour. The research would aim to understand how individuals of dual heritage use consumption both to negotiate daily interactions and to construct, negotiate and mediate their concept of cultural belonging between two cultural groups.
Strategic management, Strategy processes, practices and learning in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) or small island economies
The field of strategic management has seen some rapid theoretical evolution in the past three decades. The field is moving quickly from the domains of retrospective sense making and planning to a view that strategy is not the result of explicit formulation or deliberate action. Instead it is viewed as more of an iterative and contextual process which is embedded in the day to day activities and differences of organizations and nations. In the former view there is a tendency to assign strategic thinking to deliberate grand designs and astute forethought, and to use self-evident tools to solve what could be concerns business growth and other situated challenges. This project is focuses on the latter view of strategy, and is interested in exploring how the process of strategic thinking, development and implementation unfolds in the practice and contextual differences of organisations based in SSA or small island economies. There is a lack of information, empirical research and knowledge about strategic management in both of these contexts. There are increasing debates in the literature that Western theories of management are irrelevant to management practice or of little insight to solve the problems faced by organizations in SSA or small islands. We are looking for a student who is able to explore this emerging theory of strategy and to empirically research, challenge and/or contribute to these perspectives particularly as it applies or emerges from these contexts.
Strategy in the creative industries after 1950
The creative industries experienced explosive growth after 1950. The recorded music industry, which had existed since the late 19th century, fulfilled its potential, the film industry was able to exploit new technologies such as video, and new industries such as television broadcasting and computer gaming emerged, creating a new market in home entertainment. Creative industries were unusual for much of this period in that they often created speculative products with very short life cycles, while the dynamic relationship between hardware and software in the industry often led to standards wars. As technological innovation moves faster, these characteristics have started to appear in other industries as diverse as food and finance; research in this area can help to prepare practitioners for an increasingly fast moving future. We are looking for a student to research an aspect of the creative industries utilising a strategic history approach, leading to a bold and original PhD thesis.
Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:
- The relationship between creative industries and the electronics industry
- Standards wars in home computing 1970s-present
- Convergence in creative industries – a new phenomenon or not?
- Industrial location in creative industries
- Corporate structure in creative industries
Human resource management, organization studies and organizational behaviour: Judgement in day to day managing
Various streams of research into management learning, reflective practice and professional expertise have highlighted the importance of judgements made amidst moment-by-moment management, professional or organizational activity. The topic of judgement is a strangely under researched topic in management, only finding an outlet when related within the context of decision making, and then focusing almost entirely on rational decision making models. There is very little research into how people make judgements within the context of the hurly burly of day to day working relations. This project will seek to remedy this omission. It is likely that the method necessary for this research will be largely qualitative in nature looking in considerable detail at how managers account for how they make decisions.
A discursive investigation of leading in organisational conversations
Recent research in leadership has highlighted that leadership, rather than being best seen as an activity or personal quality, can be understood as a relationship. However, the work that has been done in this area has tended to centre on leader activities, follower behaviour or structures of distributed leadership. This proposed work will look at how leading and following happens in work based conversations. The research methodology will be taken from a discourse analytic approach and will look at moment by moment way in which leadership is created. The research should contribute to the literatures on leader-follower relations.
Work identities as digital narratives: A cross-national study to examine processes by which students create, shape, maintain and change their work identities in a digital context: Supervised by Dr Kristen Reid
The study of identity is important as it influences all human behaviour and is the point of departure from which people make sense of themselves and others. Socio-psychological approaches emphasise the role of social interaction in creating a consistent and coherent identity, whereas discursive approaches emphasise the importance of the constructive and constitutive powers of language, narrative and discourse in the creation of identity Identity can be seen as resource or guide for sensemaking in employment situations and will influence the development of work identity and future psychological contracts. Additionally, identity construction may be influenced by digital literacy whereby digital ‘native speakers‘ use a unique narrative to define and construct their identities. However, the generalisability of the effect of this digital narrative is unclear given the digital divide among more and less developed societies. A successful proposal would examine the development of work identities within the context of digital narratives and the digital divide. The proposal should be for a cross-national/cross-cultural study, preferably using higher education students learning in a practice-based learning/work-based learning context.
Higher education governance and academic identity:
Current trends in Higher Education governance reflect the established public-sector practice of using the sector's 'experts' to form part of the management structure. For academics, a move into management is a deviation from the well-understood worlds of research and teaching. The transition between academia and management is not always a smooth one. At a practical level it has been suggested that academics lack the requisite skills for management and deal badly with conflict. However, our early research suggests that challenges facing academics in management roles are much more eclectic. Issues of power, control and agency may be undermined by the often-temporary nature of their position. The perceived relevance of the role and lack of authority may frustrate effectiveness, and engaging with new narratives and networks may have consequences for how personal, social and professional identities are constructed and re-constructed. Considering academics as 'reluctant managers' the limitations of academics in management roles and the ways in which management roles challenge academic identity we are interested in supervising PhD students wishing to undertake qualitative research in any of these areas, to explore what happens when academics move into a management role.
