Alumni profiles

Financial Development in Africa: A Critical Examination

I am Simplice Asongu, Lead Economist and Director of the African Governance and Development Institute in Cameroon, a position I held prior to joining Brookes for a PhD by Publication. I preferred this route to a Doctorate degree because of the competitive challenges of globalisation.

At Brookes, I worked on ‘a critical examination of financial development in Africa’: a portfolio of eight published papers. Individual items of the submitted published works entailed an aspect of stock market performance in financial market development and two aspects of financial intermediary market development notably: exposure of African financial systems to global shocks and a rethinking of financial systems in light of liberalisation and the poor.

I am still working as Lead Economist and Director of the African Governance and Development Institute and devoting much of time to mentoring younger researchers in Africa.

A Cross Cultural Study of Consumer-Based Global Brand Equity in the Restaurant Industry

Sung Ho has been involved in teaching and research based on the extensive 13 year teaching career including being an Associate Professor in South Korea (ROK). He has two PhDs, the second one was in Marketing which was awarded at Oxford Brookes University (United Kingdom) in 2012 and a PhD in Tourism Management at Dong-A University (South Korea) in 2002.

For Sung Ho’s PhD dissertation, he conducted research with a very strong analytical ability, combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches. To test the research model, data is collected from consumers belonging to two different cultures. His study also makes a significant contribution to the measurement of Consumer-Based Global Brand Equity in the restaurant industry and explores the relationship between the antecedents (cultural values) and the consequences (brand reputation and brand loyalty) of Consumer-Based Global Brand Equity. His interests are on the importance of services marketing, brand management, digital marketing, service management (such as management of hotel & restaurant, convention, event and travel agency), consumer behaviour, quantitative and qualitative research methods, etc.

Sung Ho has several papers published and under review for the international ranking journals (e.g. European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Information Technology & Management, Journal of Marketing Communications, etc.). Outside academia, he currently manages his own business as a director, which is education-related, called Oxford Edu Centre Ltd.

Prospects for gender democracy in labour movements

My PhD was the outcome of activism, research and teaching in the UK and abroad over 25 years. Most recent was a Leverhulme Trust funded project [2010-12], with trade union women in Brazil and South Africa. This built on my work at Ruskin College, 2000-2010, where I first ran the MA in Women’s Studies before setting up the MA International Labour and Trade Union Studies. Before that I worked at Brookes School of Business (1991-2000). Previously I taught at the Polytechnic of North London, and also researched and wrote the women’s pages for the printing industry trade union SOGAT 82.

Thus my PhD became a meta analysis of 25 years worth of published work in the UK and internationally, including Ukraine and central/eastern Europe, and with labour movement colleagues from over 20 countries when I was academic coordinator of a research network of Global Labour University alumni (2009-12). All this became a longitudinal, international and intergenerational study. My standpoint was feminist, and I drew on the ideas and work of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to evaluate the prospects for gender democracy in trade unions worldwide.

I continue to write up my research, and my most recent book, co-authored with GLU colleague Gaye Yilmaz from Turkey, is Migration and Domestic Work. The Collective Organisation of Women and their Voices from the City [2017]. Palgrave/Springer.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-51649-3

A Comparison of Mentor and Coach Approaches Across Disciplines

I work as a youth and community lecturer with a background in youthwork. As a youth work practitioner I specialised in mentoring youngpeople at risk of exclusion from school, managing a communitymentoring scheme and teams of youth inclusion workers. Theseexperiences have enabled me to develop teaching modules at the YMCAGeorge Williams College which focus on mentoring and coaching skills.

Whilst studying on the MA in Coaching and Mentoring Practice at OxfordBrookes University I began to reflect on my mentoring experiences andwondered how much of my practice was in fact drawing on coachingskills without realising. This led into the design of my DCM thesiswhere I interviewed practitioners from six mentoring and coachingdisciplines (mentors of young people, mentors of leaders, mentors ofnewly qualified teachers, coaching psychologists, executive coachesand sports coaches) to see where any shared or distinctive approachesmight be found. Results suggested that there were somediscipline-specific features, but there was also scope forpractitioners to adopt interdisciplinary and multidisciplinaryapproaches where skills can be reapplied across disciplines

I teach Leadership Coaching and Mentoring at the YMCA George WilliamsCollege and manage their Higher Education programmes. I am also adirector of Mind the Gap Transformations (www,mtgt,co.uk) withresponsibility for coaching and mentoring. We aim to help employeesand organisations identify gaps within the leadership, wellbeing andrelationships at work field.

