Business Brief

Adam Smith Business School Student Wins Undergraduate of the Year Award

Congratulations to Joshua Brown, Business Economics student, who has been awarded the Mathematics, Economics and Finance Undergraduate of the Year Award, sponsored by Gazprom.
Joshua, who is currently in his final year, spent his junior honours year at the University of Melbourne and has been an ambassador for the University’s Study Abroad programme.

Joshua was presented with the award by Alistair Milnes, Gazprom, and Sir Trevor McDonald OBE at a special event held in London on Friday 19th April 2013. The award includes a summer internship at Gazprom’s headquarters in London and a week in their Singapore office.

Joshua Brown commented, “Hopefully winning the award, alongside a highly recognised degree from the University of Glasgow and an exchange at the University of Melbourne will enhance my career prospects and allow me to enter a graduate scheme in the field that I wish to enter, one that allows me to interact with markets. Glasgow University have been key in this process, as the flexible structure of the course allowed me to try different subjects in order to find the one that best fit what I wanted to do. Had I been forced to stick with the subject I chose straight out of school, I certainly would not be in the position I am now!”

Glasgow Team Wins CIMA Global Business Challenge 2013 UK Final

A team of four Glasgow students have won the UK round of the prestigious CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) Global Business Challenge. The Glasgow team, named “The Big Four” is comprised mainly of undergraduate students Petr Perina (MA (SocSci) Business Management and Economics), Eliska Mazanova (MA (SocSci) Business Management and Economics), Jaromir Sida (BSc Applied Mathematics and Finance) and Scott Marquis (BSc Mathematics).

On Friday 14th June, “The Big Four” competed in the national final, held at the headquarters of News International in London, against three teams from other UK universities. The finalists were required to analyse a complex business and financial case study, produce a cogent set of recommendations and present their report to a judging panel of business experts and in front of an audience of CIMA delegates. Representatives from other universities and recruiters from businesses such as Nintendo, Tesco and Barclays were also present in the audience.

The Glasgow team were ultimately announced the UK champions and are set to represent the UK in the global final against 100 participants from 24 countries in Johannesburg, South Africa on 28th – 29th August 2013.

The CIMA Global Business Challenge is an international competition which aims to bring out the best in the business leaders of tomorrow and to showcase fresh young talent in the field of business management. Over ninety teams from all over the UK registered and over fifty entries were received for Stage One of the competition.

Professor Farhad Noorbakhsh, former Head of the Adam Smith Business School, comments, “Winning the CIMA Global Business Challenge UK final against such a high level of competition is an outstanding achievement. The Glasgow Team exhibited strong teamwork and excellent analytical and presentation skills to be crowned the UK champions. To go head-to-head with finalists from countries including Singapore, Russia, China, Pakistan and South Africa in the international final is a fantastic opportunity both in terms of professional experience and career development.

"I wish the Glasgow Team every success in the global finals."

Adam Smith Legacy Lecture

On the 13th March 2013, the Adam Smith Business School, in conjunction with the College of Social Sciences, held an event to promote the renaming of the School and the legacy of Adam Smith. The lecture aimed to reinforce and inform our stakeholders’ understanding of the legacy’s currency and impact and was well attended by students, staff, alumni and friends.

The evening commenced with a welcome from Professor Farhad Noorbakhsh, former Head of the Adam Smith Business School, who introduced speakers Professor Ronald MacDonald, Adam Smith Chair of Political Economy and organiser of the Adam Smith Legacy Lecture; Emeritus Professor Chris J Berry and Dr Craig Smith, Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences, all of whom have written extensively on Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Lecture presentations and abstracts can be viewed on the Adam Smith Business School website: www.gla.ac.uk/schools/business/newsandevents

Community for Internationalisation and Enterprise Research (CIER) Wins Two British Academy/ Leverhulme Grants

Dr Margaret Fletcher, Professor Trevor Buck (both Adam Smith Business School staff) and Dr Emmanuella Plakoyiannki (Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki, Greece) have been successfully awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme research grant.

The two year project (2013-15) is titled, “Case Study sampling: A Study of Practices in International Business”. The study will involve the analysis of case selection practices used by researchers in leading international business journals. The aim is to identify good practice that will support researchers in their case selection and sampling in the field, that will result in more trustworthy and credible conclusions for theory, policy and practice.

Dr Yee Kwan Tang, in collaboration with Professor Stephen Young (also staff of the Business School) and Dr Victor Konde (ATDF Entrepreneurship Hub, Zambia), have also been awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme research grant for a project titled “Facilitating Entrepreneurship in Africa: A Study on the Effectiveness of Electronic Business Platforms”. The project aims to uncover the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of electronic platforms as the primary sources of business knowledge, network development and identification of entrepreneurship opportunity by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa. The project involves a large-scale survey on MSMEs in Ghana and Zambia. The study is part funded by the Adam Smith Research Foundation and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

Whyte & Mackay hosts visit for MSc Strategic Marketing students

Scottish alcoholic beverage producer Whyte & Mackay Ltd recently hosted a site visit for three MSc students studying Export Marketing at the Adam Smith Business School. The visit was arranged by Martin Cotter, Planning and Customer Service Manager, during a visit to the Business School where he gave a guest lecture on Whyte & Mackay’s “Export Supply Chain”.

