Leadership and organisational learning and development

In 2013, the British Academy of Management (BAM) launched the Researcher Development Grants Scheme with the aim of advancing management scholarship through empirical research. Two UWE Bristol researchers, Eda Ulus and Inge Aben, developed the project ‘Silence is Golden’ which was successfully selected as one of 13 projects from 125 applications for a Researcher Development Grant. The project will explore individual experiences of introversion in higher education.

Following this project, Inge Aben was rewarded a PhD scholarship in 2018 to continue and expand her studies into “introversion at work” at the University of Bath, School of Management. She was supervised by Professors Nancy Harding, Juani Swart and Russ Vince.

The findings of the research will be shared with professionals in reports and academic journals and used to inform best practice in teaching and best practice in organisations.

The Leadership Evaluation Collaboratory was a network of practitioners and academics that promoted learning and experimentation around different approaches to evaluating leadership development and organisational change. Its aim was to support the development of evaluative capacity amongst professionals who work in complex environments, where multiple-stakeholders collaborate across boundaries in order to address systemic issues and where outcomes may not be readily discernible.

Meeting regularly for four years between 2015 and 2019, the collaboratory was supported by funding from the NHS Leadership Academies of the South West and the Thames Valley and Wessex regions. The experience of co-chairing the Collaboratory is currently being written up as a research paper by Dr Gareth Edwards (UWE Bristol), Dr Simon Smith (University of Winchester), Dr Adam Palmer (University of Winchester), Professor Richard Bolden (UWE Bristol) and Emma Watton (Lancaster University).

To find out more, please contact: Dr Gareth Edwards.

Professor Peter Case is leading teams of researchers in the design and delivery of leadership and organisation development programmes to improve service delivery for malaria elimination and HIV prevention in southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Namibia).The key collaborative partner for this work is the Malaria Elimination Initiative (a research centre based at the University of California, San Francisco and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), but Peter also works closely with ministries of health in the region, the Clinton Health Access Initiative and Population Services International to bring about changes in operational practice and improved performance.

A key aspect of ensuring sustainability of the work is providing accredited training via UWE Bristol’s postgraduate certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership to cohorts of health professionals in the region. The teams work with local stakeholders to find ways of improving healthcare services. Participants in the studies include national programme directors, heads of specialist medical services at provincial and district levels, middle management and frontline staff (doctors, nurses, environmental health officers).

To date, this has resulted in improvements in the reporting of malaria cases by health facilities; increased collaboration between the malaria programme, schools, and community organisations; a decrease in health facility stock-outs of key malaria treatments drugs and an increase in malaria case investigation rates.

To find out more, please contact: Professor Peter Case.