The state of the field in UK management research: reflections of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) panel

This paper reviews the state of the field of the sub-disciplines within UK management research, based upon the submissions of 94 UK higher education institutions to the Business and Management Studies Panel in the UK's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It offers observations on the UK model of the assessment of quality in, and funding of, research conducted in publicly funded higher education institutions.

Exploratory database visualisation: the application and assessment of data and dimensionality reduction

This thesis describes the development of a complete data visualisation system for large tabular databases, such as those commonly found in a business environment. A state-of-the-art 'cyberspace cell' data visualisation technique was investigated and a powerful visualisation system using it was implemented. Although allowing databases to be explored and conclusions drawn, it had several drawbacks, the majority of which were due to the three-dimensional nature of the visualisation. A novel two-dimensional generic visualisation system, known as MADEN, was then developed and implemented, based upon a 2-D matrix of 'density plots'. MADEN allows an entire high-dimensional database to be visualised in one window, while permitting close analysis in 'enlargement' windows. Selections of records can be made and examined, and dependencies between fields can be investigated in detail. MADEN was used as a tool for investigating and assessing many data processing algorithms, firstly data-reducing (clustering) methods, then dimensionality-reducing techniques. These included a new 'directed' form of principal components analysis, several novel applications of artificial neural networks, and discriminant analysis techniques which illustrated how groups within a database can be separated. To illustrate the power of the system, MADEN was used to explore customer databases from two financial institutions, resulting in a number of discoveries which would be of interest to a marketing manager. Finally, the database of results from the 1992 UK Research Assessment Exercise was analysed. Using MADEN allowed both universities and disciplines to be graphically compared, and supplied some startling revelations, including empirical evidence of the 'Oxbridge factor'.

Manoeuvring towards research decline:the RAE and the decline of Britain's international research standing

Purpose: This research paper aims to examine the global trends in publishing in the leading marketing journals between 1964 and 2008, focusing on how public policy intervention in the assessment and funding of academic research has influenced Britain's relative productivity in the world's leading marketing journals. Design/methodology/approach: The method was an audit of contributions to the leading journals based on the authors' affiliation, country of origin and country in which they obtained their doctoral training. Findings: The results show that the proportion of leading marketing publications by authors affiliated to British universities have held steady at about 2 per cent, while the productivity of several other countries has accelerated past Britain. However, to retain that share, Britain has increasingly depended upon importing people whose PhD is not British. This contrasts with some other European countries that are now more productive than Britain, but mainly recruit locals with local PhDs. The pattern of decline in the UK is related to the impact of Britain's research assessment exercise and the continuation of relatively weak social science research training. Research limitations/implications: The analysis is limited by only looking at one academic discipline and only the top few academic journals in the field. Practical implications: The findings have implications at several levels. At a national policy level it questions the value of the research assessment exercises that appear to have presided over a decline in research productivity. For institutions, it questions the value in investing in developing local talent when success has come to those who buy talent internationally. Perhaps, the major implication arises from Britain's academic productivity declining while neighbouring countries have grown in international excellence. Originality/value: At a time when the continuation of expensive university research assessments is being questioned the research findings add value to the current debate in showing how that very process has accompanied academic decline. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Topographic mappings and feed-forward neural networks

This thesis is a study of the generation of topographic mappings - dimension reducing transformations of data that preserve some element of geometric structure - with feed-forward neural networks. As an alternative to established methods, a transformational variant of Sammon's method is proposed, where the projection is effected by a radial basis function neural network. This approach is related to the statistical field of multidimensional scaling, and from that the concept of a 'subjective metric' is defined, which permits the exploitation of additional prior knowledge concerning the data in the mapping process. This then enables the generation of more appropriate feature spaces for the purposes of enhanced visualisation or subsequent classification. A comparison with established methods for feature extraction is given for data taken from the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise for higher educational institutions in the United Kingdom. This is a difficult high-dimensional dataset, and illustrates well the benefit of the new topographic technique. A generalisation of the proposed model is considered for implementation of the classical multidimensional scaling (¸mds}) routine. This is related to Oja's principal subspace neural network, whose learning rule is shown to descend the error surface of the proposed ¸mds model. Some of the technical issues concerning the design and training of topographic neural networks are investigated. It is shown that neural network models can be less sensitive to entrapment in the sub-optimal global minima that badly affect the standard Sammon algorithm, and tend to exhibit good generalisation as a result of implicit weight decay in the training process. It is further argued that for ideal structure retention, the network transformation should be perfectly smooth for all inter-data directions in input space. Finally, there is a critique of optimisation techniques for topographic mappings, and a new training algorithm is proposed. A convergence proof is given, and the method is shown to produce lower-error mappings more rapidly than previous algorithms.

Feed-forward neural networks and topographic mappings for exploratory data analysis

A recent novel approach to the visualisation and analysis of datasets, and one which is particularly applicable to those of a high dimension, is discussed in the context of real applications. A feed-forward neural network is utilised to effect a topographic, structure-preserving, dimension-reducing transformation of the data, with an additional facility to incorporate different degrees of associated subjective information. The properties of this transformation are illustrated on synthetic and real datasets, including the 1992 UK Research Assessment Exercise for funding in higher education. The method is compared and contrasted to established techniques for feature extraction, and related to topographic mappings, the Sammon projection and the statistical field of multidimensional scaling.

