Workshops
De gastproffen van de Flanders DC Faculty in Residence organiseren op geregelde tijdstippen workshops en seminars. De academische seminars zijn toegankelijk voor academici, onderzoekers en 'kenniswerkers' van alle hogescholen en universiteiten, de executive workshops voor managers en ondernemers.
Korte omschrijving: Customers, regulators, and the public are increasingly demanding that firms minimize the impact of their products and operations on the natural environment within the frame of sustainable development. In response, management research has evolved over the last decade or so from a narrow focus on the concept of pollution control to a much larger set of management decisions, programs and technologies that contribute to greener operations.
After tracing earlier research that explored whether it pays to be green, this presentation uses a multi-dimensional definition of environmental expenditures to examine implications for performance. Multi-year data drawn from several government databases provided the basis for empirically testing the financial returns that result in manufacturing from specific patterns of environmental expenditures and tools. Overall, expenditures targeted toward environmental management practices emerged as a key lever in improving manufacturing performance. Finally, I conclude by extrapolating from these results to emerging areas of sustainability-related research in operations management.
Datum: 4 februari 2009 van 12u tot 13u30, Vlerick Leuven
Voor meer info, klik hier.
Inschrijven kan via research@vlerick.be.
Korte omschrijving: Although the ability to create and exploit new knowledge is a central feature of the creative industries, the knowledge creation practices adopted by such organizations have received limited attention. In the creative industries, knowledge creation commonly occurs in multi-disciplinary teams, which are often characterized as a motley crew of members with disparate views and personalities. In this paper we explore the creative functioning of a particular genre of motley crew, the entrepreneurial jazz teams (EJT). Employing a novel inductive approach, we identified and analysed three exemplar cases of team creation, team leadership and team turnover (i.e. team member entry and exit). Our research led us to the following conclusions:
All three entrepreneurial leaders sought high levels of diversity when creating their teams, which resulted in functional and dysfunctional conflict.
The three leaders employed different leadership styles to manage the conflict whilst ensuring new knowledge creation.
Finally, variation of leadership style impacted on team creation and turnover across all three cases. We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.
Datum: 2 maart van 12.00 tot 13.30
Voor meer info kan je terecht bij Nathalie Lagae.
Inschrijven kan via research@vlerick.be.
Korte omschrijving: Product-harm crises are infrequent but seismic events in the life of any given brand. Product-harm crises are defined as well-publicized instances of defective or harmful products. Due to increasingly stringent product safety standards, instant diffusion of news, and the flow of communication over the internet, product-harm crises have become an increasingly frequent occurrence in the marketplace. But it is their impact on key marketing variables, such as consumer perceptions and brand evaluations, that make them such an interesting subject of study for marketing scholars. This presentation examines 10 years of research on product-harm crises to develop insights into consumers' representation of market stimuli such as brands.
Datum: 30 oktober van 12u30 tot 14 u, Vlerick Gent
Inschrijven kan via research@vlerick.be.
Korte omschrijving: What is business process intelligence and what not? The objective of the seminar is to scope the area of BPI in a scientific way. As a starting point for this discussion, a few maybe provoking hypotheses will be formulated about potential methodologies and tools. Some of them are often mentioned as being part of BPI but also challenged. Others do not appear in the relevant literature (or very seldom) but might perhaps deserve some more attention.
Hopefully this topic will stimulate a lively and fruitful discussion that can help us in coming closer to an encompassing as well as discriminating definition of the field.
Datum: 2 oktober van 12u30 tot 14 u, Vlerick Leuven
Inschrijven kan via research@vlerick.be.
Korte omschrijving: The theory of occupational choice is a well-known framework for studying self-employment decisions. In this context the roles of entrepreneurial abilities, risk attitudes and liquidity constraints as well as many other covariates have been investigated widely. This approach has two major shortcomings. A first shortcoming is that the self-employment decision is static: one chooses between self-employment and (un)employment. In reality there is a process in which people move through various engagement levels from never thinking about the self-employment option, to thinking about it, to taking steps (nascent entrepreneurship), to having a young business, to having an old business and dropping out. Each stage is assumed to have specific determining factors. A second shortcoming is that no discrimination is made between intentions and reality of the self-employment decision and their specific determinants. Again, the determinants of intentions and realization need not be identical. Eurobarometer data of various recent years allows a full study of all engagement levels. These data also allow a full study of the interplay between intentions and reality, i.e. latent and real entrepreneurship.
Datum: 3 december 2008 van 11u tot 12u30, Vlerick Campus Gent
Voor meer info kan je terecht bij Nathalie Lagae.
Inschrijven kan via research@vlerick.be.
Creativity Talks Goes International: Share ideas with our visiting faculty!
Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School and Flanders DC recently started a new project: 'Flanders DC Faculty in Residence'. Within the framework of this project, we invite top international faculty to Flanders to share their insights and to bring their expertise on business creativity to a broader public.
Therefore, we would like to invite you to the unique executive seminar of Prof Dr Robert Klassen. Robert Klassen is a Professor of Operations Management at Ivey School of Business, Canada. His expertise focuses on exploring the linkages between operations and the natural environment, including international operations.