Finance: The role of emotion regulation in financial capability
Significant resources have been devoted to improving the financial capability of citizens by increasing the knowledge base about financial products. Such approaches have mostly been ineffective. This project builds on existing work on personal finance and emotions and decision-making at the Open University to explore a different approach. Recent advances in psychology and neuroscience have shown us that cognition and emotion are inseparable. Emotions play a vital role in all aspects of our decision-making from perception through to action. This role is often productive but may have a negative impact in many situations especially when emotions are poorly regulated. Increasingly, work on emotions, judgement and decision-making suggests that improved emotion regulation may improve the quality of decisions in many domains. Research in this area could have major implications for financial education initiatives and government policy. The Open University Business School is currently undertaking a joint project with the BBC to look (via a large scale survey) at the relationship between emotion regulation and financial capability. This project is likely to lead to the opportunity for a follow-up study with a large cohort of respondents. This will provide an opportunity for a PhD student to devise and conduct a study on the role of emotion regulation in financial capability and financial outcomes.
The international regulation of utilities
The UK experiment with privatisation and regulatory reforms in utility industries in 1980s was widely followed in many countries in Europe and the rest of the world. It is timely to examine how this regulatory policy has undergone change in last 30 years and also to investigate whether any theoretical predictions could be made bout how policies evolve. The focus of this PhD project will be on new institutional economics and how it relates to development of regulatory capacity in a dynamic policy making environment. The utility regulations of electricity and gas industries were distinct regimes set up in 1980s. These were subsequently merged. The research project will focus on answering the following questions: what are the theoretical explanations for separation of regulation across industries; how could convergence of regulation be explained? The project will use empirical methodologies, collecting evidence from key stakeholders such as regulators, industry leaders and relevant government officials.
Regulation of energy sectors in India
The post 1991 Indian energy sector has been partly liberalised and many regulatory agencies have been put in place at state and federal levels. The proposed PhD research project will concentrate on electricity sector and its regulation in India. The purpose of the study will be to answer some key questions including development of competition across electricity supply chain, development of regulatory policy and effectiveness of its implementation. There are more than 25 state level electricity agencies that have been set up since 1995 to determine electricity tariffs and regulate the quality and supply of electricity in India. There is need to examine several aspects of the regulatory practice to test the hypotheses about efficiency and competition enhancing force of regulation. Light touch price cap regulation in the UK and some other countries created competition for domestic and industrial consumers which led to argument that regulatory reforms could be used to encourage competition in network industries and thereby increase the technical and allocational efficiency in these industries. The research will require knowledge and application of quantitative techniques and an interest in financial and efficiency analysis.
Corporate governance and its impact on the firm’s performance and valuation
This project follows existing research currently being undertaken on the OUBS doctoral programme, which concerns on the inter-relation between the firm’s performance and corporate governance in the UK. There is scope to conduct a Europe wide or international comparative analysis of this relationship. Theoretically the PhD project will draw from the accounting/finance and the financial economics literature using agency theory, valuation and market based accounting research approaches. The empirical research will focus on a systematic comparison of institutional differences between developed and developing economies The project will involve quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Preference will be given to candidates interested in conducting empirical research in the finance area.
Managing knowledge and innovation: Knowledge exchange and organisational learning across boundaries: comparative studies of organic business/ agriculture
Organic agriculture is an area of increasing importance to Britain's rural economy. Research in other areas of rural economy, such as artisan food production, has highlighted the importance of formal and informal knowledge exchange; and organisational and inter-organisational learning to the development of the sector. This research project will aim to identify existing barriers and tensions to ongoing learning and knowledge exchange and will find ways of conceptualising and understanding practices which facilitate knowledge sharing, learning and collaboration in organic agriculture. The focus of the study may therefore include the building of legitimacy within existing and possibly hostile environments and reactivating/re-negotiating the legitimacy of old/existing knowledge as applied to new practices. Interesting questions to address may include: what are the facilitators of and barriers to knowledge exchange in these contexts? In what ways can we identify communities of practice and knowledge communities as drivers of social change? In what ways are obsolete or traditional knowledge or practices re-adopted/adapted? How do these practices and their representations impact on consumers’ behaviour and practices? Comparative studies across two or more countries would be of specific interest.
Entrepreneurship and the home-work interface: A study into the experience of running online businesses from home
The ability to run a business from home is a longstanding practice of the entrepreneur starting out and setting up their fledgling business. Operating a business from home may be a practical necessity in order to test out the viability of a business idea and before scaling it up and ‘going for growth’. Alternatively, retaining this way of working and actively making the choice to keep running the business from home may be a practical response to the benefits this arrangement brings such as maintaining a desired work-life balance. The appeal of the choice of business location may differ according to various socio-economic characteristics associated with the entrepreneur such as gender, age and family status. Funding is available for a PhD student to examine the experiences of entrepreneurs who work from home running online businesses. Such businesses include software and web application businesses and online community or media businesses. Questions you are likely to address will include: Why do male and female entrepreneurs embark upon this business choice and what are their experiences of this form of work? How might these experiences differ from other types of home-based businesses?
