Tackling the problems of our congested airports. Managing the Skies ISSUE 20 Lancaster University Management School | the place to be The Path to Eden Morecambe 22Women as Family Business Superheroes 10Innovation in the NHS 14 FIFTYFOUR DEGREES
Without the Investors in Excellence fund, Alva* would have fallen through the gaps. With the help of this money, they are hoping to find their own tenancy so they can focus on their studies and don’t have to live each day wondering whether they will suffer abuse. Student Wellbeing Co-ordinator Join us in building a better future Unlock the full potential of Lancaster University Management School's students and enrich business education by becoming a LUMS Investor in Excellence. Your monthly donation can fuel a legacy of excellence, making a lasting impact on the world. The generosity of our donors has funded emergency hardship relief, groundbreaking research, life-changing global study opportunities, and much more. For as little as £10 per month, you can join them. Donate today and be part of a community providing wider opportunities and building a brighter tomorrow. ‘‘ ’’ *name changed for anonymity LUMS INVESTORS IN EXCELLENCE FUND lancaster.ac.uk/investors-in-excellence
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 3 Are You a Traitor? Would you betray your friends to make a quick profit? Renaud Foucart investigates how guilt, trust, cooperation, and betrayal affect how we behave when money is on the line. 34 In this issue... 30 No Circular Panacea Alison Stowell, Hervé Corvellec and Nils Johansson outline how criticisms of the circular economy could help it become an actual solution to actual problems rather than a cure-all. 46 The Internship Challenge How can student internships be improved to better serve both the students and the businesses who take them on? Mike Ryder explores the issue. 42 Regional Work Inequalities With millions of UK workers in insecure work, the Work Foundation’s Rebecca Florisson examines regional variations and what changes can be made at regional levels. Women: Business’s Secret Superheroes Allan Discua Cruz explains a study by members of the Centre for Family Business that shows why women’s influence on keeping family businesses operating successfully can no longer be hidden. 6 The Path to Eden Eden Project Morecambe offers the potential to revitalise the town. Radka Newton explains the I-Connect project, looking to ensure that plans are made with proper public insight – especially around how people get to and from the new attraction. 14 26 Managing The Skies Konstantinos Zografos explains how his OR-MASTER project seeks an optimised approach to assigning flight departure and arrival slots – to the benefit of airlines, airports, and the travelling public. 10 Don’t Cut Out the Middle Man Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring describe their work with the UK National Health Service on improving access to innovative technologies. An Oasis for Leaders Entrepreneur in Residence and leadership coach Sanjay Rishi looks at how lessons from work can be applied at home, and vice-versa, to make us better in both spheres. 38 Sharing Food More Fairly FareShare’s Carl Hawkes explains how his organisation distributes food to those in need, and how Lancaster’s research expertise is helping to add insight and value to their operational decision-making. 18 22 Transformational Creativity How can creative approaches help make evaluations more participatory, engaging, relevant, impactful, and inclusive? Elisavet Christou, Pınar Ceyhan and Violet Owen explain.
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 5 Professor Claire Leitch Executive Dean Lancaster University Management School Foreword Subscribe online at lancaster.ac.uk/fiftyfour SUBSCRIBE For those of us who fly, one of the greatest frustrations can be unexpected delays and cancellations. Holidays and business plans can be thrown into turmoil in an instant by problems at the airport. Over the last decade, researchers in our Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL) have been working with air traffic control networks and other key players in the flight industry to look at ways in which slots at airports can be assigned. These slots determine which airlines fly from where, to where, at what times. By using their logistics expertise, and mathematical modelling, the CENTRAL team have undertaken work on the ORMASTER project to devise a fairer way of airports allocating slots to airlines. Konstantinos Zografos leads both CENTRAL and the OR-MASTER project, and his article is a fascinating insight into the work they have undertaken, and the hopes for the future. It is not an easy task – as with anything that requires major alterations of an existing system, there is always politics involved, and entrenched positions to overcome – but the research has important industrial partners, and it has the potential for positive practical impact on the airline industry – and on us passengers too. This kind of real-world influence is what we strive for within our School. We recognise the importance of using our knowledge and skills to make a difference to business, policy-makers and society as a whole. You can see that also in the work of Professors Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring. They have been working with the UK National Health Service to look at the ways in which huge public and governmental organisations can bring more innovation into their operations. As a patient on a ward, in surgery, or visiting a GP, we rely on the NHS to have the best technologies and practices available to ensure our safe care. But if these technologies are being developed by small businesses, how do they get into the national framework in the first place? Kostas and Martin’s work looks at how intermediary organisations can bridge the gap between the huge and small organisations, speeding up innovation adoption and removing obstacles. Their analysis and feedback to the NHS – as well as work with the UK Ministry of Defence – provides a platform for positive change. You can see further evidence of our work with external partners in the article from FareShare’s Carl Hawkes. FareShare is the UK’s national network of charitable food redistributors, who take good quality surplus food from across the food industry and supply nearly 9,500 frontline charities and community groups. They have been working with researchers in the Department of Management Science, as well as members the STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training, to analyse and add value to their operational decision-making. This can affect people across the country relying on the likes of foodbanks, and you can see from Carl’s article that Lancaster’s input has already made a difference. Hopefully, there will be similar positive effects from the I-Connect project. Eden Project Morecambe offers the potential to bring huge benefits to the town, the community, and the wider region. Radka Newton explains the importance of looking beyond the site itself, and has been working with local councils and businesses to bring the voice and insight of the public to the processes. These articles provide just a handful of the examples of impactful research and engagement taking place across the School – as well as a mere taste of the contents of these pages. I know that we will be able to bring you more tales of practical solutions and transformational work in future issues of Fifty Four Degrees. Until then, enjoy this edition. Welcome to the latest edition of Fifty Four Degrees, your chance to gain an insight into the research taking place at Lancaster University Management School.
