Original Thinking Podcast

During COVID-19, we have witnessed community responses on a scale and diversity that was previously unthinkable with invisible acts of good neighbourliness, donations by businesses of all sizes, and the creation of thousands of mutual aid groups, all in addition to the work of the voluntary sector.

We now need to galvanise the progress made, identify and remove barriers for communities to flourish, and co-produce a new understanding of risk, vulnerability and capability through communities.

This podcast asks whether community resilience can be a new local resilience capability, and explores different models of community action from the US, Chile and the UK to illustrate how this might be achieved.

Panel:

Duncan Shaw – Professor of Operations and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

Fernando Padilla - National Director of the Volunteer Programme, National Youth Institute Chile

Suu-Va Tai – President of Community Emergency Responses Teams (CERT), US

Hannah Tankard - Business Emergency Resilience Campaign Director, Business In The Community

In April 2020, at the height of the first wave of COVID-19 across Europe, academics at Alliance Manchester Business School and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute launched The Manchester Briefing – a fortnightly document that brings together international lessons for local and national government recovery and renewal in the wake of the pandemic.

The Briefing, which has been successfully distributed across the world, has been specifically aimed at those who plan and implement recovery from COVID-19, including government emergency planners and resilience officers.

One year on since its launch, this special event will explore and collate the key lessons and themes that have emerged from around the globe during the crisis, and we will be joined by a panel of emergency managers who will share their local experiences of COVID-19 responses, early recovery efforts, where their cities are now, and the challenges that lie ahead in terms of recovery and renewal.

Speakers:

Duncan Shaw – Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

Piero Pelizzaro - Chief Resilience Officer, Milan, Italy

Luis Carvalho - Civil Protection, Municipal Service, Amadora, Portugal

Katia Tynan - Manager, Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction, City of Vancouver, Canada

Chair: Harald Dragar, President of The International Emergency Managers Society (TIEMS), Norway

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and join us online for the networking event of the month! Speak to like-minded business women for an amazing online event. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Prepare your digital business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

In this episode we are joined by Susan HayesCulleton, CFA, “The Positive Economist”. Susan is Managing Director of the Hayes Culleton Group, with clients across Europe and the USA. The businesses include BECKSearch which facilitates active peer learning and #SavvyTeenAcademy which manages the entire experience of teenage work experiences in corporate organisations. The company also provides training, speaking and content development services, in the subject areas of the financial markets, economics and entrepreneurship.

Susan has twice co-authored “Positive Economics”, the market-leading Leaving Cert economics textbook in Ireland, and she is the author of two books published by Penguin, The “Savvy Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom” and “The Savvy Guide to Making More Money”. Susan is co-founder of The Positive Economist, Associate Lecturer at Ulster University, host of the “Fantastic Female Fridays” YouTube show and presenter of the Savvy Women Online podcast. She serves on the boards of the Irish International Business Network and the Ireland Hong Kong Business Forum. Susan holds a Chartered Financial Analyst charter, MSc Executive Leadership, BSc Financial Maths and Economics and a Diploma in Taxation.

Today’s podcast was recorded at the Women in Business MBA Student Council event held on International Women’s Day.

Joining us on the panel were Professor Fiona Devine OBE, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School, Damaris Albarran, Chair of Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board and former Vice President at Bank of New York Mellon, Katie Clinton, a member of Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board and Partner at KPMG UK and Head of Internal Audit, Risk and Compliance, and Jennifer Halliday, also a member of Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board Finance Director, CF Industries UK and USA. They answered questions from facilitator Tania Rahman, MBA Class of 2022 and VP of ESG & Community about how they ‘choose to challenge’ – the theme of this year’s international women’s day.

This podcast continues the interdisciplinary discussion of critical issues confronting human labour under COVID-19. 

Conflicting Covid narratives: The value of supermarket work and implications for the future

Abbie Winton is a final year doctoral researcher at the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research explores retail work and sociotechnical change, with a current focus on the crisis and the shaping impact this could have on the future of work within the sector.

Debra Howcroft is Professor of Technology and Organisation at the Work and Equalities Institute and is the Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment’.

Sharing the load: How work sharing can reduce unemployment, improve gender equality, and benefit mental health

Jill Rubery is Professor of Comparative Employment Systems and Director of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her current research interests include inequality in the labour market, digitalisation in the workplace, and the related effects of COVID-19.

Isabel Tavora is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Manchester Alliance Business School and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research focuses on comparative employment policy, collective bargaining, gender equality and work-family reconciliation. Isabel chairs the School’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Beyond work intensification – the contradictions and ironies of the changing nature of cleaning work in a context of austerity and organisational change

Jo McBride is a Professor at the University of Durham and has worked on a range of issues related to collectivism at work, the nature of skills and in work poverty, and the role of decent work initiatives.

