School of Management (SoM)

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Browsing School of Management (SoM) by Type "Working Paper"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 565
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    Academic entrepreneurs?
    (1989) Birley, Sue; McMullen, Ed; Myers, Andrew
    Entrepreneurial education has exploded over the past ten years in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In the USA there are now more than 50 institutions seeking academics to fill endowed posts; in the UK, there are more than 200 courses in small business in institutions of Higher and Further Education. The reasons for the growth has been essentially the same in both countries - in time of economic decline, with large firms shedding labour, new firms and small firms have been seen as a significant strand in future strategies. As a result, academic institutions have been forced to respond to a demand from both students and potential entrepreneurs, a demand fanned by a growing band of “academic entrepreneurs” . . . ..but are they?
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    Accountability for public sector it projects and the senior responsible owner: a theoretical background and research agenda
    (2005-06-03T18:32:25Z) Lupson, Jonathan; Partington, David
    The history of public sector IT capital projects is littered with examples of projects that have been delivered late, or have exceeded their budgets, or have proved unsuitable for their intended use. Such projects include the computerised passport processing system, the National Insurance Recording System and the Libra project (Comptroller and Auditor General, 1999,2001, 2003). Other projects such as the Benefits Card Payment project (Comptroller and Auditor General, 2000) have been cancelled prior to completion after the expenditure of significant sums of public money, having made little progress over an extended period of time. These project failures and their consequent negative impacts on the delivery of public services have been widely reported in an almost continuous stream of newspaper headlines. This succession of revelations about the problems of public sector IT capital projects has been accompanied by high levels of political and public concerns that the benefits of the projects are lost and that large sums of public money are being wasted. In the first part of the paper we argue that there has been a historical focus on institutional accountability at the expense of research into individual accountability. We explore how and why the traditional doctrine of civil servant accountability has declined, with a resultant increased emphasis on both the accountability of civil servants and on managerial performance. We examine the effects of managerialism on the changing subject of civil servant accountability and on the emergence of the SRO role. We formalize our arguments by developing two propositions that illustrate the basic flaws in the SRO concept that arise from subjective and cognitive aspects of understanding. In the second part of the paper we explore the potential and limitations of five different approaches to the study of SRO accountability that might take into account its cognitive and subjective components. We conclude that one of the five - experientialism, or phenomenography - offers to overcome the limitations of the others. We present three further theoretical propositions using phenomenographic principles to illustrate the argument for the existence of a range of understandings of SRO accountability. We conclude that the subjective and cognitive limitations outlined open the way for further research into the field of accountability and the management of IT projects across the public sector.
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    Achieving Excellence in Customer Relationship Management
    (School of Management, Cranfield University, 2002-12) Clark, Moira; McDonald, Malcolm; Smith, Brian
    This report covers the work of the Cranfield CRM Research Formn for the first year of its operation Directed and funded by a group of organisations across many sectors, the goals of the Forum are to enable excellence in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by defining and understanding this important management process.
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    After sales service in UK manufacturing
    (Cranfield School of Management, 1988-04) Clark, Graham
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    After sales support strategy
    (1990) Armistead, Colin
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    Agility and flexibility: what's the difference?
    (1996) Baker, John
    There is growing interest in the concept of “agile organisations” amongst management practitioners and academics. Early publications have been largely practitioner-oriented and have been at pains to claim that this is a new idea, with fundamental differences to other concepts such as flexibility and lean production. However, there has been little direct explanation of what these differences actually are. A particular area of confusion appears to be over the difference between “agility” and the established concept of “flexibility”, a confusion which this paper starts to attempt resolving.
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    Aligning HRM with service delivery
    (1997) Viney, Claire
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    An appraisal of media weight tests
    (Cranfield school of Management, 1973-10) Corkindale, David; Kennedy, Sherril
    This report considers the topic of media weight testing: that is,the examination of the effect of different levels of media advertising spending on behaviour in the market. In a simple test, for example, the level of expenditure is increased above normal in one area and the sales, brand shares or attitudes in that area are compared to those in other, comparable areas where normal weights of advertising are maintained. Although media weight tests are a much practised marketing exercise they would seem rarely to produce conclusive, or useful results. The MCRU has found that within the body of experiences of Sponsor companies only about one in twenty media weight tests have produced conclusive results. Similarly, discussion with other market researchers has suggested the same order of magnitude for the success ration. Also a study reported by Clancy (1972,1638) suggests the situation is not much better in the U.S.A. In order to formulate guidelines for successfully conducting media weight tests, it is necessary to establish, illustrate and understand the reasons giving rise to the usual failures. These reasons can be categorised in two ways: A - statistical, quantifiable reasons B - conceptual and managerial reasons, which tend to be less easily quantifiable After the problem has been defined, this report is set out in three parts:¬ Part A considers and establishes why the circumstances of the market place may render it unlikely that many media weight tests will produce any detectable changes in the market place; Part B considers the market and organisational context in which this sort of exercise is usually conducted and against which it has to be assessed; and Part C discuss the implications of these findings and presents guidelines for successful media weight tests.
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    Approaching acquisitions strategically
    (1988) Payne, Adrian
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    Assessing organisational effectiveness
    (1988) Steele, Murray