Pilot ready for take-off

In terms of PhD, my reading habits seem to swing to and fro between books and journals. For the second half of 2009, where before I had been amassing (mostly by raiding reference lists) very many peer-reviewed journal articles, the pendulum moved back to books, many of them seminal. Bateson’s own works of course – including a copy of Naven – and books about Bateson, but also a more diverse collection embracing cultural anthropology and evolutionary theory.  Now in the last couple of weeks, I again am collecting journal articles from a variety of sources I would not have predicted a year ago and with titles that should perhaps make me (or my supervisor) concerned.

All this flurry of activity is leading to is a presentation in March at Lancaster of my thinking to date, followed by an up-grade meeting in front of a panel.

Apart from communicating the kernel of my idea (below), I will need to show what I’ve done in terms of pilots. To that end, next week I shall be engaging some kindly volunteers from our full-time MBA cohort in Narrative Inquiry, built around interviews of career, learning points in life, and family-of-origin. There’s still a big piece of what I want to do missing, but this is progress.

As for the crux of the research, which revolves nicely around the question “what is learning?”, I now feel that the two productive (i.e. unexplored, relatively, in the context of Management Education) are:

a. the necessary connection between evolution and learning

b. how learning is a stochastic process

Henley MBA e-newsletter for January 2010

Dear all,

I usually don’t start writing these things on the day they’re due to be sent out, so you will have to forgive me if this one lacks the usual sparkle and polish. In fact, I don’t know how it’s been for you, but I’ve been having a disjointed start to the year. At the start of the month we had the kind of wintry weather that, depending on where in the world you live, might either be considered as unprecedented, or just business as usual. For the startled residents of the English Home Counties, however, the severe cold and fairly heavy snow caused misery and country-lane gridlock on more than one occasion. We were even forced to postpone several workshops on site here, which I don’t recall happening before. The expression “working at home”, so often a euphemism for something else, actually came true for many staffers and faculty.

False starts over, the past week or so has felt like our own version of “business as usual”, with the classes full and the restaurant and bar buzzing. I’m sad to say that Kathy Jarvis, MBA Programme Manager, will be off for a few more weeks in recovery after breaking her wrist before Christmas. When she’s back we’ll be pushing on, in particular, with activities to promote Progression and Completion (Graduation’s younger siblings), but until then please bear with us if you have an outstanding issue pending.

Henley on Linkedin

The Henley Business School group on Linkedin now has 4,869 members. If you haven’t done so, or haven’t done so for a while, it might be worth checking the group area out. There have been some interesting discussions (which you can choose to follow) and it’s often fun to run a search to see who in the Henley network shares the same industry, region, or even family name! In response to several well-thought through requests, we now have some new sub-groups formed. One is for Henley in Ireland, and another for Henley alumni in Norway. A third, Henley Alumni in Asia-Pacific, is just getting going and will cover New Zealand to Hong Kong and Singapore. These geography-based sub-groups complement the thematic groups already there. We’ll monitor activity on these and see whether the proliferation works, or whether we need to keep things simple with fewer, but larger groupings. As always, please make sure your Linkedin profile is up to date, and accurate, before requesting to join.

Research Corner

Only one candidate for this section this month. Ephraim Spehrer-Patrick writes “I am currently writing my Henley MBA dissertation about Human Capital Measurement and would appreciate your participation in my survey. It will take approximately 20 minutes.

Below you will find the link to the online survey: [removed from blog]

Despite frequently stated by business leaders that ‘people are the company’s greatest asset’, there is no unified and commonly accepted approach that enables organisations to consistently quantify the benefits of their investments in people and comparing the outcome with other organisations. Human capital in this study is defined as “measuring the impact of people management practices and investments as well as the contribution of people to bottom-line performance of an organisation”.

The study addresses whether human capital measurement should be standardised and to what degree human capital information should be disclosed to external stakeholders.”

