[2015]
OPEN
UNIVERSITY
By some miracle, just as my job at Mentor was proving disastrous, almost out of the blue I found myself the academic role I had been searching for most of my life. It was almost like coming home. The job suited me down to the ground and my manager, and most of my colleagues, were a joy to work with:
9180 OU 1 - Starting at the Open University
9124 OU4 - The OBS Family
(9124T*)
9179 OU14 - Head of Centre -- Strategy and Policy
(9179T*)
0310 OUBS 1 - Top & Bottom of the Popularity Stakes
(9179T*)
0326 OUBS 2 - Roland Kaye
(0326T*)
An indication of what I subsequently achieved at OUBS is shown by my 2000 AD application for ILT accreditation (the body instructed by the government to accredit teachers in higher education):
In more detail, the work I was involved in is best described in terms of a series of separate periods, the first of which was – drawing on my extensive practical experience in the field – heading up the OUBS (Open University Business School) academic marketing group:
9119 OU 2 - Marketing Courses in Maintenance
9132 OU 3 - The New Marketing Course B732
Eventually I moved on, in a natural progression, to corporate strategy – and the course B885 ‘The Challenge of the External Environment. This, in turn unexpectedly moved on to futurology and became my most successful course at the OU:
9128 OU5 - The Start of B885
9192 OU12 - Writing B885
The core of the course team chair’s job was to manage the overall project which was to lead to the new course, along with its team of writers and support staff (several dozen in total) with a budget of £½ million plus. In addition, I had to write a significant part of it myself. Beyond that, however, I had to bring together a range of ancillary offerings, of which the most important was the video material produced by the BBC:
9112 OU6 - Filming with the BBC
9136 OU7 - Filming in Japan
(9136T*)
9168 OU8 - Socialising in Tokyo
(9168T*)
9116 OU9 - Filming in Detroit
9130 OU10 - Filming in New York
9139 OU10 - Filming in Los Angeles
9123 OU11 - Sound Interviewing
9129 Rail or Air
Towards the end of the 1990s, I went on to set up a new Masters Programme in Marketing with a specific leading edge course – B852, Future Marketing – which addressed subjects such as post-modernism and especially e-commerce. Paradoxically due to the abysmal marketing by the OUBS sales/marketing team, this was ultimately unsuccessful. However, the documentation behind this course, included here, gives a very good idea of how the OUBS (and the OU) worked overall:
7152 MA (Marketing) Interest Group – the whole process kicked off with the formation of an interest group of relevant academics
7137 MA (Marketing) Blueprint – which was followed by the proposal for the new MA in Marketing
7170 MA (Marketing) Minutes – which led to the first major meeting, setting out the requirements
7154 MA (Marketing) Minutes – which in turn was followed by many more meetings, threshing out the details of the programme
7180 MA (Marketing) Email to Leslie – along with the necessary resolution of some internal battles
7176 MA (Marketing) Email to Tony – some of which were more bitter than others
7119 MA (Marketing) Reply to Leslie –though even these were eventually sorted out
7140 MA (Marketing) Postgrad Proposal – from which there were a numbers of other outcomes though some – like this one – were too radical for management
7186 MA (Marketing) Marketing Enquirers – when the recruitment for the course proved to be dismal, this was my initial comment on the problems revealed by the research into the disappointing numbers of students booked
7136 MA (Marketing) Response to Report – and this was my later follow-up
7132 MA (Marketing) Relaunch Campaign Issues – which then resulted in the need for a relaunch
7112 MA (Marketing) Interim Report – which the OUBS management ultimately did agree to
7124 MA (Marketing) PR – and we actually received some (minimal) PR
They key issue was that, for a variety of reasons, I had to write a very large part of the course myself – which in turn led to my final breakdown.
Not long after I arrived at the OU I considered undertaking a PhD. But I was talked out of this by Jeannette Rutterford, the very capable Professor of Finance and the person with whom I chose to undertake my annual assessment. Her point was that she was sure that I didn’t want to go through all the humdrum routine needed, but wanted to undertake research which contributed to the advancement of business theory. Of course, she was right. However, something approaching a decade later, when I had published dozens of papers, I realized that I could obtain a PhD on the basis of these publications. This seemed an easy way to obtain one, but it proved very much harder than I had imagined!
In the first instance I approached the OU as the potential institution for this. When two years later, after a number of reminders I had failed to even get them started on the process, I moved on. Instead, I took it to Leeds Metropolitan University, where my friend – Graham May – was the only other academic working in the field of futurology. He then set up a team of professors from the School of the Built Environment (I think my PhD might have formally been in Town Planning, but I am not sure!) and their Business School. Even then it took five years (and approaching £5,000) before they finally accepted my synthesis; which is included (in three parts) below. The published papers themselves are respectively included under 2012 MARKETING MATERIAL and 2018 FUTURES RESEARCH.
7174 PhD - Reducing Uncertainty 1 – including the Abstract,
List of Included Publications, Introduction,
Background
7187
PhD Reducing Uncertainty 2 - Context and Initial Field
Research, Simpler (Corporate) Scenario Forecasting,
Robust Strategies, Global
Scenarios, Applications
7120 - PhD Reducing Uncertainty 3 - Hypothesis of Aggregated Expectations,
Government (Global) Action,
Conclusions, Appendix -
Research Methodologies, References,
Acknowledgements
In the mid 1990s, as Life Long Learning (LLL) became the flavour of the month – though nobody was actually implementing this - I proposed that the OUBS would benefit from instituting a higher level programme for MBA graduates; a ‘Fellowship of Business Administration’ (FBA):
0312 FBA First Steps
0332 FBA Early Proposal
0324 FBA Minutes
0380 FBA Minutes
Regrettably, even though the project was widely supported within the School, it was killed by OUBS management:
However, around the Millennium it was resuscitated once more, and was also linked with Cranfield (through the good offices of Malcolm McDonald):
0347 FBA Report on Cranfield Collaboration
It, thus, became another of my decades long projects! This time it was developed further by me, at the time of the dot.com boom, to be part of a proposal for a web portal. In particular, the management of CISCO, then the richest company in the world – with growth ambitions – were also interested in this wider concept:
0325 Portal - CISCO Proposal (the initial concept)
0384 Virgin Portal Proposal (the final version)
0362 Virgin Portal Proposal Appendix
0363 Virgin Portal Letter (the last letter before the deal
collapsed at more or less the same time as the dot.com
boom did!)
Finally, the best summary of my career in OUBS, to the point at which it collapsed, was the CV(s) prepared as support for my candidature for the Chair in Marketing.
Of course, I didn’t get the chair; and instead was forced out of OUBS!
* Text only versions
hits