Original Thinking Podcast

Placing health and wellbeing at the heart of organisations makes business sense.

Key business priorities such as productivity and staff retention have been shown to improve significantly when employers genuinely care about employee wellbeing. Younger workers today are also placing an ever-higher priority than previous generations on wellbeing over company loyalty, a trend only accentuated by the pandemic.

But to create an authentic and sustained culture of wellbeing in an organisation requires a clear definition of what wellbeing is and how to measure it. Metrics need to be simple and easy to understand, drawn from robust data sources, and relevant and credible to a wide range of stakeholders.

The National Forum for Health and Wellbeing, based at Alliance Manchester Business School, has been looking at the evidence linking wellbeing and performance, and at the specific information that organisations need in order to select the wellbeing metrics that are right for them.

At this special event the Forum will be unveiling its work with members and sharing their own personal experiences of how they have tackled measuring wellbeing in their workplaces. Members will also take part in a live panel debate to discuss these pressing issues.

Speakers include Sir Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and co-founder of the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work, and Forum member Dr Richard Heron, Independent Chief Medical Officer and former VP Health for BP, who has been spearheading the metrics initiative.

This event will be hosted by Kieron Flanagan, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at Alliance MBS.

What next for UK science and innovation policy?

The UK was an industrial and scientific pioneer. Yet for nearly as long, the country has fretted about falling behind industrial and technological competitors. For decades the UK’s not terribly impressive R&D/GDP ratio of around 1.7% has resisted all attempts to improve it.

For historical reasons, UK government R&D spending is unusually biased towards the ‘basic’ end of the spectrum by international standards, and the geographical distribution of that spending is highly concentrated on a small number of institutions in a few places – the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London.

Now the UK is once again aiming to transform its technological fortunes, with increases in public spending in the pipeline and a target of 2.4% of GDP to be spent on R&D by 2027. The hope is that this additional R&D effort will help ‘rebalance’ regional growth prospects and drive improvements in productivity.

This lecture will examine what progress has been made in this agenda, what its prospects are, and in doing so will draw out some broader questions about why we fund research and what we hope to gain from it.

This event will be facilitated by Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Alliance Manchester Business School.

This event will be hosted by Tony Venables CBE, Professor of Economics, Alliance Manchester Business School, and Research Director of The Productivity Institute.

Why some places are more prosperous

Why are regional disparities so persistent? Why do adjustment mechanisms fail, and what should policy do (and not do)? This lecture will review answers to these questions and offer insights based on a new measure of the structure of the UK’s local economies.

Tony Venables

​Tony is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society. Former positions include Chief Economist at the UK Department for International Development, professor at Oxford University and at the London School of Economics, research manager of the trade research group in the World Bank, and advisor to the UK Treasury.

He has published extensively in the areas of international trade, spatial economics, and natural resources, including work on trade and imperfect competition, economic integration, multinational firms, and economic geography.

The event will be facilitated by Professor Bart van Ark, Professor of Productivity Studies & Director of the Productivity Institute at Alliance MBS.

This month we will hear from Chaido Doulala-Rigby (Yuli), chair of ICE North West - Institution of Civil Engineers.

Yuli is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE), a Fellow of the Permanent Way Institution, and a Fellow of the Institution of Royal Engineers. With over 25 years’ in Geotechnics, her work experience includes working as a Tunnelling Engineer for Balfour Beatty/AMEC JV at the Jubilee Line Extension Tunnelling project in London (1995), as a Geotechnical Engineer for Mouchel Asia Limited in Hong Kong (1996-2005) and as the Chief Civil Engineer for Tensar International, the inventor of polymeric soil reinforcing and soil stabilising geogrids (2005-present).

Yuli is the current (2021-2022) Chair of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) for the Northwest region of the UK, a past Chair (2016-2018) of the UK Committee of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS), an elected member of the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) Executive Committee (2020-2023) and has authored and delivered several publications about reinforced and stabilised soil around the world. She is a regular judge for the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Engineering Awards in the NW of the UK, the UK Ground Engineering Awards and she is the coordinator and a judge of the Baroness Platt of Writtle Awards on behalf of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, of which she is a Liveryman and a Court Assistant. She is a registered STEM Ambassador and was a Governor of Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College until it closed in 2021. She is the first female Engineer in the Northwest of the UK to obtain Fellowship of the ICE in September 2011 and the first non-military Engineer, to become a Fellow of the Institution of Royal Engineers (FInstRE) in May 2018.

Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

At this Vital Topics event, we are joined by Andy Haldane, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Arts, former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, and Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Andy will be exploring levelling up in this Vital Topics lecture.

Levelling up - where next?

Published in February 2022, the Levelling Up in the United Kingdom white paper sets out a plan of action to spread opportunities more equally across the UK.

In September 2021, RSA Chief Executive Andy Haldane was appointed by the Prime Minister to define and develop the flagship national levelling up strategy – a decade-long moral, social and economic cross-government, cross society programme to spread opportunity and prosperity to all parts of the UK.

In this event, Andy Haldane explores how the White Paper’s ambitious vision and 12 national levelling up missions can now be made a reality in towns and cities in every part of the UK, by 2030.

Andy Haldane

During his 30 years at the Bank of England, Andy has become a leading expert on monetary and financial stability as one of Britain’s most influential economists and served as a member on the Financial Policy Committee and Monetary Policy Committee. He was Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office from September 2021 to March 2022.

He stepped down from this role in 2021 to join the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) as Chief Executive.

In addition to his contribution to the Bank of England, Andy has led HM Government’s Industrial Strategy Council and in 2009 co-founded Pro Bono Economics, a charity dedicated to using economics to empower the social sector. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine in 2014 and among other positions, is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Social Sciences and Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

This event is facilitated by Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Sponsored by DWF, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

At this Vital Topics event we will be joined by Andy Haldane, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Arts, former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, and Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Andy will be exploring levelling up in this Vital Topics lecture.

Levelling up - where next?

Published in February 2022, the Levelling Up in the United Kingdom white paper sets out a plan of action to spread opportunity more equally across the UK.

In September 2021, RSA Chief Executive Andy Haldane was appointed by the Prime Minister to define and develop the flagship national levelling up strategy – a decade-long moral, social and economic cross-government, cross society programme to spread opportunity and prosperity to all parts of the UK.

In this event, Andy Haldane explores how the White Paper’s ambitious vision and 12 national levelling up missions can now be made a reality in towns and cities in every part of the UK, by 2030.

Andy Haldane

During his 30 years at the Bank of England, Andy has become a leading expert on monetary and financial stability as one of Britain’s most influential economists and served as a member on the Financial Policy Committee and Monetary Policy Committee. He was Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office from September 2021 to March 2022.

He stepped down from this role in 2021 to join the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) as Chief Executive.

In addition to his contribution to the Bank of England, Andy has led HM Government’s Industrial Strategy Council and in 2009 co-founded Pro Bono Economics, a charity dedicated to using economics to empower the social sector. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine in 2014 and among other positions, is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Social Sciences and Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

This event will be facilitated by Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Sponsored by DWF, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

In this episode, we will hear from Heather Waters, Enterprise Manager, Natwest. With over 20 years B2B experience, Heather is now part of the Women In Business team developing and delivering the strategy to support female entrepreneurs across the U.K.

In 2019, the Treasury commissioned Alison Rose, the CEO of NatWest, to lead an independent review of female entrepreneurship. Heather spoke to us last year following the publication of the second annual review, about how she would be working with key national and regional organisations that support female entrepreneurship to start and scale.

During this episode, she will give us an update on the findings from this year's Rose Review Progress Report.

This episode is hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

At this Vital Topics event we are joined by Marian Sudbury OBE, Director, Regions, Department for International Trade.

The event is facilitated by Mario Kafouros, Professor of International Business & Innovation and Head of the Division of People, Management and Organisations, Alliance Manchester Business School.

In her lecture Marian explores why governments including the UK government actively support exporting. She will discuss why governments partake in trade deals, and how the UK government is helping businesses to export through trade deals and through export support.

Marian Sudbury

A Cambridge graduate with an MBA from Manchester Business School, Marian’s background as a senior business leader means she brings commercial acumen to the role of Director UK Regions for the Department for International Trade.

Marian has worked on behalf of major blue chip companies, charities and government, defining organisational direction and designing and delivering short and long-term commercial strategy. She was made a Board Director in 2001 for planning and then setting up the international division within a Greater Manchester research firm.

