Research | University of Strathclyde

Principle 4 - Research

The University of Strathclyde will engage in conceptual and empirical research that advances our understanding about the role, dynamics, and impact of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value.

Strathclyde Business School carries out research that is both theory-driven and relevant for policy and practice. This section highlights some of our research related to social responsibility and sustainability. The Research Excellence Framework 2014 rated us highly for Impact and how our research impacts on practice on business and we were also rated highly for Research Environment which looks at 'vitality and sustainability'.

Impactful research with global social responsibility at its heart:

Research on the ‘business case’ for a living wage has been undertaken in collaboration at a local level with the Scottish Living Wage Accreditation Initiative and at an international level with Global Living Wage steering group hosted by the UK Living Wage Foundation.
A new project funded by the University on Low Carbon Power and Energy research theme is developing simulation and optimisation tools to minimise the time taken to install offshore wind farms.
SBS has been particularly focused on shaping the financial ecosystem post the 2007/8 credit crisis in order to develop a more societal orientated capital system. This is a central research challenge of the new Centre for Financial Regulation and Innovation.
Dr Andrea Coulson of the Department of Accounting and Finance represented Strathclyde Business School at a seminar event on Ethical Finance Accountability and Governance held by Durham University in 2018. Andrea presented her research on public water supply in southern Malawi along with Emeritus Professor Rob Gray from the University of St Andrews. Andrea’s research focuses on ensuring lifeline access to a sustainable water supply system to the vulnerable communities of Malawi.
Anees Farrukh, lecturer in Sustainability Accounting in the Department of Accounting and Finance, presented his work at a number of international conferences including Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting (IPA), Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA) and Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR). The study focuses on critically analysing the role of NGOs in achieving Sustainable Development Goal no. 4 that addresses the educational crisis in Pakistan where 25 million children are out of school. The study makes original empirical and theoretical contributions on NGO governance, accountability and sustainable development practices.
Yu-Lin Hsu, lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance, is contrasting the carbon disclosure data of US firms with the Taiwanese listed companies. The study aims to investigate whether the negative relationship between the US results in carbon emissions and firm value continuing to hold in Asia. The findings suggest that the international generalisation of US results should be applied and explained with caution, as firm value is positively associated with carbon emissions from Taiwanese listed companies.
James Bonner, a second year PhD student in the Department of Accounting and Finance, investigates the symbolic values associated with water by communities in rural Malawi through, in part, a site specific case study. The research aligns with the Scottish Government Climate Justice Fund Water Futures Programme, led by the University of Strathclyde in partnership with the Government of Malawi, which aims to work towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal no. 6, to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. By investigating social, cultural and economic information and representations, from secondary sources and fieldwork, it aims to develop a set of symbolically derived shadow accounts of water as a means to open up this space and give voice to such issues. James’ research in the field of sustainability accounting also has links to civil engineering and hydrology.
Richard Tawiah, a first year PhD student in the Department of Accounting and Finance, critically evaluates the growing publication in Sustainability Reporting. While organisations publish their Corporate Social Responsibilities as part of their annual financial statements in the form of sustainability reports, these reports are mostly quantified in monetary terms in order to score, among other reasons, economic and political gains. The study questions the validity of such sustainability reports through a cross-section of key stakeholders in order to justify the assurance of these reports for an informed decision making and also to enhance stakeholder confidence in activities of operating firms.
Grant Allan and Gioele Figus (Economics) secured +3/1+3 funding for a PhD project entitled “Building and using a framework to analyse the economic impacts of policies targeted at the tourism economy in Scotland” via the Scottish Graduate School in Social Science, in partnership with Visit Scotland.
A major research project titled Research Infrastructure for Research and Innovation Policy Studies 2 (RISIS 2) was launched at the beginning of 2019. The project aims at building a data and services infrastructure supporting the development of a new generation of analyses and indicators on science, technology and innovation (STI). RISIS 2 brings 19 partners from 12 European countries together with the objective of transforming the field of STI studies into an advanced research community. The project will develop, harmonise and integrate 18 different datasets on STI, provide facilitated access to these datasets and offer training. As part of the consortium, a multidisciplinary team based at the University of Strathclyde (PI: Dr Abdullah Gök (HCE/SBS); Co-I: Dr Yashar Moshfeghi (CIS/Science)) will develop a dataset on social innovation projects and actors by utilising advanced text-mining and machine learning approaches. The project will run for 48 months.
Markus Gehrsitz, Stuart McIntyre, and Graeme Roy (Economics) were awarded a grant by the Nuffield Foundation for their project on Education and Human Capital Accumulation. Using Scottish Government data, they will build a large panel dataset that follows every Scottish pupil from primary school until one year after high school graduation. This new resource will be used for quantitative analyses of education policy and practices, and to evaluate policy interventions. The research team will showcase these opportunities by studying the effect of primary school class size on pupil attainment and post-graduation destinations.