Building works at the Greenlands site

Work on the new teaching facility and creation of the Learning Resource Center will begin in earnest next Monday and this week the contractors have been getting the site ready (and hanging up more signs than I’ve ever seen on any building site). The work will last until mid summer and will cause some disruption to the locations of workshops, but the end result should be quite stunning. Those of you who like to come in and work quietly in the library may still do so, but the location for this has been moved to the building in front River House where the snooker table used to be.

I’m tempted to tell you that the construction work’s being done by the same company that installed those fantastic hand-driers in the refurbished toilets, but that might seem as though I’m trivialising the new Greenlands Trust Suite, which I’m not – I’m really looking forward to having whole new spaces for learning and I think it will be some solid evidence of the Reading effect.

New Intakes

Next month we’ll be welcoming a new Henley-Based intake (on the renamed Flexible MBA), HB43, and then in March, new groups from Denmark and Finland. For those who don’t know, the Nordic and Scandinavian incoming students hold a joint workshop at Greenlands and have a tradition of organising their own “Eurovision Song Contest” on the second evening. The trophy is currently back in the hands of the Danes, who put on a performance to rival anything you might see on the X Factor to get it back from the Finns.

At the end of March, it will be South Africa’s turn for their Starter workshop, which we will be running from the new Henley location in Johannesburg. New premises, too, for the Henley office in Hong Kong.

Who’s Who

 This month we welcome an energetic new Director of Marketing for the Business School, Rosemary Hayes, who joins us from spells with IESE in Spain and University of Kent Business School.

Many of you outside the UK will know Pat Hougham, who did much more with our Partner Network than her title of International Programmes Manager suggests. After more years here than she would care to admit, Pat will be retiring in February and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank her for all her dedication and resilience in dealing with a great number of things on the Flexible MBA.

NUS Cards

This may be of interest to those of you based in the UK. National Union of Student (NUS) ‘Extra’ cards are available for part-time as well as full-time students from the University of Reading. NUS cards, apart from having some nostalgia appeal from your slimmer undergraduate days, entitle you to numerous discounts in certain retail and service businesses. Details of how to purchase one can be found at http://cards.nus.org.uk/buy/ (pick up is from the Whiteknights campus Student Union in Reading, I believe) and info on the card can be found here http://www.nus.org.uk/en/NUS-Extra/.

Weather report

It’s been a strange start to the year. On the 4th, after two weeks away, it felt as though everyone was back and raring to go – then at the end of that week the snow and ice arrived. For the first time since I’ve been here, we were forced to postpone workshops, which have now been rescheduled. The past few nights have seen temperatures in rural districts around Henley drop to minus 17, and life has skidded to a halt somewhat.

Everyone’s hoping that next week will provide some respite, though the forecast is hardly encouraging. There were some interesting features on the BBC about the difference between “weather” and “climate”, which we may need to remember when other consequences of our economy manifest themselves in other places and times this year.

Greenlands, not looking green

The Home Counties (where Henley nestles) were brought to a snowy standstill yesterday afternoon and evening, with amazing scenes of gridlock and abandonment of cars along leafy lanes. I got away early enough to get back to Oxford, but other colleagues were not so fortunate. And this morning driving in via Marlow looked like a middle-class disaster movie as many people had not retrieved their BMWs, Mercedes and (ironically) 4 x 4s.

Many people sought refuge back here at Greenlands and Alan Brand, our Director of Hotel and Estates circulated the following memo this morning. Congratulations to those staff who stayed around or came in to help everyone out.

“Greenlands played it’s part yesterday in what must be some of the worst snow conditions on record for this area. All available bedrooms were full (some having to double up! ) with a mix of staff who were unable to get home (some tried and gave up choosing to return to work!) and some local business clients, Many staff who left early were caught in horrendous travel conditions and reports of 5+ hour journeys to Henley and surrounding areas were common however I am sure more accounts will emerge today.

