̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Centre for Business Research

“It's not one single trauma, it’s hundreds of traumas”

cjb250 — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 08:00:45 +0000

Policies aimed at addressing the migrant crisis need to take into account the serious mental health issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers, say researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge as they launch two films highlighting the plight of migrants and possible policy options to support them.

Celebrating Cambridge Women: Part II

jek67 — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 22:06:40 +0000

Read the second part of our series marking Women's History Month, as we shine a light on even more of the inspiring women living and working here at Cambridge.

Cambridge achievers recognised in New Year Honours

ps748 — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 08:33:45 +0000

Economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta receives an elevated knighthood. Sir Partha, the Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics, is made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire for services to economics and the natural environment.

Another economist, Dr Graham Gudgin, of the Centre for Business Research, is awarded a CBE for services to economic development in Northern Ireland. He said: "I am delighted to receive this honour in recognition of my time in Belfast running the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre, as Special Advisor to First Minister, David Trimble, and working with Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, on tax reform for Northern Ireland. It was an honour to be able to use my experience as a member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group to advance economic ideas and practice in Northern Ireland."

Professor Krishna Chatterjee, Professor of Endocrinology at the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, is also awarded a CBE for services to people with endocrine disorders. He said: “I am delighted that my contributions to endocrine disorders have been honoured in this way. This also represents the efforts of many scientists and clinical colleagues in Cambridge, and internationally, with whom I have worked over the years. Together with the patients participating in our research, we strive to advance knowledge and outcomes in rare hormone disorders."

An MBE is awarded to Elizabeth Blane, a laboratory manager for services to pathogen genome sequencing, and Natural Sciences undergraduate, Dara McAnulty, receives the British Empire Medal for services to nature and the autistic community in his native Northern Ireland. At 18, Dara, a student at Queens' College, is the youngest person to feature in this year's list. His 'Diary of a Young Naturalist' won the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Nature Conservation.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ��'s Acting Vice-Chancellor, Dr Anthony Freeling, congratulated those being honoured: "How wonderful to see people so closely linked to the Collegiate ̽��ֱ�� being recognised in the New Year Honours list. It’s gratifying to see dedicated service acknowledged and rewarded in this way. My warmest congratulations to those colleagues and friends of the ̽��ֱ�� who have been honoured for their commitment and their achievements."

A number of academics, staff and an undergraduate student at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge feature in this year's New Year Honours List, the first of the reign of King Charles III.

It's gratifying to see dedicated service acknowledged and rewarded in this way

Dr Anthony Freeling

Senate House

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Greater business-university collaboration will reap rewards, says new report

skbf2 — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:09:34 +0000

Valuable interactions between businesses and universities in the UK take many forms, but a lack of capacity by firms and information from universities is holding back even greater collaboration, says a new report.

̽��ֱ��report by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) and the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School found that people-based interactions are the most common form of business-university interaction at 45%, followed by problem-solving interactions at 30%, commercialisation at 24%, and community-based interaction at 23%. Even within the commercialisation category, use of academic publications was most common at 19%, while spinouts and licensing were only 9% and 2%, respectively.

Report based on survey of nearly 4,000 companies

̽��ֱ��report based on an online survey of 3,823 companies in 2020-21 found that there is much untapped potential for the university sector to work further with business. Collaboration is curtailed by companies' lack of capacity to tap this important resource and by a lack of information from universities on how they can help businesses.

"A key finding of the report is that interactions take multiple forms that are far more frequent than spinoff and licensing transactions, and the vast majority of businesses interacting in these multiple forms find benefits that meet or exceed their expectations," said report co-author Alan Hughes of Imperial College Business School and the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge.

"But the survey results also make clear that it's lack of capacity on the part of companies, and a shortage of information provided by universities – rather than the costs of interaction – that is holding back greater collaboration with the UK's university sector, and this is costing the economy in terms of innovation and competitiveness. This issue could be addressed by businesses devoting more attention and staff to building their capacity for interactions with the university sector. This would be time and money well spent in terms of potential rewards and impact on company performance.

"Universities could also devote more attention to informing companies about the support that can be provided, and business schools have an important role to play in this."

Firms lack ability to seek knowledge from universities

Among the more detailed findings, the survey showed that companies of all types and sizes are "lacking in the ability to search for external knowledge from universities and invested only modest effort and time in integrating this knowledge into their companies". More than half of companies with at least one interaction with universities said that lack of resources was the biggest constraint on further interaction, followed by difficulty in identifying a university partner to help their businesses.

̽��ֱ��impact of COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to university-business links, with more than a third of firms reporting that it had impacted their interactions with universities. If the destructive impact of the pandemic on collaborations persists it will harm future economic growth and business performance.

̽��ֱ��115-page report – ̽��ֱ��Changing State of Business- ̽��ֱ�� Interactions in the UK 2005 to 2021 – is co-authored by Alan Hughes of Imperial College Business School and the CBR at Cambridge Judge; Michael Kitson, Assistant Director of the CBR; Ammon Salter of the ̽��ֱ�� of Bath; David Angenendt of Technical ̽��ֱ�� of Munich and the CBR; and Robert Hughes of the CBR.

Other findings of the report include:

UK businesses interact with universities on a global scale, not only locally or regionally. 'Knowledge exchange interactions operate over multiple regional, national and international geographies.'
Individual academics and individual professional staff at universities play a big role in starting and sustaining collaboration with businesses. 'Personal contacts are important mechanisms for university-company interactions.'
̽��ֱ��diversity of university types in the UK higher education sector is a 'strength of the system', because companies interact with large research-focused universities as well as smaller and more specialised institutions.
Companies that interact with universities rely on a diverse spectrum of academic disciplines.

