Centre for Work, Organisation and Society

Enterprise and engagement

Dr Sarah Cromie

Dr Sarah Cromie

Dr Cromie's social responsibility work focuses on helping asylum seekers and refugees at a local charity.

Enterprise activities

This section highlights our current and potential projects with practitioners.

By 'enterprise' we mean our evident usefulness to people beyond academia. Making our research relevant is an important aspect of our activities, which enables our work to achieve its full impact. We intend that the knowledge generated by our research is shared with; public and private sector workplaces, charitable institutions, members of professional societies and other members of society for mutual benefits.

As well as undertaking research, members of CWOS are interested in helping external organisations to find innovative solutions to their people issues at work.

Our research capabilities include the following areas:

  • Aspects of the employment relationship and how this affects ordinary people and society at large
  • Links between the way change in organisations is managed and its outcomes
  • The influence of employees' experiences and perceptions and their responses to change
  • Sustainability, animal welfare and biodiversity
  • Links between individual personality and ability and workplace performance
  • Flexible work practices
  • Gender equality in the creative industries
  • The moderate, constructive, character of organised labour, with themes of partnership and pluralism  
  • The precariousness of work and workers' responses to this

Examples of enterprise and engagement with the wider community by the members of the Centre for Work, Organisation and Society:

John Arnold 

  • A regular performer at the “Bright Club”, which is a national initiative in which academics become comedians in order to make their work accessible and memorable to the general public.

  • Current work being carried out by John Arnold and Stanimira Taneva on how people can thrive at age 55+ is providing much useful feedback for participating organizations in the ICT and healthcare sectors in UK and Bulgaria. Later in the project tools will be developed to help turn useful feedback into management action. A prototype mid-career review questionnaire, sponsored by Eurofound,  has been developed and ways are being explored to make this available to the general public.

  • The “Straight Talking” project, funded by Vitae, and jointly led by John Arnold, has informed how universities manage the careers of their research staff. It has resulted in significant changes in practice in this area in at least two UK universities. See https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/reports/straight-talking-vitae-march-2012.pdf/view.
  • The Employee share ownership project, supported by ifs ProShare and conducted by Dr David McConville under the supervision of Professor John Arnold and Alison Smith, has produced rich and somewhat controversial findings about the ways in which employee share ownership schemes shape the way participants approach their work. A summary of this work is publicly available on the ifs ProShare website, at: https://proshare.ifslearning.ac.uk/docs/default-source/research/loughboroughresearch(fullresearchreport)september2012.pdf

  • Organised a workshop called My Beautiful Career and other stories at CIPD Midlands annual event - Be HR Smart: Develop yourself and shape your future, October 2015.

 

Iain Coyne 

  • Senior Editor for the British Psychological Society test reviews and is responsible for managing a team of consultant editors and test reviewers to ensure the development of timely, robust, effective and useful reviews of psychological tests for use in work, educational, clinical and forensic settings. The aim is to provide independent advice on the psychometric quality and practical considerations of a variety of psychological tests; providing guidance for test users, test takers and the general public. To date over 150 reviews have been published. Test publishers are increasingly valuing the worth of having their test reviewed via the BPS review process and the reviews are becoming a popular resource for individuals interested in using psychological tests in their work.

  • Works closely with Advance Consultancy in the design and development of a Suitability© to Collaborate tool for use in their consultancy work with large construction sector organisations. To date Iain has helped create a personality-based psychometric inventory and has provided initial evidence for the reliability, validity, norms and fairness of the tool.  The tool will be used to help understand the propensity of individuals to be collaborative (from a dispositional perspective) and help guide organisations on development needs for individuals who do not match the organisations’ requirements for collaboration. This intervention is particularly envisaged as part of a suite of assessments for organisations planning to bid for large scale collaborative infrastructure projects.

  • As Programme Director for the School's Work Psychology and Business Psychology Masters programmes, Ian has close ties with Work Psychology Group – an occupational psychology consultancy with specific expertise in the development of situational judgement tests. He is a research fellow within the organisation and has worked with WPG members on validation projects as well as other assessment research projects.

  • Spoken at Amnesty International to their managers and employees about Dignity at Work and this has led to some work experience for one of our MSc students in examining and updating their dignity at work training.

  • Running training courses on Diversity and Inclusion for Anglian Water through Executive Education.

 

Christine Coupland

  • Currently working with European and British Athletics to encourage and develop women who are currently active in sport to move into leadership roles.

  • April 2013 - a weekend development programme was organised with financial support from the IAAF. Women from Great Britain, other European countries and two other countries took part. The proposed engagement programme consists of four annual seminars to be conducted in April of each year between 2013 and 2016. The aim is to create a critical mass of women leaders who are able to support and mentor their colleagues through the programme and beyond into leadership positions. 

 

Sarah Cromie

  • A trustee for a small, Loughborough-based charity working with asylum seekers, refugees and trafficked young people. This is in keeping with her research into social responsibility practices.

 

Donal Hislop 

  • Keynote speaker at a webinar organised by Maudsley Learning in October 2015 on the topic of 'Employee Wellbeing and Performance - The role of technology and the modern workplace. 

  • October 2015, Donald Hislop was interviewed as part of a BBC East Midlands report for the programme Inside Politics on the challenges of train-based business travel.

  • October 2017, he was one of the key speakers at the CIPD Midlands area partnership (MAP) annual conference in Warwick with over 60 people in attendance during his session.

  • December 2017, Donald Hislop participated in Debate with David D’sousa of CIPD in impact of AI/Robotics on job losses, which took place at CIPD HQ in Wimbledon, London.

 

Please check the individual members’ web sites for more detail on these and other areas of expertise.

19th February 2018: Dignity at Work

  • CIPD practitioners event on the topic of Dignity at Work. The event was run primarily for CIPD members, with Masters students participating too. Besides the CPWS team and Iain Coyne as the main host and organiser, other speakers who were in attendance also included Julie Dennis, from ACAS, who talked about sexual harassment.

CIPD Leaders in learning - Loughborough SBE is one of 5 host universities for CIPD national initiative

  • 12th September 2017 – Leaders in Learning launch event
    Speakers: Donald Hislop (Introduction), Clive Trusson on The Learning Organization: A Discussion for Learning and Development and HR Practitioners, Andy Lancaster (CIPD)

  • 6th March 2018 – Leaders in Learning Network: Emerging roles in L&D
    Speaker and facilitator: Andy Lancaster

  • Thursday 15th May 2018 & Wednesday 21st November 2018
  • Taneva, S. and Arnold, J. (2018). Pathways to Successful Aging in Organizations, in symposium “Organizational Practices Contributing to Successful Aging at Work”, 2018 SIOP Annual Conference, 19-21 April, Chicago.
  • “The impact of identities that span the work and non-work domains” Ciara Kelly is Symposium organiser and co-chair (2018). Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Chicago, USA.
  • Kelly, C., Rofcannin, Y., Las Heras, M., Bosch Kries, M, & Ogbannaya, C. (2018) Integrating FSSB with Flexibility I-Deals: The Role of Context and Domain-Related Outcomes Academy of Management annual meeting, Chicago, USA.
  • Kelly, C., Arnold, J. & Strauss, K. (2018). The Role of Serious Leisure in Creating Resources for a Sustainable Career. Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Chicago, USA.
  • Hislop, Coombs, Taneva, Barnard (2018) The Impact of AI and robotics on Service and Knowledge Work: A Literature Review. Presented at 36th International Labour Process Conference, Buenos Aires, 21-23 March.