 I would like to thank ALL the Henley team who joined me at Greenlands last night for rallying round and pulling resources for what turned out to be an enjoyable evening for most! Some special mentions go to Lee and the catering team for providing a hot meal (Thai Curry and Scampi and Chips yum yum!), Delphi for looking after our diners, Gary for providing refreshments, Tim for laying on the Disco! and Kalyan for managing the night shift which included some delicate negotiations ref room sharing ! Many other colleagues assisted throughout the evening to ensure all our guests were comfortable. 

A special mention goes to Beth Hunter who, after sending the Front of House team home in the afternoon, manned the phone and reception until late to ensure all staff and clients were settled and to David Amara (Security Officer) who abandoned his car and walked (yes walked) from Caversham to Greenlands to cover his shift finally arriving at 11.30pm………….. given that we outsource Security, that’s dedication in the extreme, well done David.

 A great example of the Henley Experience.  Thanks to all.

 Alan”

And the walls came tumbling down

There’s been a falling domino effect with a succession of reminiscences and reportages about the 20th anniversary of the extraordinary second half of the year in 1989 which saw the very public end of most of eastern Europe’s communist regimes. Those events marked the end of a period of history in Europe, a division drawn in (geo)graphically following the speed of invading forces into area occupied by the Axis powers at the end of the Second World War. 

I was lucky, I suppose, to be living in Hungary in that year and seeing some of that momentum from “inside”, and it is almost nostalgic now seeing the footage and the hearing the voices of twenty years ago. Memories cannot be relied on not to filter, but I can recall the annual influx of tourists from East Germany to holiday by Lake Balaton in Hungary, many in order to meet up with friends or relatives from West Germany, and then the unprecedented build up of those people, many simply camping out in August and September to see what would happen – whether the rumours of a change of heart by the Hungarian government regarding access to Austria via the border crossings would materialise.

It did, of course, and the cavalcade of Trabants and Wartburgs in Hegyeshalom to Nickelsdorf was the moment at which the tightly-laced Iron Curtain unthreaded itself. The Hungarians already had much more liberal and frequent travel opportunities West, but for most other citizens of Warsaw Pact countries, this was forbidden.  For some, such as those suffering the lunacy of the final years of the Ceausescu regime in Romania (where the State had created a pathology of paranoia and schizophrenia at various levels of society) even travel to other communist countries was out of the question.

The Hungarian Communists simply voted themselves gleefully out of existence (well, actually, they re-branded themselves) and set in motion constitutional reform which would see the the digging up and veneration of the leaders of the 1956 uprising, the first democratic elections in eastern Europe, in the spring of 1990, and the packing up and taking back to Russia by the Soviet Army of all traces of occupation (including, literally, the kitchen sinks from the barracks). At last, Hungary could aim properly at being just like Austria!  In those months, its neighbours all did the end of communism in their own ways, and for some it almost did them in. December is the month of remembering the organised chaos of the Romanian revolution, and of the revelations about just how mad that regime was. Then the Romanians were free to aim properly at being just like Italy.

For all that it was an exciting period of history, my personal December 1989 revolution began on the 18th in a maternity clinic in Budapest’s soon-to-be-fashionable 9th district, with the birth of my first daughter, Amy.

The Brandenburg Contingency

The Internet may be infamous as platform for gibberish, ungrammatical monologues and semi-meaningless self indulgence amongst the young (I may be being only a little harsh), but it does also allow the middle-aged to indulge in intrigue and a kind of archaeology which occasionally makes connections with the past.

A few of my earlier posts have featured my own family in one way or another, from battling and revolutionary grandparent (which, coincidentally, revealed a cross-connection with the antecedent of one of the Personal Tutors at Henley), to passing mention of my father’s epic crossing of the Atlantic in 1950 in a small boat, the Ituna. So here’s another one…

I have a relative, by marriage, named Robin Dalton. Robin is a fascinating story in her own right, and is now in her 80s. An Australian by birth, she has published two volumes of memoirs, been a writer and producer of Hollywood film and West End stage and seems to maintain, even now, boundless energy that is divided among many ventures in the arts. However, a meeting with her last year threw up a gem from the past.