Miguel Martinez Lucio is a Professor at the Work & Equalities Institute and is the Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment. He has worked on questions of change within work, the transformation of worker representation and the development of regulation and the state.

Job value during COVID-19 pandemic: Recognising migrants as ‘critical’ but neglected workers

Anthony Rafferty is a Professor of Employment Studies at the University of Manchester and a Deputy Director of the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI).

Stefania Marino is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in the field of labour sociology, industrial relations and labour market studies with a specific focus on international comparative analysis. Stefania has worked extensively on the relationship between labour migration and labour market and in particular on trade union representation of migrant workers across countries.

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and join us online for the networking event of the month! Speak to like-minded business women for an amazing online event. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Prepare your digital business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

In this episode we will be joined by Yukti Bhardwaj, Co-founder & CEO Aimo, ED of Aim Group. Co-founded by Yukti in 2019, Aimo's mission is to accelerate the adoption of green mobility in India and make EVs more accessible for consumers. It has the ambitious aim of becoming India’s top tech-based end-to-end mobility solution.

Growing up amongst a family of social workers engaged in community service, Yukti has come to terms with many struggles in life including the problems of both health and wealth. She has always had the hunger to strive for more and do things differently, rather than going for a traditional path - she studied science in high school, commerce and business in university and went on to build a tech start-up of her own.

Yukti had always been interested in business, which was the reason she left her law degree at Nottingham University in 2016 to join Alliance Manchester Business School to pursue a degree in business and finance. She graduated with a first in 2019 with a degree in BSc Management (International Business Economics).

Aimo is getting noticed within Indian business circles and last year was nominated as mobility start-up of the year by Entrepreneur India magazine. They are currently being accelerated by Rebalance Start-up accelerator.

This episode will be hosted by Panos Constantinides, Professor of Digital Innovation and Digital Learning Lead for Executive Education at Alliance MBS, who will be discussing artificial intelligence systems.

Research into Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems has increasingly moved out of the lab and into organizational and social settings where they affect how people live and behave. This research describes the evolution of technology-assisted driving across the five automation levels specified in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International Standard (SAE 2014). Through this analysis, implications for an interdisciplinary research agenda are explored.

Panos' research focuses on the transformative potential of digital technology, including digital platforms, infrastructures and artificial intelligence. He has carried out funded research projects with a range of organisations on innovations in digital infrastructures and platforms, ranging from healthcare and financial IT infrastructures, mobile payment platforms, and smart grids.

The discussion will be facilitated by Dr Christos Begkos, Lecturer in Management Accounting at Alliance MBS.

As we look ahead, one thing is clear. The old style of innovation isn’t working.

With evolving technologies playing a vital role, and the pace of change not set to slow, now is the time for legacy organisations to be their own catalysts for change and to tap into the wealth of resources that will allow them to compete in the innovation game.

What has stopped companies unleashing their potential to innovate and quickly transform? How can legacy companies adopt the tactics and ideas of fast-growing start-ups?

Join Ismail Amla, Chief Growth Officer at Capita and AMBS alumnus, as he explores how legacy companies can create the right conditions for transforming themselves through innovation and shares key insights and case studies from his forthcoming book From Incremental to Exponential.

The discussion will be facilitated by Alliance MBS' Silvia Massini, Professor of Economic and Management of Innovation.

Vital Topics is sponsored by DWF and Capita.

The belief that corporations have social charter to operate goes back many decades. This has, for better or worse, been encapsulated in more recent discussions of the social responsibility of corporations and can be seen operationalised in the environmental and social positioning of companies. However, despite the promise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) the evidence that it ‘matters’ materially is open to question.

In this podcast, Timothy Devinney, Professor of International Business at Alliance MBS, goes over 20 years of his own work on the topic and addresses the question of whether we can have CSR without other forms of social responsibility that are reflected in the behaviour of consumers, investors, managers, and employees.

He takes this a step further by also addressing the question of whether our failure to deal with larger social issues, such as climate change, are really a failure of Individual Social Responsibility.

The podcast will be facilitated by Professor Giana Echkhardt, Professor of Marketing at King's College London.

In today's podcast we are delighted to be joined by businessman and philanthropist David Gregson who is here to discuss the Greater Manchester Young People's Wellbeing Programme.

During a distinguished corporate career David has sat on the boards of some 30 companies and charities while also co-founding a leading private equity firm. He is also an alumnus of the University of Manchester and sits on the Advisory Board of Alliance Manchester Business School.

The Wellbeing Programme, which is being led by the Manchester Institute of Education at The University of Manchester, in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre, aims to gather data from tens of thousands of young people about their wellbeing. Over the coming months, the project team is working with teachers and young people, as well as Local Authorities, local businesses, academics, charities, the GM Health and Social Care Partnership and many others, to get their input on the design of the Programme.