Demand for flights from the world’s biggest airports is sky high. In coming years, it is only expected to increase. But airports have only so many arrival and departure slots they can fill. How do they use these slots to the best efficiency? Professor Konstantinos Zografos explains how his OR-MASTER project is using mathematical models and algorithms to seek an optimised approach. Find the answer, and they can help allocate efficiently scarce airport capacity to benefit airlines, airports, and the travelling public. 6 | Managing the Skies
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 7
More than 5,000 airlines operate globally. They transport people and freight across countries and between continents. Every year, billions of passengers take to the skies on commercial flights. The skies are becoming more and more crowded, and airports only have so much capacity to deal with arriving and departing flights. There are around three million arrival and departure slots at UK airports alone every year. At Heathrow, the UK’s largest airport, for instance, they had more than 9,000 slots a week in 2023 with which to meet the needs and desires of all their airline customers. That may sound like a lot, but demand is greater than supply. Heathrow is just one of many airports worldwide where airline demand for arrival and departure slots exceeds airport capacity for considerable hours of the day. In 2023, 205 airports worldwide were overly congested. These airports are called coordinated airports. The majority – 107 – of the coordinated airports were in Europe, with Heathrow one of eight in the UK. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) are forecasting air passenger growth of 1.5%-3.6% in the next 20 years. Bearing in mind that the increase of demand will outpace the expected increase of supply, the already acute demand-supply imbalance will be exacerbated, affecting airlines, airports, and passengers alike. Therefore, in the short to medium term there is a need to find ways to optimise the allocation of the scarce available airport capacity. It is this issue that we have been looking to address on EPSRC-funded ORMASTER Programme Grant. Our OR-MASTER team – made up of a core team of operational research and air transport experts here at Lancaster, along with computing science researchers at the University of Leicester, and members from Queen Mary University London and Bangor University – have designed mathematical models and algorithms to help improve decision-making for how capacity is allocated to airlines at an airport, and at a network of airports. CONTRIBUTING TO A NEW SYSTEM As it stands, independent authorities allocate these slots at overly congested (coordinated) airports around the world. Airlines cannot simply pick and choose to operate their flights in these airports, and therefore they submit requests to the independent authorities 8 |
(coordinators) who allocate slots for arriving and departing flights. Each airport must decide how much capacity it has – which is translated to how many slots are available, for both arrivals and departures, in an hour and sub-intervals of an hour, e.g. 15 minutes. The balance will vary during the day – at certain times, more slots will be available for flights to land than take-off, and vice-versa. Airlines then request slots for their flights. Passengers have their own preferences for when they want to fly. This affects demand for slots and their distribution in time, e.g. during the day, and throughout the days and weeks of a season. Taking into account these requests and the available capacity, coordinators allocate slots. Airlines’ requests may have to be moved by so many minutes either side of their desired slots, others will get exactly what they want. It is a mammoth task. There is a complex framework determined by international guidelines that dictates how capacity is allocated. These guidelines introduce criteria, priorities, and constraints on how the various categories of requests placed by the airlines should be accommodated. Our task has been to develop mathematical models taking into account the slot allocation decisionmaking environment, and associated solutions algorithms. We need to provide the decision-makers with information, which will lead to greater levels of efficiency, fairness, and transparency. Both airports and airlines have goals and desires, as do the air traffic control organisations who look after airspace, and there are different groups within those larger sets. For instance, the requests of airlines that have historical slot usage rights (referred to as grandfather rights) at an airport, have a priority over the requests of airlines that are seeking to enter the market. Any change to the status quo is likely to meet resistance. However, even within the existing decision-making framework changes that do not radically challenge the fundamental assumptions of this framework, i.e. grandfather rights, can bring about improvements in the quality of airport slot allocation. Discussions on potential changes have been going on for decades. It is impossible to satisfy everyone completely, though it is necessary for all stakeholders (airlines, coordinators, airports, and air traffic service providers) to agree a roadmap for the implementation of a new system. With a level of compromise, there can be benefits in certain areas for everyone. We are looking for an optimal setting of capacity and delays, at single-airport and network levels. We created models that incorporate the preferences of all stakeholders for multiple objectives. Our models can help decisionmakers to find a commonly acceptable airport schedule that balances the preferences. The mathematical models developed within the OR-MASTER project provide the capability to support a more objective decision-making process. We can provide facts and data to back-up the generated solutions. Sacrifices must be made, and the models and methodologies can show decisionmakers where this can happen most effectively while ensuring all the airlines obtain slots as close as possible to those they want. ADVANCE PLANNING Airports must declare their slot capacity six months in advance, and major scheduling decisions are made based on these levels. Airports have a maximum capacity level based on everything running smoothly. If they were to use this for scheduling purposes, they might be able to make more airlines happy by giving them the slots they want; but it is not practical. It does not allow for