Oxford Brookes Business School students showcase research that makes a difference
Oxford Brookes Business School holds 8th Annual Human Resource Management Research Conference
On Saturday 7 November, Oxford Brookes Business School postgraduate students presented their research at the 8th annual Human Resource Management Research Conference in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CPID).
Conducted in organisations such as Amey and Virgin Money, but also family businesses, university colleges and the NHS, these projects led to recommendations for improvements in various aspects of management. In a welcome addition to his Saturday morning, Professor Tim Vorley,Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean at Oxford Brookes Business School said:
Oxford Brookes University has been successfully offering development programmes for working HR professionals for over 20 years, and this year a series of fantastic presentations at the Research Conference showcased academic insights with applied outcomes drawn from a range of organisational settings. It really is impressive to hear about work undertaken by our students on the MA and MSc HRM programmes, many of whom also work in a variety ofHR roles.
Master’s students have few opportunities to showcase their research, but more often than not, their research projects are of a high standard and deserve a wider audience. For a number of years now, Oxford Brookes Business School (OBBS) has endeavoured to remedy this situation.
This Saturday, an audience of 60 staff and students came together on Zoom to hear about the cutting edge research conducted by students on the postgraduate HRM programmes. The event began with a keynote from Dr Anne Laure Humbert, who presented her research undertaken in partnership with the Royal College of Nursing, on 'Gender and nursing as a profession: valuing nurses and paying them their worth’. Based on the questions that followed Anne discussed the challenges and benefits of working collaboratively with the Royal College of Nursing. The final report from the research, which received nationwide attention.
There are a number of options for the study of HRM at OBBS: full-time (MSc), part-time (MA), distance learning (fast-track) and as a Postgraduate Diploma further information about Human Resource Management. These different options may to some extent explain the diversity of the seven student presentations that followed the keynote. There was huge variety, not only with regard to topics and type of organisation, but also in terms of theoretical and methodological perspectives, and research approaches. Topics ranged from employee resilience and psychological capital, emotional labour in line management, to career progression for professional services staff, and working from home in a pandemic. Methodological approaches included language analysis on twitter data and working from home hashtags, repeat semi-structured interview data, and large scale surveys on affective organisational commitment and employee engagement. Student presenters had many useful research do’sand don’ts to share with the appreciative future research student audience members.