Business and Management - OU Community Online

OU researchers have shown important differences in physiological responses to market events and market volatility between expert and less experienced traders. They conclude that learning to regulate emotions effectively is an important facet of traders’ expertise.

Professor Mark Fenton-O’Creevy at the Open University Business School worked with colleagues in the OU and with partners in six countries to research how financial traders make decisions and to develop learning tools to help them to regulate their emotions better. He presented the research paper: 'Emotion regulation and trader expertise: heart rate variability on the trading floor' at the NeuroPsychoEconomics Conference in Rotterdam.

The researchers studied 28 traders with experience ranging from one month to 25 years over multiple trading days in two European investment banks, one based in London and the other in Copenhagen. Each trader was equipped with an ECG sensor to capture heart-beat information, which was worn throughout the trading day including over the course of releases of important market information and during periods of significant market turbulence.

Using heart rate data to monitor emotional reactions to market events, the researchers found that traders working in volatile markets have difficulty regulating their emotions and that traders with more expertise have more effective ways of regulating their emotions.

The research is part of  the EU-funded €3.2m xDelia project, a collaboration between The Open University, Saxo Bank (Denmark), Erasmus Research Institute of Management (Netherlands), Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (Sweden), The International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (Spain); The Forschungszentrum Informatik (Germany) and Bristol University.

The OU researchers are also using a number of video games and other techniques to teach traders how to manage their emotions. They have developed games including one based on learning ‘mindfulness’ – a widely occurring technique for gaining awareness of one's current physiological state and a first person shooter game where difficulty increases with your level of physiological arousal.


 

At a recent MBA Association Ireland (MBAAI) event, OU MBA graduate, Dr Clyde Hutchinson, chaired a discussion on effective career management.  The panel comprised four distinguished members including Declan Fitzgerald, CEO Recruitovate; Ger Cunningham, CEO Careergro; Fiona O’Connor, Head of Executive Search & Selection, Deloitte Ireland and Brian MacIvor,career coach and author.  They challenged current perceptions on how the recent economy has affected career progression and recruitment, and covered online networking - including some dos and don'ts!

Clyde and the MBAAI have kindly shared highlights and learnings from the lively debate with Platform:

When Brian McIvor started his career in insurance, it was in a different age. His boss told him he would be working in insurance to age 65. Now a career coach and author, McIvor said the jobs environment has changed radically. In a climate where fear, uncertainty and pressure are the norm, the adage is now, “You are here until 6:05 this evening.”

McIvor has authored or co-authored three books, most recently Career Detection: Finding and Managing your Career. Estimating that 60 percent or more were in the wrong jobs, he encouraged people to ask, “What is your definition of success?” He said people should start thinking in terms of their experience portfolio, their transferrable knowledge, their networks, and to be ready to consider possibilities other than full-time employment.
While he did caution to prepare for “constant discomforts and constantly being alert,” McIvor noted that “career coaching, career development is not Lidl. It’s not one size fits all. It’s Louis Copeland.”
His point was echoed by Cunningham. “Don't you want to do what you were made for?"  he said. “This is particularly true in the knowledge economy.”

O’Connor took a different tack by detailing some of her career’s exploits. “My advice comes from all the mistakes I have made in not managing mine,” she said. After falling in to a job she hated after graduation, O’Connor eventually came to realize that her strengths were dealing with sales and people in a blue-chip environment.

Fitzgerald, formerly head of recruitment at LinkedIn, said we have now moved to a professionally networked world. “There are tools that allow you to turbo-charge your brand online,” he said. As an example, he ran a Google search on how a head-hunter can easily find people with specific skills and their contact information. “Understanding how to mine data is incredibly important,” Fitzgerald said.
As a challenge, Hutchinson asked the audience if anyone was hiring. One man replied that he needed a national account manager. As Fitzgerald typed his query in to Google and the audience watched, Hutchinson quipped to the hiring manager, “I like the fact that you’ve got the pen ready.”

Asked what MBAs should do to prepare for a market upturn, McIvor said they need to know what their own USP is. He also advised researching industry sectors to see if they are growing or shrinking. On a personal level, people should look at their transferrable skills. “It’s not one strategy. It’s spreading yourself across a number of strategies,” he said.
Asked about the current state of the jobs market, O’Connor replied, “It’s a funny one, you know.” Recruiting decisions are taking a lot longer, she said. Companies are opting more often for “safer, internal candidates” too, she said. Recruiters have been cut back, and referrals and networking are used more.

On the topic of external versus internal candidates, Cunningham said those from outside are usually better prepared for interview. They usually research the company more thoroughly, and make no assumptions about what is known about their work, he said. O’Connor agreed and added that the outside interviewees have probably had a few live interviews done already in their job hunt.

Returning to digital job searches, Fitzgerald said it is also easier to track down hiring managers online. Using LinkedIn Premium, you can send them messages. If you belong to the same group, you can mail them for free. He said the manager may also blog and tweet, and suggested those avenues as a means of engaging with them. Ideally, however, you should try to find someone that can refer your application to them, he said.

