We believe in the three main pillars underpinning the strategy of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. These pillars are high quality research, research-based teaching, and knowledge exchange to society. These pillars are conceived to mutually stimulate each other. As such, we contribute by deriving empirical insights from our interactions with external actors, elaborating and analysing the material, and subsequently embedding it in our teaching activities in order to deliver research-based teaching programs. And, through dialogue and outreach, we exchange our results to society in order to support our vision of a human-centred approach to management.
Our research goals
As a part of a globally oriented university, we strive for excellence and international recognition within our discipline. To achieve this, the Management of People has set out several research-related goals that we want to achieve before the end of 2019:
- Make the group visible as one who represents a human-centred approach to management through establishing a high level of publication output. We do this by focusing our manuscripts towards 13 quality target journals primarily within organization studies, critical management, and HRM. These range from journals addressing a niche to journals belonging to the Financial Times 50, thus reflecting the various levels we intend to operate at. Publishing in journals, however, shall not prevent us from publishing in books, nor shall we exclude ourselves from writing in Danish. For a more detailed introduction to our publishing strategy, please activate Prioritized journals
- Two times a year (spring and fall) the group meets for one-day seminars where we present our work-in-progress and provide feedback for our paper manuscripts prior to journal submission. The purpose of doing so is to facilitate quality improvements, increase interpersonal trust among the team members, enable mutual theoretical or methodological inspirations, and maintain team coherence.
- Increase our level of external funding through: a) keep attracting minor grants below DKK 2M, b) attracting one to two grants between DKK 2 – 4M, and c) establishing international networks in order to become partners in larger research grant applications. We are operating in an increasingly competitive environment where external funding is becoming a necessary, but challenging task. Our funding strategy is ambitious and simultaneously realistic, and therefore we consider this path to be the best one to achieve our research goals.
- Regularly being present at annual conferences such as EURAM, EGOS, and ephemera, as well as at international specialist conferences and workshops for instance related to work life, sport management, HRM research, and communication studies.
Our teaching goals
We embed our research in the relevant teaching programs offered at SDU both at BA and Master level. We are primarily teaching Business and Management programs, but are also engaged in courses outside the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences as we believe our research can contribute relevant and useful aspects for students across faculties.
We are, in particular, engaged in courses related to organization, leadership, organizational communication, and HRM. The team supports and carries the course responsibility for the course `Organization´ offered at the first semester of HA programs across all five SDU campuses, thus this responsibility is a joint high priority task for the group. Furthermore, the Master programs in HRM offered in Odense (cand.merc. and cand.negot.) are given a high priority in terms of teaching, administration, and supervision as these programs attract students engaged in topics matching our profile. We are also to a growing extent engaged in courses tailor-made for practitioners who are in line with our vision where we want to stimulate organizations supporting a human-centred approach to management.
All members of the research team contribute teaching and supervision in both BA and Master programs and to the widest extent possible also to the courses designed for professionals. The group encourages its members also to engage in writing textbooks for the purpose of teaching, because this is a way to exchange our research knowledge for a wider audience and a means to bridge a potential gap between research and teaching activities.
Our society outreach goals
We are regularly engaged with practitioners through our empirical research activities. In line with our vision, the aim of our research is to challenge and improve organizational practices. Therefore, we exchange our knowledge within the local community in the regions of Southern Denmark, at the national level, and internationally. Over the next years, it is our intention to improve and develop our society collaborations, but we can only do so if our research and teaching activities are simultaneously created, nurtured, and developed. Our society outreach is driven by the idea of exchanging knowledge of high and research-supported quality rather than distributing superficial knowledge that is not directly related to the core of our research activities. Consulting is also an option as long as the consulting engagement does not undermine our core teaching and research tasks and responsibilities.