Mini-Conference strengthens research collaboration
Thursday 24 May 2012
A mini-conference at University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, focusing on entrepreneurship and innovation, corporate governance, internationalisation and sustainability was organised in March 2012 by Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown (Associate Dean International) as part of the University Global Partnership Network (UGPN). Academics from Surrey Business School, the Centre for Environmental Strategy (FEPS) and Research and Enterprise Support (RES) delivered papers at the three day event which took place from 19 to 22 March. Hosted by University of Sao Paulo, the Surrey academics were joined by speakers from North Caroline State University (NCSU), who presented papers on the same research themes.
The Surrey line-up comprised: Professor Reinhard Bachmann who presented a paper entitled “Strategic Management, Organizational Analysis and Comparative Management” as part of the “Internationalisation” track; Dr Jonathan Chenoweth from the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (FEPS) presented a paper on “Water resources management: sustainable development” based on collaborative work with Professor Graham Miller (Head of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management); Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown presented the findings from funded research on student choice of university entitled: “Green Universities and Student Choice”, as part of the sustainability track; Nigel Biggs, the Entrepreneur in Residence for University of Surrey (based in RES) presented a paper on Entrepreneurship, and also ran a workshop with USP students on the topic.
The UGPN has already set the dates for the next mini-conference event which will be held at Surrey in September (9th – 13th) and will include the same topics, together with an additional theme: consumer behaviour. There are plans across all the faculties to try and extend the mini-conference to include more cross disciplinary work, which encourages collaboration across faculties as well and to extend the workshop to all the Schools in FBEL. The School of Hospitality and Tourism will be running workshops from 11th September to 13th, and the Surrey Business School intend to plan workshops for the early part of the week: 9th – 11th. This event provides excellent opportunities for colleagues from across the faculty to meet academics from UGPN partner institutions, and to present papers and attend seminars on research related to these themes. Colleagues from University of Sao Paul and from North Caroline State University have already been invited to participate in what is expected to be a whole week of conference workshops across the faculty and beyond.