Prof Klassen will give a seminar on “Green Operations: Pathways to Improved Competitiveness” on Tuesday 3 February 2009 at 7pm on the premises of our Ghent Campus. This seminar will help you identify where strategic linkages are possible that bridge from greener operations to improved competitiveness. You will better understand how, rather than if, it pays to be green. Through the case of Volvo Trucks, we will also give you a real-life example of how this can be achieved.
More information can be found on www.creativitytalks.be
How to subscribe?
This seminar is open to everyone interested in the topic (CEOs, innovation managers, production managers, senior managers involved in environment, health and safety, etc). The seminar will be given in English. You can subscribe via the website of the Creativity Talks
Please note that the number of seats is limited, so do make sure that you are on the participants’ list by subscribing early!
Please do not hesitate to contact Nathalie Lagae for more information on Nathalie.lagae@vlerick.be or
+ 32 9 210 92 40.
Korte omschrijving: The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the ever-present issue of business disappointment with a particular focus on how entrepreneurs respond to failure and the personal implications of business failure experience. The popular media (especially in the US) as well as some scholars and entrepreneurs view failure as the fuel of success. This view is based on the assumption that experience with business disappointment offers greater opportunities for learning than success. It is argued that experience with business disappointment forces individuals to reflect on what led to the failure which helps them understand how decisions and events impact on each other.
How can entrepreneurs recover from business failure and make the most of their experiences? How might the costs of failure be managed or minimized (these might be financial costs, emotional cost and costs associated with the effect of failure on the entrepreneurs personal and business relationships)? What barriers exist for entrepreneurs wanting to apply what they have learnt and start a new business?
The workshop will include a panel consisting of experienced entrepreneurs sharing their views about business disappointment, either based on their personal experience or on their observations as an experienced entrepreneur. Based on this discussion we will be able to develop a number of recommendations for entrepreneurs (practising or aspiring), policy-makers and other stakeholders.
Datum: 3 maart 2009 van 10u tot 12u, Vlerick Campus Gent
Voor meer info kan je terecht bij Nathalie Lagae.
Inschrijven kan via research@vlerick.be.
Korte omschrijving: Talk to the senior executives of any progressive company today and they will tell you about the competitive treadmill they are on. Despite the huge investments in innovation, bulging new product pipelines, and the relentless drive to shrink costs and time to market, they readily admit that competitors are still constantly nipping at their heels, and sometimes sprinting past.
Strategy, for these companies, is a means of besting competitors on products and prices. Their efforts and resources are consumed by R&D and innovation, the streamlining of processes to achieve more efficient supply chains and lower cost operations, and the search for ever cheaper sources of supply. Planning meetings and watercooler talk tend to be about next generation products, new features, and launch dates. These firms understand products well, and they do all the right things when it comes to innovation. And in essence, they believe that their primary route to competitive advantage is to outrun competitors, to outrun the treadmill.
But there is a different way to see things.
Over the past few years we have asked thousands of managers in a vast range of industries a simple question: why do your customers buy from you rather than from your competitors? Invariably, the answers point to intangible benefits to the buyer such as trust, reliability of supply, ease of working together, simplicity, reputation, and so on.
Hardly ever is the product, or even its relative competitive superiority, mentioned.
Rather, the commonality among the responses is that they refer to downstream activities of the firm, such as customer interaction, and make little reference to the upstream activities of innovation, production, and product development.
We believe that in the downstream, reside enormous, but neglected, opportunities for creating and capturing value. Exploiting these opportunities builds a special type of competitive advantage that grows with use and builds momentum. Firms that succeed in the downstream not only have a lead over their competitors, but the ability to pull away.
While firms have developed systematic processes to innovate and introduce new products, little has been done about innovation outside the laboratory – about developing systems and processes to create and capture value in the downstream. We present such a framework.
Datum: 29 oktober van 14u tot 17u30, Vlerick Gent
Deze workshop is enkel toegankelijk op uitnodiging.
Korte omschrijving: The aim of this project is to develop methodologies for process improvement and innovation. For this purpose I will conduct collaborative process modelling sessions and/or process innovation sessions with interested companies.
The target group are general managers and IT managers of SMEs as well as process managers, database managers and the like (if applicable).
What we need from you:
- time for an introductory meeting to discuss the project (1.5 hours)
- time for an innovation and/or modelling session with a few of your colleagues (1 or 2 days)
What is in it for you?
- You get a free analysis of your processes.
- You get a better understanding of your company’s situation.
- You get free suggestions on how you can improve your business processes.
- You get free access to the modelling and innovation tools that we use.
Does this sound feasible and interesting? Then please drop me a note of interest and a short description of the area(s) you are interested in.
Datum: A kick-off meeting will take place on the 15th of September afternoon ((from 13:00 till 17:00) to discuss details. At the end of the project there will also be a round-up workshop (in May 2009).
Voor meer info of inschrijving kan je terecht bij Nathalie Lagae.