issues with weather or other delaying factors. There must be some slack built in for it to be workable, and to avoid major delays that deteriorate the level of service provided to the travelling public. Our research looks at the potential levels of capacity and the likely levels of delays which would result. It is about finding a schedule that considers the need of the airlines getting slots as close as possible to what they want and the need to be able to depart and arrive on time. The mathematical models we have created can help generate optimal airport schedules and shed light on the trade-offs necessary to accommodate slot allocation objectives. This means those airlines which miss out on the slots they want can see how the process works. The proposed models can be applied to coordinated airports. Each airport is an individual case and will need to appropriately set the parameters of the models reflecting their operating conditions and local needs. Our work will help to manage the demand-supply imbalance, through the optimal allocation of the available capacity. This will result in efficient schedules and will support a fairer playing field for everyone. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 9 Konstantinos Zografos is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Management Science, and Director of the Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL) in Lancaster University Management School. Professor Zografos leads the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)-funded OR-MASTER (Mathematical Models and Algorithms for Allocating Scarce Airport Resources) project. Researchers at Lancaster involved in OR-MASTER include Professor Kevin Glazebrook (Co-Investigator), Dr Nihal Berktas, Dr Burak Boyaci, Dr Jamie Fairbrother, Dr Kamyar Kargar, Dr Fotios Katsigiannis, Dr Merve Keskin, Theodoti Kerama, Davood Mohammadi, Professor Stefanos Mouzas, Dr Aleksandr Pirogov, Dr Robert Shone, Dr David Torres-Sanchez, and Dr Jiang Yu. k.zografos@lacaster.ac.uk
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 11 Don’t cut out the middle man Innovation intermediation in supply chains We want public services to have the best tools at their disposal. But businesses with the products to solve problems often lack the ability to bring their services to the attention of these public organisations. Professors Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring explain their work with the UK National Health Service, examining how the use of intermediary organisations can speed up and improve access to innovations, leading to better processes and new technologies being employed for the betterment of patients.
If you are taken into hospital in England, you rely on the National Health Service (NHS) to provide the best care available. As a publicly-funded organisation, the NHS is responsible for hospitals, general practitioners, and many other forms of healthcare across the country. In 2021/22 alone, there were an estimated 570 million patient contacts with doctors, hospitals, mental health services, ambulances and other NHS outlets. For these millions of contacts to be as successful as possible, the NHS must continue to innovate. Surgeons and nurses need the most up-to-date technologies, products with the greatest chance of ensuring a heart operation is successful, that a transplant goes well, that diagnoses are accurate. The NHS spends more than £1bn annually on research and development, and healthcare is the largest area of government procurement spending in the UK. In 2018/19, the UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spent just under £70bn, most on behalf of the NHS in England. This money is spent, among other things, on purchasing innovations that fulfil as-yet-unmet healthcare needs – they are looking for innovators to create something that can be applied across their organisation. But if this all sounds nothing but wonderful and straightforward, it is far from it. THE SMALL BUSINESS PROBLEM The slow uptake of innovations within the NHS has long been an issue, related to multiple institutional failures. A culture among medical professionals of organised scepticism leads them to require substantial clinical evidence of efficacy before adopting a technology or innovation. Coupled with labyrinth bureaucracy, this slows down adoption. Many of the firms who can address the innovation needs of the NHS are technology-based SMEs. Their presence is key to stimulating change and development, to introducing the types of technology that keep the NHS at the cutting edge. The NHS – and other large public organisations – will know they have a need, but they are not always sure what the solution is, or what shape it will take. But SMEs do not find it easy to access the NHS. These firms may have the most effective products, solutions to problems that the larger organisation has yet to begin to tackle, but the essential connections between the SMEs and the NHS can be hard to establish and maintain. This is where intermediary organisations can come in. In the NHS, our research involved analysing the work of the Health Innovation North West Coast. Health Innovation Networks (formerly known as Academic Health Science Networks) are regional bodies established by the NHS in 2013 to support the identification and spread of innovations with the English NHS at pace and scale. Health Innovation Networks (HINs) bring together various NHS organisations – such as hospitals and commissioning bodies – with industry and academia, with the aim of improving patient outcomes while generating economic growth. They create a key point of reference for health innovation. They work with industry to scope problems and jointly develop solutions to key health challenges. They raise awareness of innovative firms and their technologies and coordinate NHS organisations on the demand side to accelerate the adoption of solutions that are new to the NHS. Essentially, they bridge the gap between supply and demand. IT TAKES THREE TO TANGO Our expertise is in supply chains. We know how innovation can flow through them, and if this is improved – if processes and structures are optimised, and obstacles are removed – then there 12 | As well as our work within the NHS, we analysed similar structures within the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Our research attracted the MoD’s attention, and we gave an invited lecture to an audience of Ministry officials and other civil servants. The MoD spent more than £20bn on