Tag Archives: policy

Knowledge Intensive Business Services: Post-Pandemic New Normal

In our third collaborative event between Birkbeck’s Department of Management and Essex Business School, we explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Knowledge Intensive Business Services. 

The COVID-19 crisis has forced many organisations to transition to remote working. How has this impacted Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS), which rely on in-person interaction and team working to deliver their services? 

In a joint event hosted by Birkbeck’s Department of Management and Essex Business School, University of Essex, Professors Ian Miles (Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester) and David Doloreux (HEC Montréal) outlined their view of the post-pandemic new normal for KIBS. 

As Chair, Dr Muthu De Silva, Director of Research in Birkbeck’s Department of Management, introduced the session, which began with discussion from Professor David Doloreux on KIBS and their key characteristics. KIBS are services which involve economic activities which are intended to result in the creation, accumulation or dissemination of knowledge. The KIBS sector includes establishments whose primary activities depend on human capital, knowledge and skills. This inevitably involves close interaction between KIBS and their clients in order to create and disseminate knowledge. 

Scholars have identified three broad classifications of KIBS: 

  1. Social and professional services (P-KIBS) 
  2. Science and technology (T-KIBS) 
  3. Cultural and creative services (C-KIBS) 

Having conducted a literature review into the key research streams relating to KIBS, Doloreux noted that very few studies prior to the pandemic have dealt with digital services and their capacity for innovation, so webinars like this address an important and under-researched area of the field. 

Regarding how the pandemic has affected the macro- and micro-pictures for KIBS innovation, Professor Doloreux made the following observations: 

  • There will be an evolution of demand on KIBS innovation, with greater opportunities related to big data, analytics and AI. 
  • COVID-19 may result in a widening gap between different types of KIBS: P-KIBS may be able to offer more innovative services that satisfy demands, whereas C-KIBS have suffered from drastically reduced demand due to COVID-19. 
  • We will need to rethink the location of activity of KIBS and where innovation occurs. 

As a geographer, Professor Doloreux also raised the following key questions: 

  • How can we geolocalise innovation in KIBS? 
  • How do KIBS innovate without face-to-face and frequent interactions with clients? 
  • What are the dynamics and implications of hybrid models and more digital service production on KIBS innovation? 
  • What is the geography of this connection? 

Regarding the long-term impact of the pandemic on KIBS, there are three possible scenarios that need to be empirically analysed: 

  1. The Revolution: COVID-19 has radically modified innovation and business models in KIBS. 
  2. Booster: COVID-19 has accelerated processes and practices that were already in place, e.g the hybrid model. 
  3. Weak game changer: changes prompted by COVID-19 have a weak impact on KIBS practice and products. 

The second half of this webinar invited Professor Ian Miles to respond to these observations. Having conducted research into KIBS throughout the pandemic, Professor Miles observed how the pandemic impacted KIBS in real time. He highlighted three elements of the crisis that were shaping business conditions: epidemiology, policy responses and socioeconomic impacts. 

In terms of patterns of demands for KIBS, the picture is very mixed. There was a sudden drop in demand for KIBS in 2019/20, three times that seen in the 2008 recession, in line with the drop in demand across the economy. Conversely, some KIBS sectors have been in increased demand and we have seen new demands related to new business problems. Among these ‘winners’ are some portions of research and development services (including the clinical trials industry) which have had to work under new constraints associated with the pandemic, of Information Technology and computer services (which were often quite capable of shifting to remote working),  and of professional services like accountancy and legal services (where new client problems are arising, but whose ways of working have been challenged). 

Professor Miles also discussed how KIBS have confronted challenges during the pandemic, including in particular restrictions on face-to-face interaction. This impacts on the establishment and maintenance of trust, and on the exchange of tacit knowledge, both in relations with clients, and in internal collaboration and team-building. Much effort is underway to improve videoconferencing systems and practices. 

