RRBM on Tour Symposium

Date: Friday, 8 April 2022

Time: 16:00 – 19:30 (local time)

Virtually hosted on Zoom by the University of Dubrovnik in Dubrovnik & the University of Zagreb in Zagreb (Croatia)

Overall Objective:

The overall objective of the symposium is to advance a critical and ethical understanding of what responsible science is so that credible and trustworthy knowledge is created to address problems important to business and society.

 

Specific Objectives:

In line with the above and upon the completion of the symposium, participants will have deeper understanding of the answers and nuances pertaining to the following:

 

  1. To advance the awareness of the RRBM’s principles and initiatives centered on responsible business
  2. To pinpoint the understanding of current debates and policies centered on responsible research
  3. To enhance the significance of paradigms in qualitative research
  4. To identify knowledge of practical strategies for achieving responsible research impact
  5. To develop the recognition of the relationship between responsible business and impact
  6. To increase the understanding of research transparency in scientific inquiry
  7. To develop an understanding of what it means to be a responsible scientist in business and management disciplines.

 

Participants:

The event is aimed at doctoral and junior scholars in the business and management fields, and it is hope that it will help them not only with planning but also undertaking responsible research to advance scientific knowledge as well as enhance professional standards in those fields.

TIME
SCHEDULE
16:00-16:30  Welcome addresses 

Dr Nebojsa Stojcic, Vice-Rector University of Dubrovnik (Croatia)

 

16:30-17:15

 

Opening Keynote

The History of Responsible Research in Business and Management & Why We Need it Today. 

Prof. Peter McKiernan: University of Strathclyde (Scotland)

This talk will focus on the two main reasons why we need to make our research in business and management more responsible than it has been in the last 30 years. The first reason relates to the quality of the science that has been used to deliver the results of our work. It is clear that corners have been cut in the scientific process across the board, not just in business and management. This makes it difficult to take the results with any confidence. Second, this research work has not been as relevant to society as it could have been. The institutional targets set by Business Schools have rewarded academics for their productivity which has helped them get promotion and tenure rather than rewarded society by helping to solve its grand challenges, either global or local. This ‘double hurdle’ is a constant challenge for business school academics. This talk will show how recent initiatives have formed a global ‘responsibility turn’ in business and management that has begun to tackle the two issues in constructive and cooperative ways. at the heart of this ‘turn’ is the role of external stakeholders and multi and inter disciplinary activity in the research process.

 

17:15-17:30 
Break 
17:30-18:15
 		Discussion Workshop 1

Responsible Research and Impact: Approaches, Opportunities and Challenges
Dr Layla Branicki, Open University (UK) 

Conducting impactful research that is beneficial to those outside of academia is rapidly becoming core business for academics. This interactive session will begin by focussing on the relationship between responsible research and impact, before moving on to explore practical strategies for meeting the ‘responsibility turn’ in business and management. Creating meaningful research projects that seek to tackle pressing societal challenges – such as climate crisis and structural inequalities – can be highly rewarding and highly demanding in equal measures. For example, business and management academics have mobilized their expertise globally to respond to the recent Covid-19 pandemic highlighting issues as diverse as behavioral factors and feminist crisis management to practitioners. At the same time, academics may feel like they don’t have the resources, networks, or even perhaps the skills, to create impacts for non-academic beneficiaries. Impactful research can also seem risky, exposing expertise to critique, or risking misunderstanding or misapplication. Given these opportunities and challenges, we will explore practical strategies for achieving impact, including distinguishing amongst types of grand challenges (i.e. considering geographic scope, and challenge scope), and approaches to building impact into research project design. There will be opportunities to share your own impact journeys throughout the session. 

Discussion Workshop 2

Understanding Paradigm, Methodology & Methods in Qualitative Research: Why is it relevant? 

Dr. Roberta Aguzzoli, Durham University (UK)

This talk will focus on how different paradigms used in qualitative research can enhance theory development. First, it is contextualized that management literature is embedded in the positivist paradigm and primarily quantitative methods. This limits methodological bandwidth and, consequently, the field’s contributions, as it ignores that phenomena are context-dependent. In addition, the use of a shared paradigm while enhancing the development of techniques imposes methodological challenges such as the lack of understanding of methodological concepts. Therefore, expanding the use of paradigms into management research can help first to understand contemporary issues such as organizational culture, post-colonial relations, ethics on organizations through innovation in terms of research design. In addition, the understanding of methodological concepts can help us with the method rationale and consequently rigor in qualitative research. This seminar seeks, therefore, to disentangling methodology, method and techniques and encourage paradigm diversification.

Discussion Workshop 3 

Research Transparency: What It Means and Why Should We Care?

