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This paper reviews the state of the field of the sub-disciplines within UK management research, based upon the submissions of 94 UK higher education institutions to the Business and Management Studies Panel in the UK's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It offers observations on the UK model of the assessment of quality in, and funding of, research conducted in publicly funded higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marks & Spencer (M&S) was one of the world's great retailers, enjoying legendary and iconic status, being often held up as one of the best managed and admired businesses in the world. Its ‘fall from grace’ has been spectacular and dramatic and the company is currently fighting for its life. Based on extensive in-depth interviews with company managers and utilizing a case-study approach, this paper provides an exploratory study into failure at M&S and presents this in the context of the wider literature on organizational and managerial failure. It concludes that whilst external factors in the various trading environments affected the business, there were internal aspects of the crisis which exacerbated the situation and the problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies partner selection criteria in a sample of UK international joint ventures with Western European, US and Japanese partners. Rankings of selection criteria are derived for the sample using a typology that distinguishes between task- related and partner-related selection criteria. The most important task-related criteria are found to be access to knowledge of local market, access to distribution channels, access to links with major buyers and access to knowledge of local culture. The most important partner-related selection criteria are trust between the top management teams, relatedness of partner's business and reputation. A parsimonious set of selection criteria for the sample is provided by means of factor analysis. Hypotheses are tested on the relationship between the relative importance of selection criteria and a number of characteristics of the sample - partner nationality, industry of the joint venture, joint-venture purpose, geographical location of the venture, initial approach for joint-venture formation and relative partner size. The greatest variation in the relative importance of selection criteria occurs with the geographic location of the joint venture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report examines the relevance gap in management research. Its focus is the nature of knowledge created by research at the interface between business and academia in the context of major changes likely to affect the nature of demand for such knowledge. Management research has been accused of a lack of relevance to managerial practice and of too narrow a discipline base. The report examines the conditions giving rise to this criticism, in the UK and elsewhere, and identifies an important strategic need to increase the stakeholding of users in various aspects of the research and knowledge creation and dissemination process. The report concludes with recommendations concerning new forms of research partnership and research training that will address the relevance gap. However, bridging this gap does not only require changes in the academic mind-set. Managers and firms too need to rethink their involvement in the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]