For Professor Miles, there would likely be a shift between the immediate impact of the pandemic, which has seen the acceleration of digitisation activities and the stalling of long-term digital reengineering projects such as AI and data analytics, and the long-term response, which may see these efforts reinstated as organisations push the limitations of virtual communications. Professor Miles concluded by anticipating an upsurge of innovation in the future, as organisations moved on from the ‘forced rapid innovation’ of the immediate crisis. 

The presentations were followed by discussion from the audience, which featured a diverse mix of policy makers, academics and early career researchers, and a vote of thanks from Professor Suma Athreye, Essex Business School. 

A recording of this event is available to watch on YouTube. We look forward to future collaborations as we continue to explore the impact of the pandemic on innovation, knowledge creation and dissemination.

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The case for greater evidence-based policing in the UK

Dr Almuth McDowall from Birkbeck’s Department of Organizational Psychology reports on the recent international conference on policing education and training.

On Wednesday 27 June 2018, Birkbeck hosted an International Symposium on Evidence-Based Policing.  As most of us are aware, there are quantum shifts ahead in the UK policing training landscape. According to the Policing Education and Qualifications Framework (PEQF), going forward, there will be three graduate routes to entry as a Police Constable: a) an apprenticeship, b) graduate entry conversion, and c) policing degrees. This requires a fundamental rethinking of how we train police officers and what we can expect of them. What can the UK learn from other professions and contexts? This was the overall question guiding our symposium with around 70 delegates, including academics and policing practitioners, many of whom were international attendees.

Professor Jennifer Brown, Co-Director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at London School of Economics and Political Science, opened proceedings to question if there is evidence that graduates will do a good job in law enforcement. The consensus is that research is lacking in this area, especially in the UK context, and there is an increasing need to better understand the value that ‘graduate readiness’ adds to policing on the streets. David Gamblin, Research Assistant at Birkbeck, presented research conducted as part of a Home Office Funded Innovation grant which was spearheaded by the Mayor’s Office for Policing in London (MOPAC) and led by Birkbeck’s Department of Organizational Psychology, Birkbeck’s Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), and University College London (UCL).

This tracked participants from ‘Police Now’, a leadership training programme over time and also investigated their take on ‘Evidence-based Policing’. Findings show high motivation to make a real difference, the importance of the environment once ‘on the beat’, and highlights that direct effort to train in evidence-based approaches can be helpful, but effectiveness depends on how this is done. Tiggey May, Senior Research Fellow at ICPR, outlined qualitative research from the same project which shows that the environment in forces varies greatly and that there is a need to be clear about what can and cannot be expected from graduates in training. Dr Jyoti Belur, Senior Lecturer at UCL, outlined a stakeholder review to question the extent to which forces are ready for the changes in training, highlighting an all-round need for more education and guidance.

Dr Cody Telep, Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, built on these themes by outlining his own programme of research which focused on police receptivity to research. His findings show, perhaps not surprisingly, that there is a real difference between ‘chiefs’ and ‘officers’, especially as more senior officers have a higher chance of being exposed to evidence and being willing to conduct research.

Dr Norma O’Flynn from the Royal College of Physicians presented data from the medical context, noting that more access to evidence means more drug prescriptions. A key question is whether this is always in the interest of the patients. Her presentation also highlighted that one needs to be clear on the purpose of evidence – is improvement in quality, rather than quantity, of care, not a key objective? Dr Karen Lumsden, Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, continued with the evidence-based theme, also using qualitative approaches to understand evidence-based policing. She highlighted the importance of context as a driver and the strong influence of the (policing) performance culture.

Finally, an interactive world café got everyone off their seats to work together towards solutions. All agreed that graduates have the potential to bring critical thinking, a desire to question, and upscaling of skills to policing – if these qualities are actually utilised. This depends on the culture, protecting learning time, good partnership between forces and education providers, and how policing is actually taught. Forces need to be transparent, to co-design and co-deliver training, and to promote the right kinds of skills and knowledge. Academics also need to do their bit by fostering innovation, combining rigour with realism and drawing on best practice research.