The students, Shwetha Dhanturi, Mahir Can Uenlue and Dalia Valerion Giusto, were invited to spend a day at Whyte & Mackay’s head office in St Vincent Street and had the opportunity to meet with different employees from across the organisation. This gave the students an insight into the company, the different products it produces, its marketing strategies and an overview of customer operations, which they could apply to their learning.

The students had a very successful trip and explained:

“The company visit gave us a great insight into the organisation. It was a very valuable experience and the people from Whyte & Mackay were very welcoming and friendly. We all enjoyed it very much and we would like to thank Margaret Fletcher for making this possible!”

Knowledge-exchange workshop with industry and policy: Linking Theory and Business Practice

The Community for Internationalisation and Enterprise Research (CIER), Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, hosted the second Entrepreneurial Learning in Organisations Network workshop on 16 April 2013. The network was launched by the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) during 2012. The event brought together over 30 academics, business managers, support agencies and policy makers to talk and work together to share interests and ideas on learning and entrepreneurship.

As firms come under increasing pressure to complete in the global market place, we need to understand more about what managers and firms need to know and learn to compete internationally.

This workshop focused on entrepreneurial learning for business growth and internationalisation and reflected on areas of current and future research, and policy.
The workshop aimed to:

• Present and discuss 10 years of research on knowledge acquisition and learning for international growth
• Inform and influence future research priorities
• Policy discussion on support business growth and internationalisation

The workshop was organised by Dr Margaret Fletcher, CIER, the University of Glasgow in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Ulster.

During the day Dr Margaret Fletcher and Professor Marian Jones (CIER) presented their research findings on entrepreneurial learning for internationalisation and Rakesh Sondhi, MD of BMC Global Services Ltd, consultant with the Scottish Enterprise internationalisation support programmes provided a practitioner perspective. Professor Pauric McGovern, University of Ulster chaired the day and led group discussions where we heard the perspectives of businesses and considered practical implications of the research. Professor Pavlos Dimitratos (CIER) led a panel Q&A session with businesses.

To conclude the day we identified action points with regards to research, business practice and support. Many thanks to CIER researchers Professor Stephen Young, Dr Alfredo D’Angelo and doctoral researcher Nicolas Li, Scottish Enterprise and Nick Kuenssberg who helped to promote the event to businesses, and a special thanks to the businesses who participated on the day.

www.gla.ac.uk/schools/business/research/centres/cier/

For queries about the Entrepreneurial Learning in Organisations Network please email Dr Tamara McNeill at t.mcneill@mmu.ac.uk or visit www.isbe.org.uk/Entrepreneurial-Learning-in-Organisations-ELON

French Finance Association Conference selects ASBS paper as one of the best three papers submitted

No Good Deals-No Bad Models

The above paper, which was co-authored by Adam Smith Business School academic Professor Mario Cerrato, was presented at the 30th Conference of the French Finance Association on 28th May 2013 in Lyon, France. The conference is one of the best finance conferences held in Europe and it attracts top international researchers such as Rene’ Stulz (Ohio Business School), Robert Engle (Stern School of Business) and Jen-Charles Rochet (Zurich University). The paper was selected as one of the best three papers (out of 240 papers) presented at the conference.

The paper focused on the problem faced by an investor of pricing complex contingent claims and how the investor seeks to make his valuations robust to model uncertainty. The authors constructed a notion of a model uncertainty induced utility function and showed that model uncertainty increases the investor’s effective risk aversion. Using the model uncertainty induced utility function, the “No Good Deals” methodology of Cochrane and SaáRequejo (2000) was used to compute lower and upper good deal bounds in the presence of model uncertainty.

John Mather Trust Rising Star Award Winner

The School is pleased to announce that the John Mather Trust Rising Star Award of £10,000 has been awarded to student Ying (Olivia) Feng for her ICAN business proposal, an interactive and entertaining method of delivering financial management education to a 16+ age group.

The Rising Star Award is designed to identify and support Rising Stars and promote innovation that will benefit socio-economic wellbeing of the greater Strathclyde area of the West of Scotland.

A panel made up of experts drawn from the Adam Smith Business School Advisory Board and the John Mather Trust judged the proposals and selected the finalist. Olivia was awarded £10,000 to progress with her proposal which must be completed within 18 months of the award.

Professor Robbie Paton, Director of Graduate Studies, commented: “Olivia’s business concept builds upon her doctoral research, dealing as it does with issues relating to the psychology of financial engagements, however, the business itself will be driven through interactive virtual learning environments. The panel was impressed with Olivia’s drive, business acumen and the potential of her ideas.”

‘We wish her luck.’

AMBA Global Ambassadors

Alec Pearson had the great privilege in February, in his role as Global AMBAssador, of representing the School at the AMBA Global Leadership Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference gathered 33 Global AMBAssadors from business schools across the world, with the aim of developing a strong knowledge sharing network, together with ethical and innovating leadership traits.

