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Research Showcase from the OU Business School
OU Business School MBA Alumni Association
This event took place on 23rd November 2005
Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall Campus, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
This event starts at 19.30
Paul Quintas, Professor in Management will give a brief introduction to the scope of OUBS research activity, our research strategy, and pointers to further information. Learn how research can
better inform business strategy and the needs and challenges of management practice.
Research website can be found at www7.open.ac.uk/oubs/research
Research presentations:
Future Perfect? Findings of a Delphi Study of the Future of Intranets and Enterprise Portals
Elizabeth Daniel, Professor of Information Management
Professor Liz Daniel will report on a study undertaken recently in conjunction with the Intranet Benchmarking Forum to explore the future of intranets and enterprise portals. The study used the Delphi technique, in which a number of experts share their views over a number of rounds in order to allow a consensus of the future to be built. She will describe how the experts involved in the study believe that these systems could have significant impacts on the future of organisations, impacting on how individuals work, where they work and who they can work with. However, the study also identified a number of reasons why the opportunities offered by these systems may not be fully realised and Liz will consider how these limiting factors can be addressed.
The globalisation of personal data
Dr Kirstie Ball, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Studies
As part of her role in a current research project, Dr Ball has investigated the role of personal data in two outsourced call centres: one in South Africa and one in the UK. There is a growing concern among UK consumers that outsourced contact centres have to understand their needs, and may treat their personal data differently. Call centres contain two kinds of personal information: agents consistently handle customers' information, as well as having their own personal performance information evaluated by their managers. Dr Ball's research concerns how different the organizational factors which affect how far these two kinds of personal information travel within the call centre, the privacy awareness of the staff who handle data, and what business processes are supported by the use of data. Dr Ball's presentation will explore some of the preliminary findings from one of the case studies, and explore their implications for management.
Performance Measurement - beyond the Sunday School story
Rob Paton, Professor of Social Enterprise
Over the last two decades performance measurement has become ever more pervasive, spreading into hard-to-measure areas like service quality, intellectual capital and social outcomes. Along with its close cousin, target setting, it is now de riguer in government, though intensely controversial. So what is going on? ? and how can this trend be squared with 50 years of research reporting the prevalence and seriousness of measurement dysfunction? Rob Paton will report his and his colleagues continuing work on the uses and abuses of performance measurement.
The globalisation of management practice: truth or illusion?
Mark Fenton-O?Creevy, Professor of Knowledge Management and Director of Research
Mark Fenton-O?Creevy will draw on recent research (including his own) to discuss the transfer of management ideas and practices across national boundaries. Do management practices travel well or do they get lost in translation? Is Europe becoming more like the USA or is a genuinely European approach emerging or is the picture more fragmented? He will go beyond simple ideas of culture to consider the ways in which different national economic and social institutions affect the practice of management. He will compare and contrast the different varieties of capitalism practiced around the world and consider the implications they have for the practice of business and management.
Question & Answer session ? Close
If you would like to attend this event please email - Claire Wyburn-Mason |
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 Click below to play the event (90 minutes) |
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