Delegates told us how much they had valued the event; in particular, they stressed that we got the balance right between critical dialogue and not ‘losing’ the practitioners with an overly academic take – “Great event full of insightful resources – thank you!” was a resounding comment.

We hope to draw this learning into a publication, so please so stay in touch if you would like to know more about our activities. A Special Issue of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice is underway for 2019.

Read Extending the Remit of Evidence-Based Policing.

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Policy and planning in organisations: why language matters

This post was contributed by Dr Lisa J. McEntee-Atalianis from Birkbeck’s Department of Applied Linguistics and Communciation. Dr McEntee-Atalianis is organising a conference on Language Policy and Planning in Multilingual Organisations: Exploring Language Regimes on Monday 3 July 2017.

un_language-policyIncreasing debate about the impact of international contact on language use has given rise to broadly binary accounts of its effects:  as a nurturing arena for multilingual diversity and creativity in communication practices; or as a stymieing force, leading to the dominance of linguae francae, particularly English. Themes of power, politics and economics, inter alia, play into analyses of some multilingual contexts, with calls for changes to language policy often made to combat inequity, injustice and/or to assess the ‘cost’ (financial or otherwise) of maintaining more than one language.

Traditionally the field of language policy and planning (LPP) has focused on national concerns, however in recent years research has also focussed on community, family and organisational scenarios. It is recognised that we must move beyond a nationalist paradigm to accommodate the networks, structures and flows apparent in post-national societies and inter/transnational contexts. As we move into ever-increasing global connectedness many of us are now interwoven in professional and personal networks which transcend the nation (virtually and physically), leading to complex patterns of interaction and the emergence of fluid linguistic repertoires. We are also subject to multiple layers of governance and influenced by the burgeoning economic and political might of transnational corporations and supranational organisations, which far exceed the influence of our local communities or states. How issues are debated and decisions made within these organisations and whether or not we are given a voice is of importance to us all. Language matters!

While there is still comparatively limited research on LPP in organisations, studies on supranational organisations (e.g. the EU and UN) and public administration of multilingual states (e.g. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium) have shown that they experience great difficulty in implementing and sustaining multilingual provision and this can lead to marked inefficiencies and inequities for those functioning within them and those affected by their work. This is an issue addressed in my own research on the work of the United Nations.

Current language regimes in some multilingual organisations no longer necessarily reflect the practices or needs of individuals who work within them or the people they are trying to reach. Moreover, there is demand for scientific modelling of established and newly emerging multilingual organisations to assess their effectiveness. For further developments in the field of LPP and for academics to be able to inform policy makers, concerted interdisciplinary collaboration is needed – not least the combined efforts of linguists, economists and political scientists. In a step towards this goal, I am convening a symposium with Michelle Gazzola (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field of LPP who work across a range of disciplines (education; economics; linguistics; politics) and research sites.

We will consider the unique challenges faced by multilingual organisations working within different sectors (e.g. business; diplomacy; economics) and identify and evaluate the socio-economic and political effects of alternative ways of managing multilingual communication adopted by public administrations and organisations (e.g. political representativeness, democratic participation, social exclusion). By looking at different methods of investigating language regimes and the challenges faced by researchers who work in these areas we hope to reshape current priorities for LPP research and increase its impact on policy makers working in multilingual organisations.

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The Inaugural BCAM Policy Talk: “Fiscal Buffers, Private Debt and Stagnation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” by Giovanni Melina

This post was written by Veronika Akhmadieva,  an MPhil/Phd Economics student at Birkbeck

One group is targeted for marketing outreach with a bulls-eye under the figures

In 2015, global debt hit a record high of $152 trillion (225% of world GDP), raising the possibility of a new global financial crisis striking the economy in the near future. That prompted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to conduct an in-depth analysis of global debt and economic growth. The results of this research formed the basis of the inaugural BCAM (Birkbeck Centre for Applied Macroeconomics) policy talk at Birkbeck, given by Dr Giovanni Melina (IMF).