The Fraser of Allander Institute and the Centre for Energy Policy hosted a joint modelling workshop with the Energy and Climate Policy modelling team from the University of Leeds, led by Professor John Barrett. The workshop was held as part of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) project on the impact of non- energy policies on the energy system, part of UKERC’s “Energy, Economy and Societal Preferences” research theme. The workshop was held to gain a better understanding of the different energy-economy models employed by both research groups and to identify areas of collaboration in this project, as well as discussing possible future areas for collaboration.
Scott McGrane, Grant Allan and Graeme Roy (Fraser of Allander Institute and Department of Economics) have been successful in winning a project with Scottish Water to deliver forecasts for non-domestic water consumption in Scotland. The project will explore links between economic activity and water consumption at the sectoral and aggregate levels of the Scottish economy. This research will be an important input to Scottish Water for their medium and long-term planning for non- domestic water demand in Scotland.
Marco Fongoni (Economics) is leading a project that seeks to assess the impacts of wage inequality on worker morale and productivity.
Two Chancellor’s Fellows in the Department of Economics (David Comerford and Scott McGrane) were successful in their submissions to the Strathclyde Doctoral School Centre for Doctoral Training call for Chancellor’s Fellow lead CDTs. One of these themes is around sustainable energy (David Comerford) and another is around the impacts of climate change on freshwater systems (Scott McGrane).
The Department of Economics is involved in the Doctoral Training Centre in Wind and Marine Energy Systems, and the Industrial Doctoral Centre in Offshore Renewable Energy.
The Department of Economics through Scott McGrane and David Comerford are involved in the GCRF funded One OceanHub project. This project is seeking to understand the role of the Blue Economy in the Global South, and how oceans can be used in a sustainable way.
Dr Sreevas Sahasranamam (Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship), has been focusing his research on the impacts and influences of social responsibility with the following papers: Sahasranamam S. and Ball, C. (2018), “Influence of national business system on social enterprises in Scotland and India”, Research Handbook on Small Business Social Responsibility: Global Perspectives (Eds. Laura J. Spence, Jedrzej George Frynas, Judy Muthuri and Jyoti Navare), Edward Elgar, 23-46 and Sahasranamam, S., Arya, B., & Sud, M. (2019). Ownership structure and corporate social responsibility in an emerging market. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, forthcoming.
Dr Sreevas Sahasranamam (Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship), Ekaterina Murzacheva (Hertfordshire Business School) and Jonathan Levie (HCE) won the best paper award at ISBE 2018 in the ‘SME growth and performance: Quantitative perspectives’ track for the paper exploring the double disadvantage effect of social and spatial exclusion on entrepreneurial activity.
Much of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship’s research focuses on the significance of socio-economic resources – including social, economic and human capital as inputs and outputs of entrepreneurship.
The Hunter Centre is especially interested in highly collaborative industries, which focus on sustainable value creation for the entire sector, including creative arts, social enterprise, and craft food and drink. Work in
these fields informs wider policy and practice into collaborative sustainable socio-economic growth.
Dr Matthew Hannon (Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship) was successful in securing funding as Co-Investigator for the Energy Revolution Research Consortium (EnergyREV) through UKRI’s Industrial Strategy. The consortium will provide recommendations to accelerate UK deployment of smart local energy systems. He will co-lead two work packages on: 1) policy and regulation; and 2) business and finance, running until 2022.
A report into wave energy innovation support in the UK written by Dr Matthew Hannon, Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, and Imperial College, London, received extensive coverage in both print and broadcast media. The report was funded by EPSRC, IPPI and SBS.
Dr Matthew Hannon launched the report “Examining the Effectiveness of Support for UK Wave Energy Innovation since 2000: Lost at Sea or a New Wave of Innovation?” at the University of Strathclyde in November 2017. It stimulated significant media interest with coverage from BBC Radio Scotland – Good Morning Scotland, STV, the Scotsman and the National amongst others. Paul Wheelhouse, Scottish Minister for Business, Innovation & Energy responded directly to the report’s recommendations on STV, highlighting the importance of the research and a commitment from Scottish Government to follow through some of the report’s recommendations.
Dr Katerina Nicolopoulou (Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship), Principal Investigator, and Co-Investigators Christine Samy (PhD researcher), Professor Sarah Dodd (Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship), Professor Ashraf Salama (Department of Architecture), and Dr Robert Rogerson (Future Cities) have been awarded funding from SFC GCRF Pump Priming Fund for their project, “Re- enterprising the ‘Forgotten Villages of Greater Cairo’ through female micro-entrepreneurship: Building towards the creation of a ‘Global Knowledge Exchange Hub’ for accelerating women-led Socially Progressive Entrepreneurship to address water-based challenges in the informal settlements of the Global South.”