Collaboration, responsible and sustainable leadership, entrepreneurship and the power of international networks were the main themes and discussion points to emerge from the conference. The conference included presentations from NASA, CNN and the Distill Foundation, alongside social entrepreneurs from across Africa, consultants and business school Deans. They all demonstrated and discussed the role MBAs and management education can play in changing the world of business. Alec and his fellow AMBAssadors visited a township in Cape Town and questioned what role they could play to improve the lives of those who live there and also who should be responsible? One business school Dean asked whether this should be down to businesses, government or charity. Unanimously they all believed it was the responsibility of businesses.

For further information on the Global AMBAssadors programme, please contact Alec Pearson (alec.pearson@glasgow.ac.uk) or visit: www.ambaguide.com/the-mbaexperience/global-ambassadorsprogramme/

Strategic Management Society: Glasgow Conference

Dr Ignacio Canales, Reader in Strategy at the Adam Smith Business School, summarises the recent Strategic Management Society “Strategy in Complex Settings” conference, which took place in Glasgow on 20th – 22nd June 2013.

Inaugurated by Professor Marjorie Lyles, president of the Strategic Management Society (SMS), the SMS Special Conference took place in Glasgow, which is the first time the conference has been held in Scotland and it has been thirty years since it was last held in the United Kingdom.

Nearly one hundred and fifty academics in strategy from across the world convened in the Marriott Hotel Glasgow to present and discuss their work on business strategy in complex settings. World leading strategy thinkers such as Professor Iain Mitroff and Professor Roy Suddaby mixed with leading UK strategist and business people, including Sir Harry Burns, Ms Kate Buell-Armstrong and Mr Sandy Rowan to openly discuss how to address “wicked” problems in multi-level and interlocked settings. The conference highlights included an inaugural speech by the Lord Provost in Glasgow City Chambers and an off-site dinner in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

The Strategic Management Society was represented by three of its interest Groups: Strategy Process, Stakeholders Strategy and Strategy as Practice. The three interest groups ran parallel sessions where different paper presentations addressed Strategy in Complex Settings.

Three plenary sessions saw master talks by the keynote speakers and for the first time in the SMS, crossroads sessions were introduced to bring together the different interest groups in a fruitful discussion. Before the conference kicked off a successful Doctoral Workshop was ran by Steve Floyd, Roy Suddaby, Cathy Maritain and Richard Priem at the Adam Smith Business School addressing the issue of what and how to publish.

In all, the conference was a success and three years of hard work organising it reached fruition. I would like to thank the SMS office for their immaculate organising capabilities and my two co-chairs, Donald MacLean (University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School) and Robert MacIntosh (Heriot-Watt University) for a fantastic job.

8th Global Conference of the Academy of Marketing’s Brand, Corporate Identity and Reputation Special Interest Group

The 8th Global Conference of the Academy of Marketing’s Brand, Corporate Identity and Reputation Special Interest Group took place on April 3-5, 2013 in Oporto, Portugal. It was organised from the Catholic University of Portugal and it was jointly chaired by Dr Joana César Machado, Catholic University of Portugal, Oporto, and Dr Leonor Vacas de Carvalho, Évora University. In the conference 100 academics from 23 countries were able to share their research findings, exchange their ideas on branding and develop their international research network in this research area.

The University of Glasgow contributed considerably to this conference with a significant presence. Two members of staff from the Adam Smith Business School (Professor Luiz Moutinho and Dr Cleopatra Veloutsou) were Keynote speakers in this event, while Dr Veloutsou also presented a research paper on the formation of Brand Relationships, with data collected from an ESRC funded project.

Professor Luiz Moutinho opened the conference with the Plenary Session titled “Methodolatry, PolyMeasures and Reverse Branding”. His talk was about the dangers attached to methodolatry and scientism and the needed focus on a journey of knowledge and society relevance. He covered neo-Kantian and Aristotelian perspectives, as well as perspectives on Adductive Reasoning. Professor Moutinho made the case for the use of Polymeasures in academic research in marketing-bio-physio, experience sampling, implicit/indirect, self-reporting, neuroscience and psychophysics measures. He also mentioned many new trends in branding that academics should be researching to advance knowledge. Finally, he called for the use of future research methods.

Dr Cleopatra Veloutsou closed the conference with a Plenary Session titled “My Brand, Your Brand, Our Brand”. In her presentation she identified sources of signalling that contribute in the development of brand reputation in the minds of various audiences. She argued that in the new digital environment that companies operate in, the company controlled sources of signalling in the formation of reputation, such as advertising, promotion or product related decisions, are losing their power. Other semi controlled or totally uncontrolled sources of information, such as the competitors, word of mouth, news on the brand or other related entities (co-brands, country of origin etc), are often influencing the audiences more when they are forming their view on brands. Dr Veloutsou pointed out that this trend is changing the manner that companies should manage brands and possess questions on the “ownership” of brands. She also indicated that academics should be thinking about research projects that can help them better understand the new reality in the development of brand reputation and be able to support brand strategists to deal with this new reality.