Danish delegation visits the School

Cardiff Business School welcomed a delegation from Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Marketing on Thursday 9 March 2017.

This visit was coordinated by School Manager, Dr Andrew Glanfield, in collaboration with Yvonne Bjørkov, Head of Administration at Copenhagen Business School. This relationship was facilitated by Professor Adam Lindgreen, Head of the Department of Marketing at Copenhagen Business School, and a former Cardiff Business School colleague, where he was Head of Section for Marketing and Strategy.

The day’s proceedings began with Professor Martin Kitchener, Dean of Cardiff Business School, welcoming the delegation to the School’s flagship Postgraduate Teaching Centre and introducing them to the School’s progressive Public Value strategy. This strategy, launched in 2015, articulates the School’s commitment to promoting both economic and social improvement, aiming to help solve some of society’s grand challenges through interdisciplinary teaching and research.

Public Value is also embedded within the School’s Governance and ethos, with a number of new action plans recently implemented, one of which looks at enhancing partnership working between academic and professional services colleagues.

Through discussion, it was realised that the School’s Public Value strategy aligns extremely well with Copenhagen Business School’s own reformist agenda through its Business in Society platforms, which seek to address, in five-yearly cycles, contemporary social ills.

The full-day of workshops and presentations that followed Professor Kitchener’s welcome was designed to provide the Danish delegation of Professional Services staff with an overview of how Cardiff Business School add value through its approach to administrative. A key focus was the innovations and developments the School has implemented to improve academic and student experience. Chief amongst these developments is the creation of the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Hubs and the role of the new Section Executive Administrators in providing an important bridge between the School and its Sections.

Workshops leaders and speakers were drawn from across Cardiff Business School, the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS), and Cardiff University’s central professional services teams.

Key sessions from the day’s activities included:

• Professor Ken Peattie, Head of Section for Marketing and Strategy, discussing the role of the Head of Section.
• Deputy School Manager Julia McCarthy exploring the role of Section Support with Abi Llewellyn, Section Executive Administrator for Marketing and Strategy.
• Matt Williamson, AHSS Registrar, talking about managing structural administrative change, alongside Dr Glanfield and Cardiff Business School’s Deputy Dean, Mohamed Naim.
• Laura Davies, Head of Marketing, Communications and International Recruitment for AHSS, on creating and launching a successful programme, with Dr Taman Powell, Programme Director for the MSc in Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship.

Other sessions included: teaching support systems; maximising the potential of alumni relationships; teaching allocation; module evaluation; and the working environment.

Speaking during the day’s activities, Professor Adam Lindgreen, said: “Our aim is to undertake yearly fieldtrips to leading international business schools as a way of developing skills and sharing best practice. Our strategy for the Department is inspired by the Russell Group Universities and given my history with Cardiff Business School, and its excellent reputation, it was obvious that this is where we should start.

“We are currently re-organising our administrative processes and parts of the course administration will be centralised. As with all change, there are questions about how this will impact on services and access to professional services. It’s important that we explore and consider successful examples of this type of restructuring and I am grateful to Cardiff Business School and Cardiff University for welcoming us so warmly. I have no doubt that today’s sessions will spur new thinking and provide us with many insights into effective delivery and implementation strategies.”

Professor Martin Kitchener added: “We were pleased to welcome Adam and his team to Cardiff today in the interests of sharing best practice in the development of professional and administrative services within business schools. We are proud of the changes we have already implemented and are always looking at improvements to ensure that we continue to offer an excellent teaching, research and working environment. Importantly, we are also learning from the exciting work that is undertaken at Copenhagen Business School.”