A paper by Razzaque Sarker and Alec Morton (Management Science) was accepted and published: Sarker, A. R., Sultana, M., Ali, N., Akram, R., Alam, K., Khan, J. A. M., Morton, A. (2019) Cost of caregivers for treating hospitalized diarrheal patients in Bangladesh. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease. 4(1).
The paper “Investing in antibiotics to alleviate future catastrophic outcomes: what is
the value of having an effective antibiotic to mitigate pandemic influenza?” by Dr Itamar Megiddo, Professor Alec Morton, and Professor Tim Bedford (Management Science) and in collaboration with colleagues from Wageningen University and Princeton University, was recently accepted in the journal Health Economics.
In June 2017 Gillian Anderson, Robert van der Meer, Alec Morton et.al (Management Science) had a paper accepted for the BMJ Open ‘Cost comparison of orthopaedic fracture pathways using discrete event simulation in a Glasgow hospital’. This work was funded by the Scottish Government sustainability and value division and took place at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in conjunction with staff from orthopaedics.
Gillian Anderson and Robert van der Meer (Management Science) were awarded funding to support the use of Discrete Event Simulation in the Scottish NHS. This is in addition to the substantial amounts of funding that we have received since 2014 to work with the Sustainability and Value sector of the Scottish Government for work across the NHS in Scotland.
HAPIOR (Health Protection and Improvement with Operational Research) is a responsive research facility funded by the UK Department of Health. The project is led by Professor Alec Morton in Management Science, with Dr Abigail Colson and Dr Itamar Megiddo. With colleagues from University College London, the team will research policy questions related to antibiotic resistance, immunisations, and other priority issues for the Department of Health.
Dr Itamar Megiddo (Management Science) was part of a successful Escalator application led by Professor David Greenhalgh (Maths and Stats) from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The funding is for work together with Malaysian colleagues to model a novel autodissemination mosquito trap impact on dengue—the disease and economic burden. The model will be incorporated to a mobile app to predict disease transmission based on egg counts.
Dr Itamar Megiddo (Management Science) was awarded a pump-priming grant from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) Global Challenges Research Funds (GCRF) together with Dr Robert Van der Meer, Prof Alec Morton, Dr Abigail Colson (Management Science), and Dr Amanj Kurdi (SIPBS). The funding is for a first step to begin work together with the partners in the University of Ghana, the Ghanaian Ministry of Health, as well as practitioners in Ghana to “Operationalise Universal Health Coverage for Non- Communicable Disease in Ghana.”
Matthew Revie and Tim Bedford (Management Science) were awarded funding for a 30 month KTP with Datalytics - an SME focusing on developing analytical tools for big data problems. The KTP will focus on developing energy applications for Smart Cities to evaluate their carbon neutrality and their developing energy network and generation portfolio. The project grows on an existing Data Lab Innovation Centre project with Datalytics.
Euan Barlow, Matthew Revie and Lesley Walls (Management Science) have been awarded funding for a project to develop prediction models for water quality failures. The project is funded by Scottish Water and the Data
Lab Innovation centre. It will explore new applications of decision support in this area, and will further develop relations between Scottish Water and the Department.
Abigail Colson, John Quigley, Matthew Revie, and Lesley Walls (Management Science) were awarded a framework contract from the European Food Safety Authority for providing expert elicitation services to support quantitative risk assessment. Strathclyde leads a team with over 10 researchers from other European institutions.
Karen Scott, a PhD student within the Department of Marketing, has been awarded a Scottish Graduate School of Social Science - Scottish Government internship scheme. The internship is aligned with the Equality and Tackling Poverty Research team, and is involved with the evaluation of a pilot study making free sanitary products available to women and girls from low-income households in Aberdeen. The internship will primarily be involved with gathering a range of data from administrators and beneficiaries, as well as contributing to the qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
Dr Kathy Hamilton (Marketing), along with Dr Aliakbar Jafari (Marketing), and Julius Stephan (Aston University) have had their paper titled “Riches to Rags to Riches – Consumers’ identity (re-) construction after having overcome a spell of poverty” accepted for presentation to the 2018 European Advances in Consumer Research Conference and publication in the EACR proceedings.
Dr Kathy Hamilton (Marketing) is co-chair for a new Academy of Marketing Special Interest Group on Consumer Research with Social Impact. The aim is to bring together consumer researchers working on socially impactful work to share knowledge about the contextual areas in which social impact is demonstrated, the forms that social impact can take, and methodological and theoretical approaches to social impact.