Robin mentioned that my father, Desmond, a month or so before his premature death in 1973, had given her a manuscript – the opening chapters and synopsis of a novel – with the request that, being so much better connected in the publishing world, could she pass it on to a likely publisher for consideration. If you want something done, always ask a busy person, and Robin duly did as she had been asked. Nothing came of this, the story could not be developed because the author died, and there is no way of knowing whether it would have gone any further.  Sadly, too, there was no sign of the manuscript itself and, with so many years passed, by the time I heard of this tale Robin could not recall where it might be, even in the unlikely event that it had been returned from the publisher, Ernest Hecht, that it was sent to.

Mr Hecht is still alive and his Souvenir Press in London is still in business, but not active in publishing since he is now a second-hand and rare bookseller in Great Russell Street opposite the British Museum. I managed to get an answer from him but, regretfully, he also had no record of having received a manuscript from Desmond Dalton.

I do know his story was provisionally titled “the Brandenburg Contingency”, but not much else. That is an intriguing title – spy story? music murder mystery? Who knows?  I do rather think, though, that it would reveal something of the character of my Dad, so it would be great to dig it up one day.

Random thoughts? No, really?

There’s been an aspect of Bateson’s thinking that has been puzzling me. More exactly, and not for the first time, some time after reading a passage (or series of passages) by Bateson a small light-bulb switched on and revealed a door in my thinking to walk through. The fact that the fact of the door also reveals the hitherto unobserved fact that one is standing in a dead-end street .

In much of his writing, and in particular in Mind and Nature, he describes evolution and learning as the “two great stochastic processes”. Stochastic means “random”, but that also needs some explanation. Is evolution random? If stripped clean of the human notion of purpose or design, biological evolution might well be seen as being random. But in what sense is “learning” random?

Our default definition of learning, often cited in management education, seems to return always to the idea of an accumulation of acquisition of knowledge, with the individual (the learner) as a repository, a water-butt filling up. That’s probably an over-simplification, of course, because education now lives with nearly thirty years of developments in complexity theory and most people acknowledge that thinks are inter-linked. However, despite that experience how much do we really question underlying assumptions, and won’t we always prefer a nice, mechanistic explanation which looks like it could reasonably be classed among a set of “contributions to knowledge” (and another drip in the bucket)? As managers and as academics, we spend our time trying to filter out “noise” in order to define and refine our learning, but end up managing or researching in ever decreasing circles and cycles.

Nevertheless, I didn’t understand exactly how learning was stochastic, random, because I had been framing learning only in terms of myself.  I learn something when I meet a new or novel situation, and learning is simply a process of trial and error. The stimuli met by me, as a learner, I might then be tempted to imbue with the quality of randomness. But this results in an epistemological error since randomness is not a property of the stimulus, but rather of the relationship between myself and the stimulus.

What this means, therefore, is that “learning” is not a property within me.  It’s not just that learning cannot occur without a context, it is that learning forms the context, and the context is always of a higher logical level than the elements or parts that go to make it up.

Impact! (Show me the money….)

Clive James does a weekly talk on Radio Four at the moment, in a series called “A point of view”. He can usually be counted on not just for eloquence and wit, but also for hitting certain targets square in the eye with a well chosen (or chewed, if one thinks in terms of sound-bites) point.