Universities can help in full range of business functions

"Companies seek university interactions to solve the full range of business functions," says Alan Hughes. "These wider functions span strategy and business organisation, finance, logistics, human relations and marketing. As a result, interactions spread far beyond the STEM (science, tech, engineering and maths) disciplines to encompass, in particular, business and management studies and the social sciences, as well as arts and humanities. Non-STEM disciplines are particularly significant in knowledge-intensive services and other service industries, which are the dominant sectors in UK economic activity."

More than 80% of all companies surveyed said their university interactions met or exceeded their expectations, yet this was greater in more business-related areas of interaction such as human resource management, financial planning and business strategy. Interactions that did not meet expectations were concentrated in tech and process development, as well as logistics and procurement.

"This finding is a reminder that the UK higher education sector, including business schools, play a role far broader than only in the well-publicised technology sector," said co-author Michael Kitson, Associate Professor in International Macroeconomics and Director of the MBA Programme at Cambridge Judge.

"Developing new technologies are, of course important, but the survey shows that a focus only on technology risks businesses and universities alike missing out on organisational and other business-related activities that benefit companies across the UK."

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Interactions between UK businesses and universities are broad-based and beneficial, but are being held back by firms' lack of capacity and information to tap this key resource, says a new report co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School.

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̽��ֱ��social scientist who inadvertently became a poet

cg605 — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 10:29:49 +0000

At the age of thirteen Mona Jebril found herself stranded in Gaza, becoming a refugee for the second time in her life. Her talent and determination brought her to Cambridge where she became the first Gates Cambridge Scholar from the Gaza Strip. She completed her PhD in education in 2017. Today she is using the arts to give a voice to those in areas of conflict.

Beyond the pandemic: re-learn how to govern risk

lw355 — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:15:30 +0000

As the pandemic crisis has played out across the world, different governments have taken different approaches to controlling the spread of virus and supporting citizens – with different outcomes. Can we start to draw conclusions on how best to govern future catastrophic risks?

How to tend an economic bonfire

lw355 — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 13:05:07 +0000

Business, enterprise and employment are flourishing in Greater Cambridge, but housing and infrastructure are struggling to match the jobs boom, and gaps in social equality keep widening. ̽��ֱ�� academics are connecting their insights, data and algorithms to find solutions to the area’s “growing pains”.

Military spending did not 'crowd out' welfare in Middle East prior to Arab Spring

fpjl2 — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 11:00:34 +0000

Research casts doubt on the widely-held view that spiralling military expenditure across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 'crowded out' investment in healthcare and public services, leading to civil unrest that eventually exploded in the Arab Spring revolutions.

̽��ֱ��so-called 'guns versus butter' or 'welfare versus warfare' hypothesis – that prioritised military spending resulted in neglect of health and education, thereby creating conditions that fomented public rebellion – is considered by many experts to be a root cause of the uprisings that gripped the region during 2011.

However, a team of researchers who analysed economic and security data from MENA nations in the 16 years leading up to the Arab Spring found no evidence of a trade-off between spending on the military and public services, specifically healthcare.

̽��ֱ��researchers from Cambridge and the Lebanese American ̽��ֱ�� argue that much of the evidence for the ‘guns versus butter’ causal link come from analyses of wealthy European nations, which has then been assumed to hold true for the Middle East.

They say the study’s findings, published today in the journal Defence and Peace Economics, provide a “cautionary note” against a reliance on simplistic correlations based on data from OECD nations to draw important policy conclusions about the causes of turmoil in the Middle East.

“Our research finds reports of this apparent spending trade-off prior to the Arab Spring to be somewhat spurious,” said Dr Adam Coutts, based at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Sociology.

“Academics and policy-makers should be careful in assuming that models and results from studies of other regions can be transplanted onto the Middle East and North Africa,” he said.

“Determining the cause of unrest is a rather more complex task than some experts may suggest. Historical experiences and political economy factors need to be considered.”

While only Saudi Arabia is in the top ten global nations for military spending in terms of hard cash, when calculated as a share of GDP six of the top ten military spenders are MENA nations.

Coutts and colleagues ran World Bank data through detailed statistical models to explore the trade-off between spending on military and on welfare – health, in this case – of 18 different MENA nations from 1995 up to the start of the Arab Spring in 2011.

̽��ֱ��team also looked at casualties resulting from domestic terror attacks in an attempt to estimate security needs that might have helped drive military spending in a region plagued by terrorism.

They found no statistically significant evidence that increased military spending had an impact on health investment. “Contrary to existing evidence from many European nations, we found that levels of military expenditure do not induce or affect cuts to healthcare in the Middle East and North Africa,” said co-author Dr Adel Daoud from Cambridge’s Centre for Business Research.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found no evidence for casualties from terrorism affecting either health or military spending – perhaps a result of the routine nature of such occurrences in the region.

“There may have been a policy adaptation in which regional conflicts and security threats are no longer the main influence on government security and military spending decisions,” said Daoud.

Adam Coutts added: “It has been argued that Arab populations accepted an ‘authoritarian bargain’ over the last forty years – one of societal militarisation in return for domestic security – and that this came at the expense of their welfare and social mobility.

“However, health and military spending cannot be predicted by each other in this troubled region. Policy analysts should not single out military spending as a main culprit for the lack of investment in public goods.

“Once again we find that straightforward explanations for unrest in the Middle East and North Africa are tenuous on close analysis.”

Findings dispute 'guns versus butter' narrative as a major factor behind the Arab Spring. Researchers caution against uncritically applying lessons from Western nations to interpret public policy decisions in the Middle East.

Policy analysts should not single out military spending as a main culprit for the lack of investment in public goods

Adam Coutts

Hossam el-Hamalawy

Medics transferring injured protesters in Abbassiya Square, Egypt

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