Dr Melina presented an academic paper, a result of his joint work with Nicoletta Batini (IMF) and Stefanie Villa (KU Leuven), that focuses on fiscal buffers, debt and stagnation, and has strong policy implications. In the period from 2002 to 2008, the bulk of the increase in debt of large advanced economies was due to borrowing by the private sector. Then, as some might recall, the Great Recession happened, and the picture changed dramatically; the increase in private debt was rather modest while government debt increased drastically.

A curious mind might wonder why government debt went up during the financial crisis 2007-2008. Dr Melina proposed two possible reasons. The first explanation is based on the denominator effect and on the mechanism of government automatic stabilisers. Government spending, in nominal terms, increased during the financial crisis, partially because more people applied for unemployment benefits, and this in turn boosted government debt. The second explanation derives from the fact that many governments attempted to cover part of private debt – through the recapitalisation of banks, for instance – and that led to the fall in government revenues and the rise in public debt.

“Deleveraging”

The deleveraging is a well-known concept in economics that refers to the process of economic entities reducing their debt to income ratio. The deleveraging of the economy often follows global economic catastrophes, and the financial crisis of 2007-2008 was no exception. Deleveraging can yield important real effects in the economy. Advanced economies can resort to public debt to a very large extent in order to cushion the effects of the negative shocks. For emerging markets raising government debt can be tricky. In some of them deleveraging is still to take place. So what are the best ways for governments to tackle potential deleveraging?

Dr Melina might just have the answer. But first two preliminary questions must be considered – do the levels of private and public debt have tangible effects on output growth? And should government extend financial assistance to credit-constrained agents and firms at times of financial distress?

The paper addresses these questions by first revisiting the literature on the effects of public and private debt on economic growth. Then the authors build a theoretical framework that reproduces the leverage cycle. The authors examine links between private and public debt, in order to capture the mechanisms through which private debt may become public. Finally, the model is used to analyse the effects of government interventions targeted towards financially constrained agents.

Private debt proved to have a negative effect on output. As for public debt, when authors differentiated between high (greater than 95% of GDP) and low public debt countries, they found that when the public debt is low, the government has more room for manoeuvre (more fiscal buffers) and can help to support economic activities in the deleveraging phase. However, if the level of public debt is high to begin with, the further increase is detrimental to the economic growth.

On the question of government financial assistance to credit-constrained agents, it appears that intervention mitigates the extent of the deleveraging and reduces the deflationary effect of the negative house price shocks. Another somewhat counterintuitive finding is that the peak increase in government debt is decreased by government intervention; if government intervenes, it sustains the economic activity and by doing so it reduces its debt. If the level of inefficiency of government spending is high or the level of intervention is excessive, the above may not be true. According to Dr Melina – with about 10% inefficiency costs, the optimal size of intervention is about 7-8% of GDP.

Targeted Intervention

One step further, the authors compare the policy of targeted intervention with other types of fiscal stimuli, such as government investment and government consumption. They found that targeted intervention is more effective in the deleveraging phase, as it is aimed at financially constrained individuals that have high marginal propensity to consume. Hence, most of the funds that are channelled towards these individuals are consumed and that translates into a stronger output effect. Some economies, such as Southern European countries, have limited fiscal space to begin with and can only intervene to a very small extent. These countries may benefit from using limited government funds for targeted intervention rather than increasing the general level of government spending, which might be a less efficient option.

Targeted intervention works best if adequately planned and complemented by appropriate monetary and fiscal policies. In addition, it can be direct, meaning targeted at firms and private sector, or indirect, through banks, recapitalization, asset purchases and guarantees. When banks are in distress, direct targeted intervention might be preferable, because banks may use the funds provided by the government to repair their balance sheets, instead of increasing lending to the private sector.

In practice, targeted intervention might not be the easiest task for governments, as they have to find a way to discriminate between agents, to provide funds to specific firms or industries. Targeted intervention naturally raises moral hazards and competition issues, too. Dr Melina emphasised that targeted intervention is not something to be practised by the government on a regular basis, but should be reserved for disastrous times, when the economy is in distress and in urgent need of stabilisation policies. Could it be that now is just the right time?

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