You should adopt a critical perspective and seek to identify the benefits and the tensions/ challenges of running an online business from home. For instance, the fact that these businesses are online may be advantageous in that they provide flexibility in the way the entrepreneurs can work as they are not spatially tied and can reach geographically dispersed audiences/consumers. On the other hand, the constant temporal presence of the business and the difficulty of temporarily ‘closing up shop’ may create tensions in terms of balancing the respective pressures of both home and work spheres. The project will require you to carry out original empirical data collection and analysis and to think conceptually in terms of a novel theoretical angle that will also make a distinctive contribution.
Innovation in the creative and design industries
Governments have long emphasised the importance of technological and industrial innovation, but only recently acknowledged that innovation occurs beyond this realm, with much ‘hidden’ innovation occurring in services. This belated recognition in the UK is perhaps remarkable given that the UK is widely recognised for the competitiveness of the creative industries and for industrial and fashion design. It remains the case that comparatively little research has been conducted into innovation in the creative and design industries. This research project will investigate the drivers and other inputs to innovation, the knowledge relationships with suppliers, collaborators and customers, and the key innovation management processes, within selected segments of the creative and design industries. Research questions might include:
1. what role does new technology play in innovation in the creative and design industries?
2. how is knowledge created or new knowledge acquired, and how is it transformed and applied, in the creative and design industries?
3. to what extent does innovation in the creative and design industries conform to, or differ from, the innovation processes represented in the mainstream innovation literature?
The research methodology will be likely to feature qualitative case study methods.
The role of e-business in alternative forms of tourism
Many tourists are looking for alternative forms of travel, such as authentic, sustainable or even dark tourism. Such travel often relies on small providers in remote locations of the world. E-business appears to offer a means by which such small providers can collaborate with each other to offer such travel opportunities and to promote them to a world-wide audience. The research will focus on identifying and exploring the use of e-business to provide and promote such alternative forms of tourism. We anticipate that data collection methods will include observation, interview and document analysis and hence the studentship would suit a candidate with experience or interest in qualitative research methods. We expect that the research will require data collection in overseas locations such as the locations of the travel providers.
Public leadership and social enterprise: Performance measurement: applying R0I in new domains:
How do you show the business benefits, or value the impact, of expenditure on training and development; on new ways of working in, say, health care; or on social projects and programmes? abdi Ltd is at the leading edge of a fast-moving field that is of huge interest both to business leaders and government. Their diverse client base and extensive records provide unique possibilities for rigorous research; they have agreed (subject to contract) to fund a studentship to enable that to happen. The successful candidate will be supervised by leading performance measurement researchers. He or she will choose and develop one of the lines of research agreed between abdi and the supervisors with a view to producing results of interest both to theory and practice. This is a three-year studentship so candidates must already have the necessary training and qualification in research methods. A good degree in social science or business, and some business or other organizational experience is essential. This is an outstanding opportunity for someone seeking a career in business research, organizational consultancy, a management school, or as a professional evaluator. Full details will be available before the end of March, pleasecontact us by email.
The role of enterprise policies in promoting environmental sustainability
In recent years, governments have made increasing use of SME and entrepreneurship policies in order to control against environmentally damaging activity and to encourage more environmentally benign ways of operating. The research would examine this issue with particular focus on the low carbon transition. One of the arguments for intervention is that SMEs have been slow to adopt environmental improvements, with research evidence suggesting that this is due to a combination of internal and external barriers. Since SMEs represent such a high percentage of businesses, intervention is seen as necessary for a number of reasons, including: (1) helping to meet governmental targets (e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions); (2) enabling larger firms and the public sector to source from environmentally-sustainable suppliers; and (3) ensuring that SMEs are able to take up the new opportunities of a low carbon economy. The research will focus on particular sectors, and is likely to include some form of in-depth comparative case-based analysis. The aim is to contribute to current policy debates around the effectiveness of existing measures as a way of guiding entrepreneurial activity in more sustainable directions.
The role and effectiveness of chairs of governing bodies of third sector organisations
Most research on the leadership of third sector organisations has tended to focus on the role of the Chief Executive (CE), the governing body or the board as a whole. Relatively little attention has been paid to the particular leadership role of the Chair of an organisation’s governing body or board. What research has been done across different sectors suggests that the impact of chairs is highly variable ranging from very little to very great and from highly beneficial to highly dysfunctional. It is important therefore to understand in more detail how chairs enact their roles, and what distinguishes effective from less effective chairs. The proposed PhD research project would be designed to help fill this gap by examining the role and impact of board chairs in UK voluntary organisations. Research questions might include:
- How do board chairs conceptualise and enact their role?
- What distinguishes effective from less effective board chairs?
- What impact does board chair behaviour have on the effectiveness of the board, chief executive (CE), stakeholder relations and indirectly on the organisation?
- What factors influence board chair behaviour?