This week he spoke about democracy and the link to university funding and the link to research, and in particular the rules in the UK that are about to change on that matter, making it incumbent on the researcher to show the “impact” of their research in the “real world” in order to qualify for a certain portion of the funding available. James quite rightly points out the pointlessness of this as a position. You can listen to his broadcast for the coming few days on iPlayer, or you can read the transcript here.

e-newsletter for November 09

Dear all,

It’s a cold, wet, miserable November morning at Henley and the place looks somewhat deserted, as if retreated to an inner world to contemplate. Feeling introspective, I got to thinking about an item on Radio 4 this morning marking the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest grouping of what were then called natural philosophers and what we now call scientists. There’s little doubt that this marked the beginning of the modern era, leading to many breakthroughs (and some set-backs) in science. In 1660 the Society published the first peer-reviewed journal, heralding the birth of the idea, prevalent in universities still today, that it is by careful measurement and observation, combined with a detached (Descartes had mind separated from matter) reasoning, that we reveal the laws that govern our universe.

The empirical way of seeing the world has been extremely effective in ways that seem to have benefited us, although there are now nearly 7 billion of us that need these benefits, compared to only around 10% of that in 1660. If I may be provocative, I’ll suggest two other things it has done. The first has been to tie us to a philosophical microscope through which we have convinced ourselves that anything may be understood by breaking it down into parts. In the world of forces and impacts this, until fairly recently, looked to many like it explained things pretty nicely. In the world of living systems, however, things have been less clear because of the impossibility to separate the observer from the observed, and because while the effects of climate change (for example) are linear, the causes are circular. The second thing has been an obsession with giving everything a price and calling that its value.

With regard to the impact of the chain of human activity on our environment, 1660 may yet prove to have been the beginning of a Royal road that brings so many worried people to the summit in Copenhagen. The question for us at Henley is whether we should be talking more about this. Or do we not yet have the language to do so? As Einstein is quoted as saying, “you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused the problem.”

Henley on Linkedin (featuring Research Corner)

We’re still growing the group, and there are three sub-groups, with two more (Third Sector and Coaching) in the offing. Membership now stands at 4,745. Please do get involved with some of the discussions, and there are also several opportunities to help out other members with their research projects.

Jane McKenzie has asked me to mention the KM Forum, which may be of interest to anyone looking for activities connected with Knowledge Management:

” Celebrating Connections: evocations and provocations for the future. 24th and 25th February 2010

The Henley KM Forum annual conference is always a great event. The 2010 conference looks all set to be outstanding. It’s the 10th Anniversary of the Forum and for two days, Henley will be hosting some of the most recognised names in the field. Key Note speakers include:

Leif Edvinsson, Janine Nahapiet, Dave Snowden, Hubert St Onge, Karl Erik Sveiby
They will be joined by an international cast of experts including

Verna Allee, Daan Andriessen, Chris Collison, Niall Cook, Ron Donaldson, Sami Kazi, Rongbin W.B Lee, Richard McDermott, Victor Newman, Geoff Parcell, Goran Roos and Euan Semple
In addition you will gain access to the latest research produced by the Henley team in cooperation with the members. You can download the full conference brochure and speaker biographies from here. Your relationship with Henley entitles you to a discount of 10% on the one day or two day rate.

We are also looking for up to 4 helpers for the conference, who can attend at no cost, in exchange for two days effort helping to keep things running smoothly. To qualify you need to have submitted a proposal for a Management Challenge or Dissertation that has knowledge management at the heart of it already. If you have then here is your chance to do an in depth dive into some of the thinking in the field. Conversations with the delegates in the networking breaks, all of whom have considerable KM experiences, are a great opportunity to get further insights. If you can spare a couple of days in February next year, this is a real opportunity to inspire your thinking. For more information please contact Professor Jane McKenzie – Director of the KM forum – here at Henley. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. “

Attainment report

You know that from time to time I like to give you all a quick run-down of the Programme Examiner’s Meetings to let you know what the average grades achieved in assignment and exams have been in the last quarter. It’s only a general picture, but it should reassure many of you that you’re doing just fine.

[sorry, for the blog, this info has been removed].

International Business Environment elective – book now!

There is still time for any of you looking to take part in the exciting, week-long elective trip to Hungary in March next year. Expressions of interest, though, need to reach Susan Parr by December 18th 2009 and places are limited. More details of the elective (March 7th – 12th) can be found in the electives area on HenleyConnect.