Preface to Models@run.time 2016

The complexity of adapting software during runtime has spawned interest in how models can be used to validate, monitor and adapt runtime behaviour. The use of models during runtime extends the use of modeling techniques beyond the design and implementation phases. The goal of this workshop is to look at issues related to developing appropriate modeldriven approaches to managing and monitoring the execution of systems and, also, to allow the system to reason about itself. We aim to continue the discussion of research ideas and proposals from researchers who work in relevant areas such as MDE, software architectures, reflection, and autonomic and self-adaptive systems, and provide a 'state-of-the-art' research assessment expressed in terms of challenges and achievements.

The use of proteomics for the assessment of clinical samples in research

Proteomics, the analysis of expressed proteins, has been an important developing area of research for the past two decades [Anderson, NG, Anderson, NL. Twenty years of two-dimensional electrophoresis: past, present and future. Electrophoresis 1996;17:443-53]. Advances in technology have led to a rapid increase in applications to a wide range of samples; from initial experiments using cell lines, more complex tissues and biological fluids are now being assessed to establish changes in protein expression. A primary aim of clinical proteomics is the identification of biomarkers for diagnosis and therapeutic intervention of disease, by comparing the proteomic profiles of control and disease, and differing physiological states. This expansion into clinical samples has not been without difficulties owing to the complexity and dynamic range in plasma and human tissues including tissue biopsies. The most widely used techniques for analysis of clinical samples are surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionisation mass spectrometry (SELDI-MS) and 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) coupled to matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation [Person, MD, Monks, TJ, Lau, SS. An integrated approach to identifying chemically induced posttranslational modifications using comparative MALDI-MS and targeted HPLC-ESI-MS/MS. Chem. Res. Toxicol. 2003;16:598-608]-mass spectroscopy (MALDI-MS). This review aims to summarise the findings of studies that have used proteomic research methods to analyse samples from clinical studies and to assess the impact that proteomic techniques have had in assessing clinical samples. © 2004 The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. All rights reserved.

The development and operation of the effective interpersonal relationship skills relevant to career development problems from staff assessment at an industrial research laboratory

This study concerns the application of a model of effective interpersonal relationships to problems arising from staff assessment at I.C.I. Ltd. Corporate Laboratory between 1972 and 1974. In collaboration with academic and industrial supervision, the study commenced with a survey of management and supervisor opinions about the effectiveness of current staff (work) relationships, with particular reference to the problem of recognising and developing creative potential. This survey emphasised a need to improve the relationships between staff in the staff assessment context. A survey of research into creativity emphasised the importance of the interpersonal environment for obtaining creative behaviour in an organisation context. A further survey of theories of how inter­personal behaviour related to personal creativity (therapeutic psychology) provided a model of effective interpersonal behaviour (Carkhuff, 1969) that could be applied to the organisation context of staff assessment. The objective of the project was redefined as a need to improve the conditions of interpersonal behaviour in relation to certain (career development) problems arising from staff assessment practices. In order to demonstrate the application of the model of effective interpersonal behaviour, the research student recorded interviews between himself and members of staff designed to develop and operate the dimensions of the model. Different samples of staff were used to develop the 'facilitative' and the 'action oriented' dimensions of bahaviour, and then for the operation of a helping programme (based on vocational guidance tests). These interactions have been analysed, according to the scales of measurement in the model ana the results are presented in case study form in this thesis. At each stage of the project, results and conclusions were presented to the sponsoring organisation (e.g. industrial supervisor) in order to assess their (subjective) opinion of relevance to the organ­ isation. Finally, recommendations on further actions towards general improvement of the work relationships in the laboratory were presented in a brief report to the sponsor.

Classroom implications of recent research into literacy development: from predictors to assessment

We outline how research into predictors of literacy underpins the development of increasingly accurate and informative assessments. We report three studies that emphasize the crucial role of speech and auditory skills on literacy development throughout primary and secondary school. Our first study addresses the effects of early childhood middle ear infections, the potential consequences for speech processing difficulties and the impact on early literacy development. Our second study outlines how speech and auditory skills are crucially related to early literacy in normally developing readers, whereas other skills such as motor, memory and IQ are only indirectly related. Our third study outlines the on-going impact of phonological awareness on reading and wider academic achievement in secondary-school pupils. Finally, we outline how teachers can use the current research to inform them about which assessments to conduct, and how to interpret the results. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Corporate governance and related party transactions research:an assessment of theories and methodologies

This paper critically evaluates the paradigm, theory, and methodology that dominate research on related party transactions (RPTs). RPTs have been debated in the literature whether they are a facet of conflict of interest between major and minor shareholders or they are normal efficient transactions that help the firms to achieve asset utilization. Literature has been widely interested in studying the association between corporate governance and RPTs especially that according to the agency theory it is assumed that corporate governance as a monitoring tool should impede the negative consequences of RPTs and ensure they are conducted to achieve better asset utilization.