procurement in 2019/20, and is expected to spend more than £85bn over the next four years. Like the NHS, the MoD recognises the importance of new and emerging technologies. But procurement practices can impede innovation. Niteworks, a for-profit organisation, was set up in 2003 to provide an impartial environment where defence supplier employees, MoD staff, scientists and academics could collaborate to address important defence challenges. The mediating organisation enabled early and close interactions between suppliers, military endusers and relevant MoD units to investigate key requirements of new technologies. This led to refined needs and significant cost savings. Niteworks senior managers lobbied MoD officials to adopt more agile contracting, allowing faster integration of technological advances. They convinced stakeholders to test alternative procurement processes, and built a system where the MoD was more willing and able to engage early and closely with suppliers to define requirements. Their actions improved the way the MoD asks for and procures innovation. This is innovation-oriented public procurement, but it could just as easily apply to the private sector, where you have large corporations looking to innovate, and SMEs who might have the products and the knowhow to help. It could be applied, for instance, to the aerospace or automotive industry, bridging the gap from early-stage innovation to commercial application. The case for the Defence
are grand possibilities at the end of the rainbow for patients. Beyond this, we look at procurement. How do you write specifications for what you want to achieve? How do you contract for it? In the case of the NHS, how do you identify suitable SMEs out there doing smart things? It might be that what the NHS is looking for does not yet exist, or it might exist but the buyer does not know about it. The needs are not always radical, looking for something totally new. Articulating demand is crucial to identifying unmet needs and translating them into specific requirements. Intermediaries can support this demand articulation process. But it works both ways. The SMEs can look at the NHS and see this huge organisation and not know where to go, who to talk to. When we look at the NHS as an entity, we are talking about lots of different organisations. It could be a hospital, it could be an integrated care board, it could be a primary care network of GPs. They have their own challenges, and are looking for solutions to particular issues. The situation is exacerbated by SMEs’ lack of market reputation and NHS procurement rules and practices. SMEs do not speak the same language as the bureaucracy of the NHS. They could fear they have a lack of credibility. Within the large organisations, there can be aversion to risk, and SMEs can be riskaverse too, lacking incentives to try something new. As intermediary organisations, HINs can ease the relationship and help to resolve these issues. They can address some the challenges and act as a catalyst for change. They learn about what works and what does not and change how the system operates over time. They can seek to create new processes and structures, or adjust existing ones, to support innovation implementation. They transform how public organisations such as the NHS ask for, procure, and adopt innovations. We found that early in the process intermediaries identified institutional failures specific to SME firms, notably the weak connectivity to hospitals, and their limited ability to participate in NHS contracting. They promoted locally proven innovations as candidates for fasttracked nationwide adoption and lobbied senior NHS executives and policy-makers regarding the challenges facing SMEs in accessing the NHS and finance. Health Innovation North West Coast ran educational workshops targeting clinicians and NHS staff to foster a climate of innovation and openness to working with innovators, and tackle risk aversion among them. They also ran workshops for SMEs to educate them on how the NHS works. In sum, the intermediaries promote institutional change by exposing problems, imagining future ways of accessing innovation, and mobilising resources to transition to them. POSITIVE OUTCOMES We have been able to feed back on the challenges and positive results of HINs. Among the projects Health Innovation North West Coast helped with were 3D printing solutions to areas including heart surgeries and limb prosthetics to improve care delivery and reduce operating costs; an app for real-time information and remote diagnosis of children ailments; latex-free surgical gloves; and a portable ultrasound for use in primary care to speed up patient diagnosis and referral times. We also identified areas where the collaboration between innovation intermediaries, buyers, and suppliers could be improved. The ideal outcome is that our advice improves procurement of innovation, that it increases the scale and the pace at which new products enter the NHS and therefore improve health services and health outcomes. It leads to innovation on a practical level for these organisations, and anyone who encounters them. For the NHS, you might benefit from better care for whatever ailment you have. Resource productivity benefits arising from innovation also mean that public healthcare is affordable. From a supplier perspective, if you are a small company who has not dealt with the NHS before, you get a new customer, new sales, you get your product being known within the NHS, you open yourself to other markets. Everyone benefits. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13 Kostas Selviaridis is a Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management in the Department of Management Science. His research focuses on public contracting and its role in promoting innovation, resilience, and sustainability goals in supply chains. k.selviaridis@lancaster.ac.uk Martin Spring is Professor of Operations Management in the Department of Management Science. He is also Lancaster University Management School Associate Dean for Engagement. m.spring@lancaster.ac.uk This article is partly based on the paper Facilitating public procurement of innovation in the UK defence and health sectors: Innovation intermediaries as institutional entrepreneurs, by Professors Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring, of Lancaster University Management School; and Professor Alan Hughes, of Imperial College Business School. It is published in the journal Research Policy.