News from the Greenlands Site (or, “Tales from the Riverbank”)

From January, work will begin here on the creation of a new suite of teaching and learning facilities. We will be creating a new and state-of-the-art Academic Resource Centre (ARC) by moving the PowerGen library to another side of the inner quad (phase one) and then the creation of a new, Hambleden-size, classroom and six new syndicate rooms in the vacated area (phase 2). All of this should be completed by July and we will try to ensure that disruption and noise are kept to a minimum – though there will be some impact. By the way, our excellent library team has asked me to mention that our subscription to Business Source Complete (EBSCO) now includes a business video collection, with 55 videos from the Harvard Business School Faculty Seminar Series.

Work on the new boilers for Paddock House is continuing and the refurbishment of Thames Court is finished. The Bar Common room will now be a space for both clients and staff, so expect more mingling! One other quick point, the IT system at Henley will be down for essential work for 2 hours on Saturday December 12th from 10 until mid-day, so no access to our web-site or HenleyConnect.

That’s it for this month, and because of the December holiday season, it’s the last newsletter of 2009. Good luck to all of you sitting an exam later this week, and I hope that you all take several minutes away from your MBAs for letting your hair down (collectively) in December. Consider it my gift. In the meantime, if you have any interesting news about you or your businesses, let me know. You live interesting lives and it would be good to tell some of the stories where they relate to the Henley MBA “effect”. For example, Dave Cox (HB31) was kind enough to let me know that in November he was selected to be a plenary panellist on industry ethics at a major World Petroleum Council event held in Paris.

Chris Dalton

Henley MBA e-newsletter for October 2009

Dear all,  

Whether your measure is calendar, fiscal or academic, you probably won’t be surprised to know that this has been the busiest month of the year here at Henley. The cycle of the MBA is now largely annual, so there have been plenty of Stage 1, 2 and 3 starts, arranged with much the same unrelenting elegance as the line of jets manoeuvred in the skies over Henley to feed in for landing at Heathrow. The pace has meant that, sadly, this newsletter is a few days late coming out to you, so apologies.

In the last month or so, we’ve had new starts for groups from Malta, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and the UK, as well as in Trinidad. As mentioned, many other groups have reached either Stage 2 or 3 workshops for the first time, and what with welcomes to a new full-time MBA intake as well as the Executive MBA we’re feeling very full. As I look out of my office window, I see the space normally occupied by rabbits on the lawn is being taken by preparations for work to be done on Paddock accommodation. Before those of you who know and love those bedrooms break out the champagne, I should point out that this phase of work is largely structural – work on the same level of refurbishment of bedrooms we have seen in Thames Court will follow later.

 A new name for the programme

I don’t know how personally you each felt about the tag “distance” to describe mode of study on your MBA. I’m guessing that probably you either ignored it (because it had no connotation, or no  positive connotation, in your part of the world) or disliked it (because it created a somewhat old-fashioned or snail’s-paced impression way to learn), although you recognised it as a term often used to differentiate the three-year MBA from other lengths or modes of study. Well, I’m pleased now to announce that with immediate effect we are rebranding the programme from “Distance Learning” to “The Henley MBA by Flexible Learning”.

You will begin to see us use this where necessary to differentiate from other ways of achieving the same degree.  You are all on the Henley MBA, and you share this in common with the Full-Time and the Executive programme members. However, we see that you may also need more flexibility in how and where you do that studying and, more importantly, you benefit from tailoring your assignments to your own organisations.  We will take time to allow an elaboration of what this term means for Henley over the coming months. Of course, just as the change from Management College to Business School took time to get used to, so will it take a little while to get our tongues round the new title. Since Henley is already regarded as the market leader in this format of management learning, I’ve no doubt that we will make it our own.