Subsequently a Senior Vice President in a top 15 research firm she ran a business division conducting research and advice contracts for multinationals such as DuPont, Caterpillar, Mars and Oxfam. She then founded her own lifestyle business which worked for clients in locations ranging from Sakhalin to Birmingham Alabama. After three very successful years of trading she experienced, at a very personal level, the impact of the banking crisis.

Her career in advising clients on internationalisation began in Istanbul, where she provided research and advice to help Eveready, Mercedes and Avon Cosmetics understand how to operate in the Turkish market.

Since January 2013 she has been working for the Department for International Trade, initially leading Global Operations and the Northern Powerhouse and now as the Director for English Regions, a national role focussed on growing the UK economy by helping high potential businesses learn and grow through doing business overseas and high quality global businesses create wealth by investing in the UK.

Marian also sits on the Advisory Board at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Sponsored by DWF, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

Our Original Thinking Lecture series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event is hosted by Sheena Johnson, Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing, Alliance Manchester Business School.

In this episode, Sheena details her research into health and wellbeing at work. She outlines her early work into occupational differences and wellbeing related outcomes, before detailing her more recent focus on the ageing workforce which formed an impact case for REF2021 and led her to create the ‘Age, Health and Professional Drivers’ Network’. She will also talk about her ongoing work in the PROTECT COVID-19 National Core Study where she has investigated the impact of the pandemic on workers and workplaces.

Sheena is an Occupational and Chartered Psychologist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. She is an active researcher into the topics of stress and health and the ageing workforce. She established the ‘Age, Health and Professional Drivers’ Network, comprising transport and logistics firms, unions and industry representatives with an interest in age and health and wellbeing in the transport sector, which builds capacity in the sector to exchange knowledge and best practice.

The episode is facilitated by Elinor O'Connor, Professor of Occupational Psychology, Director of Teaching and Learning, and Deputy Head of Alliance Manchester Business School.

Our Original Thinking Podcast series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event is hosted by Antony Potter, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Alliance MBS.

The electric future: Unravelling how automakers collaborate with suppliers to co-develop electric, hybrid, & hydrogen fuel cell technologies

Over the past ten years automakers have invested heavily in the development of new electric, hybrid, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Although a large amount of attention has been given to the policy implications of this paradigm shift in the automotive industry, comparatively little research has studied how automakers work collaboratively with their suppliers to co-develop these eco-innovations.

Using patent data from the Toyota supply network together with econometric techniques and endogeneity analysis Antony will investigate how the automaker co-develops innovations with different suppliers. His findings unravel the unique way in which the automaker collaborates with external suppliers to develop buyer-supplier innovations, supplier-supplier innovations, supplier innovation triads, and inter-firm knowledge spillovers. Finally, he will discuss the managerial and policy implications of his findings considering the transition to net zero in the automotive industry.

Professor Antony Potter is the Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Alliance Manchester Business School (University of Manchester). His research interests focus on Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, and Innovation & NPD. In particular, his research investigates how different operations and SCM practices enable firms to co-develop innovations within global supply networks, especially for electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles. In addition, he undertakes interdisciplinary research into supply chain risk management, supplier disruptions, lean manufacturing (the Toyota Production System), and the evolution of clusters and supply networks.

His published articles have appeared in leading international journals including the Journal of Operations Management (a Financial Times top 50 journal), Research Policy (a Financial Times top 50 journal), Journal of Product Innovation Management (Grade 4 journal, ABS list), International Journal of Operations and Production Management (Grade 4 journal, ABS list), Journal of Economic Geography (Grade 4 journal, ABS list), International Journal of Production Economics (Grade 3 journal, ABS list), Regional Studies (Grade 3 journal, ABS list), Production Planning & Control (Grade 3, ABS List), Journal of Cleaner Production, and Trends in Food Science and Technology.

He has won a number of international awards for his research, such as the Emerald Literati Award for Excellence: Highly Commended Award (2020), Runner up for IJOPM’s 2019 Best Paper Award, the Chris Voss Highly Commended Award (EUROMA, 2013), Chris Voss Best Paper Award (EUROMA, 2012), and the Chan Hahn Best Paper Award Finalist (Academy of Management, 2012). In addition, he won the 2019 Runner Up Prize for the 'Teacher of the Year Award' and the 2022 ‘Researcher of the Year Award’ at Alliance Manchester Business School.

The event is facilitated by Joao Quariguasi Frota Net, Professor in Operations Management at Alliance MBS.