14 | The Path to Eden
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 15 Eden Project Morecambe offers the potential to revitalise the town and bring new tourism opportunities to the region. But for it to be a long-term success, many factors need to be properly considered. Professor Radka Newton explains her work with local and regional government and businesses on the I-Connect project, looking to ensure that plans are made with proper public insight, and encompass all relevant aspects – especially how people get to and from the new attraction.
Eden Project Morecambe is coming. A huge new tourist attraction is just years away from reality. Eden has the potential to help breathe new life into a seaside town that had its heyday in the 1950s, and which has seen steady decline in tourism in more recent decades with the closure of the Frontierland amusement park and the short-lived and unsuccessful venture that was the World of Crinkley Bottom in Happy Mount Park. The plan is that the £100m development will be complete by 2026, having been awarded £50m from the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund in January 2023. That was a major step in turning the dream into reality. Transforming land on the Promenade into an indoor and outdoor experience that connects people with the wonderful natural environment of Morecambe Bay can only be a positive thing. But there is much to consider if the attraction is to be a success. PLACE-BASED POLICY DESIGN With the multidisciplinary I-Connect project across Lancaster University, we look at policy design affecting key planning areas. I-Connect started when Groundswell Innovation and Jane Dalton, one of Lancaster University’s Entrepreneurs in Residence, who sits on the Lancashire Innovation Board within Lancashire County Council, approached us to see how our participatory research could generate insight and collect data on the impact of Eden Project Morecambe on the county’s infrastructure. The Lancashire 2050 framework, setting out the county’s vision for the future, is presented in departmentalised sections: economy, health, well-being, and education. But things are interconnected. Our project started out examining the ‘last mile’ to Eden, looking at transport issues in the area and seeing if sustainable and inclusive solutions can be found. The case of Eden encourages us to think about how to get there, have a good experience, what the journey looks like. Our stakeholders – Lancashire County Council, Lancaster City Council, the planning office, the sustainability team – were excited about the increased number of visitors and the potential for the local communities, but at the same time unsure that active transport opportunities are ready. The Eden Project is a beacon of sustainability, thinking about the future of the planet. The last thing we want is to make driving the only way to visit. ACTIVE TRANSPORT Taking a human-centred design approach, we gathered data on the lived experience of active and public transport between Lancaster and Morecambe, looking at the experience of citizens walking the route, taking the bus, the train, riding a bike. Instead of surveys or interviews, we invited participants to walk or ride with us, take a bus or the train, track their journeys and document the experience. Applying a sensory ethnography research approach, we recorded the smells, the sights, the sounds, the feelings – of cold or warmth, safety or danger – to capture the whole picture. This field-based research takes us to the place so we can better understand it. You cannot make the policy from the office. It is not possible to decide about the world around you without being in the world. Basing everything on assumptions or purely on your personal experience is not enough. These experiences can help policymakers and local business think about what services need to be implemented to make the experience inclusive and safe. If we walk, for example, on the Greenway between Lancaster and Morecambe, we realise there are limited facilities for people to have a rest, to use the bathroom, enjoy refreshments. 16 |
There is a lack of maps and directions. We looked at the types of waste you can see, how this can instigate feelings of fear. When you see empty bottles of alcohol or cans, you may start worrying if there are going to be drunk people around, if you are going to get into trouble. There were feelings of people not really knowing where they are. On the bus, you’re not sure where to get off; if you are walking, signage was a big issue. When we spoke to people, we found concerns over safety on public transport – with data showing male passengers took 17% more trips than female passengers – as well as over hygiene facilities for those using both public and active transport. Then there are issues of inclusivity and accessibility for people with a variety of disabilities and panabilities, visible or invisible – these concerns are