In the Department of Marketing, Dr Kathy Hamilton’s research relates to Transformative Consumer Research (TCR), a movement that encourages research that benefits well- being and quality of life within the context of consumer culture. She recently co-chaired an international TCR project that focused on identifying practices and processes that allow marketing academics and third/public sector organisations to collaborate more effectively. This resulted in a paper in the Journal of Business Research entitled “Exploring the Relations in Relational Engagement: Identifying Challenges and Overcoming Barriers”
Professor Dora Scholarios (Department of Work, Employment and Organisation) received the SBS Publication Prize for her publication in a top FT50 journal: Okay-Somerville, B. & Scholarios, D. (2018): A multilevel examination of skills-oriented HRM and perceived skill utilization during recession: Implications for the wellbeing of all workers.
The Scottish Centre for Employment Research (SCER) at SBS has been awarded funding by the ESRC for a £1 million project investigating management practices and their effect on innovation and productivity. The international and interdisciplinary project is one of five projects selected by ESRC which are jointly funded to £3.8 million. The SCER project is entitled “Improving management practices: work engagement and workplace innovation for productivity and wellbeing” and will be led by Professor Patricia Findlay and Professor Colin Lindsay, supported by SCER researchers Jo McQuarrie and Eli Dutton. The SCER-led research collaboration also includes leading international scholars Professor Arnold Bakker, Erasmus University, and Professor Evangelia Demerouti, Eindhoven University of Technology, world leading researchers on job design and work engagement. Professors Graeme Roy (Fraser of Allander Institute) and Sir Harry Burns, Director of Global Public Health at Strathclyde, will also contribute to the research.
Tom Baum, Pratima Sambajee and Ann Ndiuini (Work, Employment and Organisation) participated in a workshop in Nairobi, Kenya to launch their collaborative research project with Moi University. Supported by GCRF, this project is exploring research methodologies that give voice to socially excluded, nomadic communities in Kenya in the development of tourism. Ann and a co-researcher from Moi remained in Kenya after the workshop in order to conduct exploratory fieldwork with the Masi and Wasini communities.
Brian Garvey (Work, Employment and Organisation) with Russell Pepper from the Engineering School presented the results of their 2016-17 EPSRC Global Challenges multi-disciplinary project to the two agrarian reform communities in Sao Paulo state and representatives from trade unions in Brazil, UK and four universities.
Colin Lindsay (Work, Employment and Organisation) has been awarded research funding by the Fair Work Convention to extend the SCER FITwork project to an expanded study of social care organisations. This research issupported by Dr Amy Watson and Doug Young.
Patricia Findlay and Colin Lindsay (Work, Employment and Organisation) were awarded KE funding through the Union Modernisation Fund to support a Unison Scotland project on Fair Work and Activism in Social Care.
Patricia Findlay, Colin Lindsay and Jo McQuarrie (SCER/ Work, Employment and Organisation) were successful in competing for research funding from Scottish Government to undertake a Review of Partnership Working Arrangements in NHS Scotland in 2018.
Tom Baum (Work, Employment and Organisation) obtained Newton Fund support to organise a Workshop for ECRs, PhD students, public policy researchers and a smattering of experienced academics from Kenya, South Africa and the UK on the theme of Sustainable HRM in African Tourism. Tom worked with colleagues from Moi University, Kenya and the University of Johannesburg to bring together 30 participants for an intensive week, sharing current research and exploring future collaboration in this neglected area of study. The event was hosted by the University of Johannesburg and included an inspiring visit to Soweto.
Doug Young (SCER) met with BUPA Care’s Managing Director Aileen Waton, and continued to interview BUPA staff as part of the “FITWork in Social Care” research project, funded by the Fair Work Convention. BUPA Care is part of the wider BUPA International Group, a not-for-profit independent health care organisation established in 1947.
Doug Young (SCER) met with CEO Florence Garabedian and Independent Living and Training Coordinator Iain McGregor, to discuss their participation in the “FITWork in Social Care” research project, funded by the Fair Work Convention. Lothian Centre for Inclusive Living (LCiL) is a user controlled organisation which supports disabled people, people with long-term conditions and older people, to live independently in their communities.
Patricia Findlay and Colin Lindsay (SCER/ HRM) have been successful in competing for research funding from Joseph Rowntree Foundation to undertake research on “What works - influencing businesses so work becomes a better route out of poverty”, that will be undertaken by Patricia and Colin as PIs along with Dr Amy Watson and Doug Young.
The SCER team (Patricia Findlay, Colin Lindsay, Jo McQuarrie) have submitted an end of project report to funding partners (Scottish Government, SE, HIE, SDS and SFC) marking the end of Year 2 of the FITwork project and comprising reports across 35 case studies in Scottish Business Pledge companies, Food and Drink companies and Social Care organisations.