Linkedin

I’m really enjoying the correspondence and energy on the Henley Linkedin group at the moment. We’re still growing (nearly 4,700 now) and the two sub-groups are finding their voice. There are several discussions running at the moment, including one on the new EIU and FT MBA rankings, which brings me on to…

Henley in the rankings

We have had news lately of Henley Business School’s position in the rankings issued by the Financial Times (FT) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).  To quote from our own website :

“Our overall positions remain very similar with our Executive MBA still ranked 44th in the world but we are now 6th in the UK and 15th in Europe (we were 5th and 13th last year).  The Henley Full-time MBA remains at number 4 in the UK, number 9 in Europe and is now ranked 21 in the world (20 last year).”

I was at an MBA fair in Frankfurt this weekend and I think what I find reassuring about the Henley brand is not that it attracts swarms (and swarms at MBA fairs usually mean either you are the big local player or you are an MBA sausage factory) but that we retain a focus on experience in management that is the envy of many of those jostling for position on the listings.

Home Straight Community

Here at Greenlands, Richard and Mike ran yet another successful Home Straight event, timed not-so-subtly the day after the graduation to encourage those attending to focus on the goal of finishing. Mike reports that this month, for the first time, the majority of those in the group now have accepted Dissertation proposals in. Clearly, for any of you out there who are in the same or similar place in programme 4 (Part Three), the key message is “focus on the proposal”, as then you have a lifeline of contact and support from the Henley team. Also, keep an eye on your registration/re-registration clock, and make sure you apply for more time (if you are eligible).

Research Corner

Programme Member John Barnes has the following request to assist him in his research on Six Sigma implementation in UK manufacturing organisations. John has info on this in the Henley Linkedin discussion area and can be contacted at (email withheld from blog)

Christina Unworth, Finance Director at Grohe Ltd and an alumnus, writes: “I currently work for Grohe Ltd, which is a UK subsidiary of Grohe AG, the leading brand for sanitary, water technology products and systems. (Taps, showers and sanitary systems).  We also sell Kitchen taps but this is a part of the market that has not yet been explored in any detail. 

I was wondering if this could be used for a disse rtation student to explore the whole Kitchen faucet market. Including routes to market, distribution channels, market make up and value, competitor analysis etc.”

If anyone is interested (it could also perhaps be an IMP topic), then her email is (witheld from blog)

Finally, Linda Thorne (linda.thorne@henley.com for more details), here at HBS, writes of another potential MBA research project:

“Project Title: Develop airline industry revenue forecast model and its impact on distributors and consumers

 (details witheld from blog) 

Part Three Exam

This message will only affect a very few of you now, but a reminder to anyone still yet to complete their Part Three examination (under the old curriculum) will need to do so in the final sitting, which is in December. In order to be granted access, you will need to provide an appeal, which you can address to Suzanne Goddard at suzanne.goddard@henley.com

Any Other Business

Last year I plugged a HR conference being held in Vienna. Marc Coleman (marc@hrneurope.com) has informed me that another event is happening in February 2010 (apocalyptically titled: “Performance and the Next Wave in the War for Talent”) and details can be found at www.hrneurope.com.

We’re in the middle now of “Green Week” at Henley, whereby awareness is being raised of the School’s efforts to promote sustainable management policies and practices, such as ISO 14001. Of course, this is a very welcome and important topic, especially for someone constructing a PhD around the work of Gregory Bateson!

If you’ve read this far into the newsletter, you’re either looking for distraction activities to avoid writing assignments, or you enjoy online learning and education. If this is you, then as part of our developments to up-grade our VLE, HenleyConnect, we are actively seeking someone who would agree to participate in a development panel alongside developers and faculty. You will need to be within easy travelling distance of Henley and be willing to commit to join us in meetings in November to January. If you would like to know more, then please let me know.

Finally, and off topic from management education, I’d like to say a quick thank you to the two or three individuals who have bought my book on Amazon – the result is a sales ranking of about 1,300,000.

Chris Dalton