rarely acknowledged in the planning stage. POSITIVE ASPECTS What is there now is not all bad. It is not that the Eden Morecambe is all shiny and futuristic and the only way. You must ensure you do not eradicate the existing community. You must consider how they will perceive what is happening. Our initial transport angle grew. The journey is part of the overall experience. If the journey is not a positive experience, ultimately you may not even go to the destination, enjoy it, or recommend it. It was eye-opening to see it all from different demographical and cultural backgrounds, imagining what it would be like for families and for international visitors, people with pets, younger adults – all likely to want to visit Eden. This human-centred point-of-view was powerful for the policymakers, who will show the project approach and outputs in the City Council’s common room in 2024 in a form of an immersive visual exhibition. What was appreciated by the stakeholders is that they benefited from such diverse perspectives. They enjoyed having the local entrepreneurs, people from the Council, people from local community groups, artists, students, Lancaster University, all involved. Our open innovation paradigm gives voice to a diverse community of people who continue supporting our project through litter picking events and community engagement forums. A BETTER FUTURE The policymakers are now appreciative of looking at the world differently, and our research shone a light on reimagining the future of policymaking. With plans such as Lancashire 2050, you want these policies and developments to be sustainable, future-proof. In collaboration with a wide range of local stakeholders, we applied a future scenario method to imagine Lancaster in 2050, focusing on both the future of transport and of quality of life. We outlined four potential futures: the ideal scenario of Lanctopia (with a high quality of life and transport that is accessible, inclusive and efficient); Slowcaster (with high quality of life but poor transport); Nodecaster (with good transport but low quality of life); and Lancastrophe (with poor quality of life and transport). Lanctopia took inspiration from the Nordic States, with a communitycentred governance and place-based policies. Here, technology enables digital integration of transport that is emission-free, safe, inclusive and accessible in remote rural communities. Private car ownership is socially unacceptable and unnecessary, with active transport enabled through thoughtful infrastructure. At the other end of the spectrum, Lancastrophe combines the negatives of insufficient transport and infrastructure with poor life quality. There is an increasing divide between the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor, transport is unaffordable due to a scarcity of fuel, there is increased flooding in the region, high levels of crime, and little to look forward to. Neither of these scenarios will play out in its entirety, but they show how policy making might be used to shape a better future, and the importance of considering the point-of-view of citizen, who understand the unique challenges they face. Our work on I-Connect shows how this might be done through planning for the Eden Morecambe project when academic multidisciplinary research connects with a local, place-based innovation driver such as Groundswell Innovation. It is not just about the site itself, but about the journey there, and about how we consider the bigger picture of the area as a whole. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 17 Radka Newton is a Professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, a Personal Chair in Management Education and Innovation, and Founder Director of the Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education (SIME). Professor Newton is the Principal Investigator on the I-Connect: Codesigning Sustainable Communities project working in collaboration with Dr Jekaterina Rindt and Dr Mirian Calvo. Project research partners are Groundswell Innovation, Lancashire County Council Innovation Board, Lancaster City Council, and Connected Places Catapult. The project impact has been supported by the Government Open Innovation Team. r.newton@lancaster.ac.uk Hear more about the I-Connect project on the Transforming Tomorrow podcast from the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business: https://pod.co/transforming-tomorrow/ sustainability-policy-at-a-local-level
18 | Using Data To Share Food More Fairly
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 19 The charity sector is feeling the squeeze. As the cost of living rises, more people are relying on food banks to feed their families. Carl Hawkes, of FareShare, explains how his organisation distributes food to those in need, and how Lancaster’s statistics and operational research expertise is helping to add insight and value to FareShare’s crucial operational decision-making.
