Research Areas

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Accounting and Finance

Researchers in accounting mainly cluster around two main areas: firstly governance and ethics and second, accounting history.

The AGES group (accountability, governance, ethics and sustainability) undertakes research projects unified by the overarching theme of accountability. It has enjoyed recent funding support from a number of external bodies including ACCA, ESRC and EPSRC. It has a strong group of PhD students, including home and international candidates, and a number of strong and active international links.

Specific research projects include:

  • Corporate reporting
  • Business ethics
  • Corporate philanthropy
  • Social and environmental accounting
  • Sustainability and social measurement
  • Third sector accountability. 
  • Accounting history

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Economics

The Economics section covers a broad range of topics in the economics and finance disciplines, and is able to offer supervision in these areas.  It houses the Economics of Safety, Health, Environment and Risk (ESHER) research group, and the Quantitative Research in Economics and Finance (QREF) group, but is able to offer supervision in most areas of microeconomics, macroeconomics and finance.

The following represent the primary research areas of staff:

  • Applied econometrics
  • Applied microeconomics, including industrial, regional and public economics
  • Banking, empirical finance and risk management
  • Financial markets, insurance and behavioural finance
  • Health, risk, safety, environmental and experimental economics
  • Labour market economics and applications
  • Macroeconomics, trade, FDI and international economics

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HRM and Organisational Studies

Members of the group have a wide range of research interests in the field of human resource management, organisation studies and management history. Currently, there are particular interests in the field of international political economy as well as in new patterns of work and organization, public sector management, gender and industrial relations.

Staff members engage in individual research and collaborate with others at universities across the UK and abroad.

Specific interests include: 

  • Business elites and corporate governance in France and the UK
  • Entrepreneurial philanthropy
  • The ILO and the ‘decent work’ agenda, the harmonisation of international aid
  • Critical perspectives on international business, post socialist transition, migration and trans –nationalism
  • Public service mergers and multi –agency working in the public sector
  • New working patterns in mental health services
  • Gender and work
  • The application of Foucauldian and governmentality perspectives to HRM and management  – especially to developments in public services in the UK
  • Graduate careers

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Innovation and Enterprise

Our research group activities broadly cover the areas of innovation, enterprise/entrepreneurship and policy. We have particular interests in the development and pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities within and outside existing organizations and on the way in which emerging technology trends are interacting with new businesses, management and policy models.

Some specific areas of research and teaching expertise include: 

  • Corporate entrepreneurship
  • E-Business, E-Government and E-Learning
  • Entrepreneurial opportunities and new venture emergence
  • Information systems and social informatics
  • Innovation management and policy
  • Knowledge management and organizational learning
  • Technology and organisation

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Marketing

Research in the marketing group focuses on a wide range of aspects of consumer behaviour.  Ongoing projects and interests cover the UK, European and international contexts.

List of current research and teaching topics:

  • Consumer behaviour
  • Retail marketing
  • International marketing
  • Marketing communications
  • Marketing in the creative industries
  • Internet and direct marketing
  • Marketing strategy

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Strategy and Operations

The following are the primary research themes in strategy and operations.

  • Lean operations (both manufacturing and service sectors, particularly health)
  • Manufacturing planning, scheduling including optimisation in stochastic environments
  • Layout optimisation
  • Group Technology (applied to design and manufacturing processes)
  • Computer Aided Production Management Systems
  • Modelling, analysis and optimisation of manufacturing systems
  • Manufacturing and business strategy

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