Prof. Agnieszka Chidlow,  University of Birmingham (UK) 

The so-called ‘replication crisis’ in the social sciences has led to greater pressure to improve data access and research transparency (DART) this is because without data access and transparency, replication of results is problematic, if not impossible. As a result, journals across the social sciences are currently reviewing their DART policies. While the goal of increased transparency may seem uncontroversial, in practice, the introduction of journal policies and community practices to encourage or even enforce it has proved to be fraught with difficulty. This is because of the sheer diversity of methodological approaches and traditions, as well as disciplinary conventions. A ‘one size fits all’ policy is not just difficult, but also potentially undesirable, and may result in jeopardizing methodological pluralism. Another challenge is that the requirement for access and transparency needs to be weighed against other ethical considerations, such as privacy and consent, confidentiality, and intellectual property rights. Therefore, this session aims to explore the issues associated with research transparency, to point out not only why greater research transparency is important and necessary but also to stimulate the potential to reinvigorate methodological norms and practices for social science scholars. During the session, there will be opportunities to share views on data access, transparency and replication.

18:15-18:30 Break 
18:30-19:15  Closing Panel

Responsible Research Agenda: Thoughts and Reflections

Chair: Prof. Agnieszka Chidlow, University of Birmingham (UK)

Panelist 1: Dr Nebojsa Stojcic, University of Dubrovnik (Croatia)

Panelist 2: Prof. Peter McKiernan, University of Strathclyde (Scotland)

Panelist 3: Dr Roberta Aguzzoli, Durham University (UK)

Panelist 4: Dr Layla Branicki, Open University (UK) 

19:15-19:30  Closing Remarks


Speakers

 

Nebojsa Stojcic, is Vice-Rector at University of Dubrovnik, Croatia where he coordinates PhD programme “Business Economics in Digital Environment”, a joint programme of University of Dubrovnik and Faculty of Economics and Business Zagreb. His research interests lie in areas of industrial economics and economics of innovation in emerging economies. His work was published widely in leading economics and business journals such as European Economic Review, Research Policy, Small Business Economics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Technology Transfer and regularly cited in national and European policy documents. As coordinator and researcher he participated in projects financed under H2020, FP7, Erasmus+, Croatian Science Foundation and other international and national programmes. He has extensive teaching and research experience, holding teaching and visiting positions across the world (UK, China, Czechia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) over past decades.

 

Peter McKiernan is Professor of Management at the University of Strathclyde (Scotland), Distinguished Professor of Management at Vesalius College, Vrje Universiteit (Brussels), Adjunct Professor of Management at Notre Dame University (Australia) and APS Bank Chair of Strategy at the University of Malta. He is a past Chairman and President of the British Academy of Management (BAM) and a past Vice President and President of the European Academy of Management (EURAM). He holds a Companionship from the Chartered Association of Business Schools and Fellowships from the Academies of both BAM and EURAM, Academy of Social Sciences, Governance Institute of Australia, Chartered Governance, Chartered Institute of Management and the Royal Society for the Arts. He is a recipient of the Central and Eastern European Academy of Management (CEEMAN) Institutional Champion of the Year Award and a Life-Time Achievement Award from BAM. He has published widely with 10 books and many articles in mainstream international journals.  He is a co-founder of EURAM, the European Management Review and the community of Responsible Research in Business and Management. Presently. He is the Past Dean of the BAM Fellows College and the Foundational Dean of the EURAM Fellows College.

 

Layla Branicki is an Associate Professor in HRM and Organization Studies in the Open University Business School. She has over ten years of international experience of teaching and researching the managerial and strategic implications of uncertainty for organisations through the lenses of resilience, high-reliability organising, and corporate social responsibility. Layla’s research seeks to understand the factors that enable employees and organisations to navigate high risk work settings (e.g. the military and policing), periods of intensive strategic change (e.g. post-merger integration), extreme events (e.g. pandemic disease), and grand challenges (e.g. climate change). As an applied multi-disciplinary researcher Layla has collaborated with a wide range of UK Government Departments, businesses, business networks, and professional representative organizations to produce non-technical research summaries, policy briefs, and commissioned reports and has presented her work in Australia, Europe, Fiji, UK and the USA.

 

Roberta Aguzzoli is an Associate Professor of Management at Durham University Business School. Her teaching and research interests include international and comparative policies and practices in multinational companies, mainly from developing countries, the internationalization of emerging multinationals and methodology. She is a board member of the Academy of International Business Research Methods Shared Interest Group (AIB RM-SIG). She has published her research in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Human Relations, Tourism Management, British Journal of Management, and Journal of International Management.

 

 

Agnieszka Chidlow is Professor of International Business at the University of Birmingham (UK). Her research interests lie in the areas of location choices of firms as well as methodological issues in international business. Her work has been published widely in various leading academic journals in the field of international business such as Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, Management International Review and International Business Review. She has extensive teaching and research experience by holding a number of teaching and visiting positions at various universities around the world (e.g. UK, USA, Sweden, Poland, Singapore and China) over 2 decades. Agnieszka is one of the co-founding members of the Academy of International Business Research Methods Shared Interest Group (AIB RM-SIG) and before becoming the AIB RM-SIG Vice-President for Responsible Research Methods in 2020 she was the AIB RM-SIG Vice-President Program between 2016-2020. She is also currently a Working Board Member of the Responsible Research in Business and Management Network (RRBM), a panel member of the Accreditation of MBAs (AMBA), Senior Editor for International Business Review and a member of several editorial boards of internationally recognised journals.