More than two million people in the UK use food banks to help put meals on their table. Over the past five years, demand for these vital charitable and community-led services has spiked. At FareShare, we are the UK’s largest food redistribution charity. We take food industry surplus and send it through our network of warehouses to around 9,500 charities across the UK. Each week, we provide almost a million meals for vulnerable people. Like the rest of the charity sector, we are low on capacity. The increase in demand caused by the cost of living crisis and the effects of Covid leave us with difficult decisions to make. Even though we have gone from distributing around 16,000 tons of food to more than 50,000 tons annually, supply does not meet demand. We cannot always meet the needs of the voluntary sector. Instead, we must make difficult decisions about where we allocate food. We must maximise our impact and squeeze as much social value as possible out of the food we have. This can leave us in the position of having to make some impossible decisions when we have limited supplies. SOLVING PROBLEMS There are many questions to answer if we are to achieve the best possible impact. How do we maximise the social value of our food? Are we sending our supplies to the most deprived areas, the most populous areas? How can we optimise our van routes? How can we distribute foods in a way that reduces road miles to cut our CO2 footprint, whilst maintaining supplies and variety of produce? To help with this, we have worked with Dr Anna-Lena Sachs in Lancaster University Management School, and PhD researchers in the STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training. By bringing together this group of research specialists, we can start to use our data to help us solve challenges in a smarter way. Everyone at Lancaster showed a real curiosity about FareShare and our problems, asking relevant questions. Those queries and the framing of them started to unearth the basis of some of the issues we face. DATA DIVE To analyse these questions, we were able to conduct a data dive – an intense period of analysis of our data – with more than 100 PhD students from STOR-i and the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training in Foundations of Data Science. The PhD researchers we worked with were inquisitive, curious, intelligent, engaged, and excited about helping us to use our data to answer organisational challenges. Looking at vast quantities of data, they helped to set us on the road to new practice and solutions. For example, 20 |
they told us that food volumes from our suppliers typically increase in the days leading up to and the days after a natural disaster, or an extreme weather event. Any time there is a storm, our supplies spiked. If anything like that happens now, we prepare for it. Making decisions on where our food goes is challenging. It is not uncommon for us to send apples from one place to another far away. If we can get apples from Aberdeen and keep them in Aberdeen, rather than sending them up from the other end of the country, that is a much better outcome for the environment. Data is therefore crucial to determine where food is most needed and where it can have the greatest impact. The data dive was particularly useful. It stretched our thinking as an organisation and set us on a path to start to use data in different ways operationally. We have since appointed an analyst to further support our decision-making processes. A FAIR ALLOCATION With the FARE Project – the Fair Allocation and REdistribution of food – we are using publicly available datasets across our regions to help us create an automated system of allocating food. An algorithm based on population, social deprivation, the social value generated by charities, and regional centre capacity/demand will help us to ensure that our supplies have the biggest impact. A key thing about FareShare is our food should be a hand up, not a handout. It should be a connector to people and services, rather than just food aid. We require all our charities to provide additional auxiliary services above and beyond just providing food parcels. If we have two charities who both do signposting to other organisations, but one version of signposting is a poster on the back of a toilet door, and the other version is a Citizens Advice Bureau advisor on site five days a week, clearly one generates more social value than the other. We are starting to identify those groups that squeeze more social value out of our food. The seed of this project was with Lancaster University and the PhD students. It is having a real impact right across the country in terms of what we do. And this is just the start of the longterm impact our work with Lancaster has had; it has been amazing working with everyone there. Thanks to the fruits of this collaboration, we can ensure more of those two million-plus people using foodbanks are able to put meals on their tables every evening. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21 Carl Hawkes is Director of Operations at FareShare. FareShare is the UK’s national network of charitable food redistributors, made up of 18 independent organisations. They take good quality surplus food from across the food industry and supply nearly 9,500 frontline charities and community groups. The STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and operates across Lancaster University Management School and Lancaster University Faculty of Science and Technology. It trains researchers in Statistics and Operational Research and works with industrial partners both in longterm collaborations and to solve one-off problems.
22 | WOMEN: BUSINESS’S SECRET SUPERHEROES
It is not men who do all the work. Dr Allan Discua Cruz explains a study by members of the Centre for Family Business that shows how women’s influence on keeping family businesses operating successfully and over a long period can no longer be hidden. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 23
Women play crucial roles in family businesses the world over. Yet their influence is often overlooked. Too often they are treated as supporting players – or ignored completely. Within the Centre for Family Business here at Lancaster, many of us are members of families in business. We wanted to challenge these perceptions of passivity and a lack of influence on business operations and success. Our experiences have shown us how women have a vital role to play in the longevity and continuity of family firms. Yet we have become increasingly aware that little had been said about this reality in certain areas of the world where women have always engaged in family business. WHAT WE KNEW Women’s contributions to the endurance of business operations through successive generations has been considered marginal because of society’s predominantly patriarchal structure. Alongside my colleagues Ellie Hamilton and Sarah Jack, our work focused on my homeland of Honduras, a developing Latin American country. Honduras has a population of around 9.6 million and a GDP of about US$31.7 billion. The business landscape is dominated by family firms. In this environment, male-dominated cultural