How does a developmental relationship mentoring model affect toxicity experienced in mentoring relationships?

I work as an Academic Manager in Work-based Learning for the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. I am a specialist in mentoring and professional development, contributing to a variety of educational and industry publications with a book, The Mentor’s Companion, currently being published with the University of Wales Press.

Following a mediocre performance at school, I left with a clear impression that I was not academic. I was in my mid-thirties when my job required me to undertake some work-based learning, which surprisingly I enjoyed, and I continued part-time study for the next ten years eventually coming to Oxford Brookes to study for a professional doctorate. I was so nervous and it was challenging but with the help and belief of the tutors and support from fellow students my confidence grew. It is one of the best things I have ever done and my proudest achievement.

My doctorate has given me a number of opportunities. I have worked for the University of Wales Trinity Saint David for 6 years in various managerial roles. My first book is being published and I am writing the next (The Mentor’s Dilemmas).

Experiencing coaching for the first time: First coaching sessions from the executive client's perspective

I graduated with a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of technology (KIT) in Germany in 1996 and held leadership roles at numerous firms including Mercedes-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and worked in senior consultant roles at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Beratergruppe Neuwaldegg. I have been active as an executive coach since 2002 until I became cabinet minister in the Tunisian transition government in 2014.

Executive coaching has become a mainstay of leadership development practice worldwide. Some aspects of executive coaching are well studied, but the client experience of coaching is underexplored. Reports of client experiences were used to develop a conceptual Discovering, Agency, Roles, Expectations (DARE) model. The client experience of executive coaching is saturated with discoveries. Discovering of coaching, oneself and also a view of one’s potential from one’s own and third party perspectives are at the heart of the executive coaching experience. Perceptions of the experience are further influenced by client expectations, the conditions surrounding coaching and the different roles taken by coach and client. A sequence of agency emerged from the analysis.

Today I am Secretary-General of the Maghreb Economic Forum (MEF) and a Commissioner on the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. I am passionate about nurturing a new generation of responsible leaders and building bridges between the private, public sector and civil society to solve today’s global challenges.

The Influence of Organisational Variables on Knowledge Management in New Product Development.

I am Departmental Research and Ethics Lead, Research Degrees Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in HRM and Research Methods in the Department of Business and Management at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Cheshire Faculty. I have worked at the University for 18 years and also have commercial experience in HRM and educational consultancy.

My study aimed to identify and evaluate the organisational variables that act as enablers and disablers of knowledge management (KM) in new product development (NPD). NPD involves the input of specialist knowledge, which innovating firms embed into new and modified products. The provision of a conducive infrastructure, which contains variables such as organisational culture and structure, is therefore vital to support how knowledge is managed for NPD. The study, which was conducted in two global innovators, identified that the variables have both an enabling and disabling influence on knowledge management and utilisation. Hence, the design of a supportive infrastructure is crucial to ensure that firms make the most effective use of specialist knowledge for competitive advantage.

Completing the PhD has enabled me to transfer the knowledge that I gained during the study to my career as an academic and researcher. I developed an innovative framework, which I aim to commercialise as a business tool, to enable firms to utilise specialist knowledge as a strategic asset.

Credit Rating Agencies: Regulatory Changes and Market Participants’ Perspectives

I am a Fellow of the Institute of Directors (IOD) and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). Alongside my academic work, I sit on a number of boards for organisations mainly in the UK’s East Midlands region and run a consultancy outfit offering advice to businesses on issues related to governance, sustainability, risk management and lately, internationalisation and business development.

I undertook a full-time PhD in Corporate Governance and investigated the changes in the regulation of credit rating agencies by the European Commission following the 2009 global financial crisis. My study involved gathering and analysing data from various institutional actors that work closely with credit rating agencies particularly in the UK. As expected, the study was challenging but equally rewarding. The format of the oxford Brookes doctoral programme particularly appealed to me because of the collegial support and the structured regular feedback sessions. The Doctoral summer school IN turkey was a highlight as it afforded me ring-fenced time to focus on my methodology.

Since graduation, I spend my time working across universities in the UK, Estonia, South Africa and lately in the United Arab Emirates where I am temporarily based. Part of my time is spent on governance issues in the UK where I was runner-up in the IOD Director of the Year Awards (East Midlands region). I continue to leverage off my PhD to scout for opportunities for personal growth.