Keele Management School Magazine Keele Management School Magazine, Issue 2 | страница 3

03 Keele Management School News l Spring2015 Spring2015 l Keele Management School News A Summer Consultancy In our last issue, we promised an update on what our Student Consultants had been working on during summer 2014. For those of you who are not familiar with our Student Consultant programme (offered to MA Management, MA International Business, MA Marketing students) this is a summer work placement with a difference. The difference being that the placements are competitively allocated with a formal application and interview, students work on a discreet project, and the placements are credit-bearing. As always the range of projects was diverse, from a recycling project with Newcastle-under- Lyme Borough Council, community engagement and group ticketing with Stoke City Football Club, to a strategic marketing project for Eden Pet Foods, a local SME producing holistic pet foods. The highlight of the programme is the ‘Student Consultant of the Year’ event which takes place in early September. In 2014, four students made it through to the fi nals and Daniel Coyne was voted Keele Management School Consultant of the Year by an audience of fellow Student Consultants, employers and Keele Management School academics. Daniel spent the summer working on a strategic marketing project with Eden Pet Foods. Fellow fi nalist James Heeks, worked on a volunteering project for Stoke-on-Trent Leisure Services, Edwin Mwenda assessed the market for newly formed company Perfect Audio Visual and Xu Cui looked at the recycling of plastic materials for Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council. Student Consultant of the Year 2014, Daniel Coyne (pictured second left) with his fellow finalists. 04 KMS Researchers present at International Ageing Conference in Lugano Gabriella Legrenzi Dr Gabriella Legrenzi and Dr Roman Raab, KMS Economics and Finance group, were invited to present their research at the 70th Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, in Lugano, Switzerland, August 2014. The theme of the congress was ‘Redesigning the Welfare State for Ageing Societies’ and topics included societal structures such as income and wealth distribution, consumptive behaviour, gender roles and social Roman Raab cohesion change in ageing societies. Research was presented on sustainability and the design of pension systems, regulation of private pension plans, health care reforms and the effects of policy on people’s quality of life in ageing societies. Gabriella has been appointed a Fellow of the world-leading CESifo research network on the grounds of her research achievements in the areas of public sector economics and fi scal policy. CESifo Fellows are internationally renowned economists and include several Nobel Prize winners. She has been invited to present her paper ‘Fiscal Policy Sustainability in Turkey’, at the Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan international conference on macroeconomic policy and fi nancial stability, and also her work on debt sustainability in the euro-periphery to the Central Bank of Greece. KMS Research into Workload and Work-life Balance Dr Steve French, KMS Senior Lecturer in HRM & Industrial Relations, presented his research on the working time and workload of UK Civil Servants at the conference of the German trade union-based Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), in Berlin, November 2014. This followed the publication of a report on workload and work-life balance for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) which highlighted work intensifi cation, growing stress and ill health levels of union members in the current climate of austerity policies, job cuts, restructuring and the tightening of performance management systems. Steve was also invited to give a keynote speech to a conference of European Works Councillors organised by the UNITE union which focused on the development of European Union social policy and employment law.