norms and expectations may characterise local family businesses, with men often designated as business leaders and successors entitled to make key strategic decisions. The role of women in this context has been poorly understood. They are often hidden or relegated to a supportive or social role, rarely considered as leading or influencing the firm. STEREOTYPES Our study examines the role of women in family business continuity, challenging common misconceptions about their role and illustrating how they can best approach the continuity of family businesses. We were encouraged to challenge the current understanding, highlighting and championing the different roles of women in family businesses that have not only survived but thrived. At the outset, we were aware that despite women around the world being acknowledged as the unsung heroes who ensure harmony within a family in business, they are often perceived as underrepresented in senior management roles. We speculated that the contribution of women to family business continuity is influenced by the circumstances they find themselves in. If they are a mother, a spouse, and a business executive, then those roles may be influenced by how things are done both in the household and in business. STEWARDSHIP We started with the premise that the role of women in family business continuity may relate to behaving like a steward, looking after the interests of both the family and the business. Latin American cultures are highly hierarchical, collectivist, and reliant on a strong family logic, suggesting that gender roles are clearly defined. Yet we wanted to go beyond that and explore whether their role could be better appreciated as entrepreneurial stewards, going beyond maintaining existing ventures and showing a commitment to stewardship that aims to grow and build the family’s assets. To start untangling how women contribute to the continuity of family businesses as entrepreneurial stewards, we decided to examine situations in which they were formally appointed to executive or leadership positions. Across three businesses we studied, we encountered the crucial role women play in the continuity of a family firm during crises. Crises were mentioned as stories, filled with emotional accounts, unfolded. Economic downturns, 24 |
political crisis, and natural disasters all occurred, and we focused on who dealt with the situation and why. We heard powerful stories of these women’s experiences, the circumstances in which they found themselves, and how they resolved or managed such conditions. They revealed how and why gendered norms did or did not influence their approach and the (sometimes complex) underlying forces of gender in family business. This was important because previously women’s contributions were seen as limited to social activities, supporting male family business leaders. They were viewed as hosting social events for business purposes, or becoming actively involved in social club circles where their husbands are members. They have not been expected to play a direct influential role themselves. HIDDEN ROLES Our work revealed these women business leaders play an informal, covert, stewarding role, going beyond their expected gendered role at home. This stewardship role develops in parallel with a formal, and more visible, role in the firm. They went beyond expected gendered stereotypes and norms, without causing uncertainty about their objectives or responsibilities. Their ability to move between formal and informal roles reveals that stewardship approaches are transferred from the domestic sphere to the firm during a crisis, contributing to the continuity of family businesses. We also found women articulate their roles as active entrepreneurial stewards – shaping the way families engage in business, particularly when business continuity is threatened. We specifically identified three ways that women contribute to family business continuity: Embracing a stewardship role. Women actively engage in problem-solving strategies, acting on how different family members’ skills and bonds could be combined to benefit the business, and encouraging exchanges and communication among family members in times of crisis. Nurturing resilience. They foster a shared sentiment of entrepreneurial stewardship among family members when businesses are under threat. This is represented by a collective understanding of the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset and shaping a custodianship sentiment. Such sentiment, or emotion, revolves around a commitment to be involved in the survival of the firm by maintaining not only the family assets, but also the families’ unique ways of doing things. Shaping family and business networks. They purposefully, and selectively, create and strengthen formal commercial alliances, discreetly leveraging family and non-family relationships. In close family networks, this tends to be a discreet activity; in contrast, networking behaviours outside the family realm are deliberately and openly geared to help the business. These three elements contribute to shaping the role of women as entrepreneurial stewards, affecting dramatically the continuity of a family firm. CRISIS MODE The critical situations we examined proved an opportunity for women to shape a stewardship approach. What we saw is that they can play a key role at critical times by making thoughtful, strategic decisions about family assets. They can turn into powerful network actors within and outside the family itself. When they take on formal company roles, they become visible in the business environment, yet their unique role contributing to the continuity of the firm can remain hidden. The women in our study strike a delicate balance by making decisions whilst observing traditional and socially expected gender norms. Women should not be cast as victims or special cases in the Latin American family business context. They are potential builders of resilience and continuity; they influence family business continuity, ensuring harmony and strengthening bonds within the family. The public perception of these women as only taking supporting roles for male leaders does not always match the private reality, in which they can be crucial to businesses surviving and thriving. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 25 Dr Allan Discua Cruz is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and the Director of the Centre for Family Business. The article Women’s entrepreneurial stewardship: The contribution of women to family business continuity in rural areas of Honduras, by Dr Allan Discua Cruz, Professor Ellie Hamilton and Professor Sarah Jack, of Lancaster University Management School; and Dr Giovanna Campopiano, of the University of Bergamo, is published in the Journal of Family Business Strategy. a.discuacruz@lancaster.ac.uk
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 27 Can you be trusted to share? Or would you betray your friends to make a quick profit? Dr Renaud Foucart investigates how guilt, trust, cooperation, and betrayal affect how we all behave when money is on the line. Are you a traitor?
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