Alliance Manchester Business School’s Social Responsibility and Engagement Committee teamed up with the British Academy of Management this month to host a workshop on sustainable collaboration.
The workshop, organised by Dr. Eva Niesten, Lecturer and Associate Head of Social Responsibility at Alliance MBS, was a follow-up to a session held during the 2017 British Academy of Management conference hosted by Warwick Business School.
The day-long session focused on how to promote research on social responsibility, how to engage researchers in the field of sustainable inter-firm collaboration, and the most effective ways to improve the impact of academic research output in this field.
Dr Niesten explained more: “The participants presented a variety of topics addressing social responsibility and engagement in business, reflecting on issues such as value creation in responsible and sustainable supply chains, and collaboration in social enterprises.”
During the morning sessions, Stefanos Mouzas (Lancaster University) discussed the market infrastructure requirements for a successful implementation of the Paris Agreement and was followed by two presentations on non-profit stakeholders in business. Elizabeth Alexander (Newcastle University) discussed the effects of organisational identity and Rosina Watson (Cranfield University) the engagement in sustainability-oriented innovation.
The morning session was concluded by two presentations of sustainable strategies in business: Richard Fairchild (University of Bath) discussed sustainable strategies in supply chains and Arinze Nwoba (Leeds University) discussed sustainable strategies in emerging economies.
After lunch, the presentations were focussed on fundamental issues in sustainable collaboration: Mike Tennant (Imperial College London) presented a paper on cultural resources in sustainable collaboration and Lorenzo Todorow (University of Portsmouth) discussed multi-stakeholder dialogues. The afternoon was concluded by future research avenues on environmental capabilities and competencies, by Tulin Dzhengiz (University of Manchester), and on entrepreneurship in the circular economy, by Alisha Tulidhar (University of Bath).
Creating Impact
“The participants were greatly supported by extensive one-to-one feedback by renowned scholars in the field, discussing improvements for the papers and potentials for making a difference,” added Dr. Niesten. Jonatan Pinkse (University of Manchester), Wilfred Dolfsma (Loughborough University London), Qile He (Coventry University) and Albert Jolink (Coventry University) are gratefully acknowledged for their feedback to the participants of the workshop.
The workshop was organized by Dr. Eva Niesten, Professor Albert Jolink and Dr. Horace He (chairs of the BAM SIG on Inter-Organizational Collaboration).