Research impact

Aligned to the University’s Vision 2025 strategic plan, Strathclyde Business School seeks to deliver real-world impact through its research and scholarship by creating useful knowledge, theories and novel methodologies. The School’s strength derives from our knowledge base in domain-based departments, engaged externally facing specialist centres, and active involvement in interdisciplinary projects.

Facilitated by the maturing University models for achieving impactful research, the School’s strategy emphasises partnership working to deliver research impact at pace for business, industry, government, and the third sector. By nurturing our many external partnerships and creating new engagement through our involvement with, for example, the Glasgow City Innovation District (GCID), we seek to maximise the contributions of our research capabilities.

Examples of impact from our research are below. Further examples of how users gained value from our research and how we engage with external partners are available from our Research Centres.

Benefitting Individuals and Communities

The Children’s Hospices Association Scotland (CHAS) charity has increased referrals and the number of families supported following an inclusive strategy-making process.

Socio-economic benefits to individuals and communities in the Brazilian Amazon was initiated by research-led interventions made during the covid-19 pandemic.

Employment policy, practice and conditions of workers in the UK voluntary care sector was changed. Work with, for example, Cornerstone, a leading provider of care and support services for adults, ARK Housing, a not-for-profit charity, UNISON and the Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland, led to change in recruitment, retention, pay and conditions of employees.

Labour standards promoted by the International Labour Organisation on remote working and trade union policies on work conditions and offshoring have been influenced.

Benefitting Organisations

The distinctive ability of the Strathclyde Open Innovation programme, developed in collaboration with Scottish Enterprise, to achieve high levels of innovation at scale was recognised by the Deputy Director at NASA’s Centre of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. Technological innovation was accelerated at organisations including Scottish Power Energy Networks, Subsea7 and the Doosan Service Group. See Mastering Open Innovation: The Guiding Principles.

The way reliability growth, arising due to technological innovation in engineering systems, is managed in organisations including Aero-Engine Controls, Selex ES was influenced by modelling research.

Organisations such as the Wood Group and SSE gained better anticipation of the form of the energy transition in view of the foresighting and strategy making research, while a major reorganization and overhaul of management processes/procedures at the Turner Group followed engagement with strategic management research.

Reductions to a £4m per year inventory spend at Fishers Laundry was achieved through a collaborative project on the digital transformation of operations.

Virgin Money are embedding a structured programme of digital and service innovation within their Small Business Strategy division through collaborations with the Business School and Engineering.

Benefitting Policy-Makers

The Scottish Government Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy (2019) and the UK Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology POSTnote on Wind Energy have drawn on research on the policy and market conditions necessary to accelerate low-carbon energy technology and business model innovation.

Governments’ economic policies were informed by research conducted by the Fraser of Allander Institute including modelling scenarios for the Northern Ireland protocol for the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy and modelling trade scenarios following Brexit for the Scottish Government.

Working with UK and devolved governments as well as regional enterprise support organizations, entrepreneurship researchers stimulated and influenced the framing of policy debate, and helped shape policy with regard to the participation of women entrepreneurs in economic growth.

The UK Chief Medical Officer has sought the advice of our researchers to inform policies for unblocking research and development for new antibiotics in view of our research on the consequences of antimicrobial resistance.