One audience member asked about ageism, and said, that for people in their 50s, they feel they should forget about career advancement and just try to protect their jobs and salary.

That drew a variety of responses. McIvor advised maintaining your energy. “If I can hold the joy and the energy with which I can do things, that’s the core,” he said.

Fitzgerald, however, said he has seen people look at ages on CVs. “That’s very disappointing,” he said but “it boils down to the individual. If you’ve got the fire, you keep learning.” Citing the very recent emergence of social media, he said there are likely to be new industries in a few years that haven’t even been invented yet.

Cunningham suggested maintenance of a personal brand through mentoring and networking. “The value you add does not come from hard, tangible skills alone,” he said.

O’Connor said an organization full of hard-charging, A-type personalities will get nothing accomplished. All companies need steady, reliable workers, she said. “People are not ageist. They are energy-ist,” she said and warned against  even entertaining the notion of being a victim of ageism. “We all have self-limiting beliefs,” she said. “You put that message in your head and you start believing it.”

LinkedIn

Asked advice on what and what not to do on LinkedIn, Fitzgerald has this advice on what to do:
• Put up a photograph
• Get at least three recommendations
• Include two job categories, and include your specialities
• Build a SlideShare presentation to showcase your skill set
• Join groups and be active in them

He also advised keeping track of traditional sources such as newspapers, and said that a blog can be more effective than a LinkedIn profile.

On what not to do, Fitzgerald said:
• Avoid trivial or bad photos
• Avoid prominent company logos in the photographs
• Keep your profile to the point. People will lose interest and stop reading
• Avoid joining a group and doing nothing in it. “Brand or be branded,” he said.

O’Connor agreed on the photos. She said people will remember faces sooner than a name. However, one young woman in the audience asked about pictures. Fitzgerald noted that it is common in some Continental countries to include a photo with a CV. Decisions are often made on sight, O’Connor acknowledged. “We are all very judgmental.”

Fitzgerald joked this can often be the case if women reviewing job applications are looking at photos of more attractive female candidates.

Looking around, Hutchinson said, “Well, as that grenade has exploded…”

Fitzgerald agreed, however, that photos should not be submitted with CVs in English-speaking countries, and one of the great issues of our time was allowed to lapse unexplored. 

For more information on the MBAAI, visit their website here.

Marketing is paving the way for us to destroy ourselves and our environment. We urgently need to change our habits and learn to buy less, not more.

This is the call to action The Open University's Professor of Social Marketing, Gerard Hastings, is making at a conference of social marketing academics taking place at The Open University today Wednesday 9 May.

Professor Hastings, who is  Director of the Institute for Social Marketing based at Stirling University and The Open University,  calls marketers the 'cheerleaders and overseers' of the 'insanity' of unsustainable consumption.

“Marketing provides corporate capitalism with both its motive force and acceptable face. 

"There is much talk about the unsustainability of an economic model based on assumptions of perpetual growth; less about the fact that this depends on us all perpetually consuming more – which we obligingly do. 

"Marketing drives this increasingly unnecessary consumption and encourages our inurement to its catastrophic consequences."

Professor Hastings says he has chosen the topic as a result of "the blindness with which we continue to shop".

“We have no regard for the obvious downsides: materialism, wage-slavery, physical health damage (such as obesity), perpetual disappointment (why would we go on shopping otherwise?), appalling inequalities, fatuous choice (such as £40k of products in large UK supermarkets) - and, of course, global warming.”

He believes individuals and academics can all help bring about change "through shopping less and more fairly, through collective education and through regulating the corporate marketer". 

"Business academics have to research, write and teach more, leading the debate about how to correct these wrongs. We need to do this energetically and fast.”

Taking Responsibility is a one-day conference taking place at The Open University Business School. More than 30 research papers are being presented around the themes of social marketing and socially responsible management.

Find out more

• Conference on Twitter 
• What is social marketing?
• Are you a social marketer?
• Study social marketing 

More than a third (39%) of SME owners aged over 65 still do not know when they will retire, according to the Quarterly Survey of Small Business in Britain(*), produced by The Open University (www.open.ac.uk/quarterly-survey) with support from ACCA (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and Barclays business banking.

Half the UK’s SME owners report that they have changed their retirement and succession plans as a result of the economic downturn. 42% of owners are expecting to carry on running their businesses for longer, delaying their retirement, while 7% expect to close or sell their business sooner. More than half (59%) of those which expect to close early report that their turnover was down over the past year. Despite the financial crisis, almost half (47%) of owners are still confident they will be able to retire by the age of 65, but 18% expect to retire between the ages of 66 and 70 and 11% believe they will be running their business beyond their 70th birthday.

Pensions have been highlighted as a concern, with 28% of SME owners expecting to struggle in retirement. This proportion increases to 35% for the smallest businesses and drops to 20% for medium-sized firms.
When asked what their plans would be should they be unable to work due to illness or injury, 16% of respondents said that a lack of continuity arrangements would mean they would have to close their business. This increased to 48% among business owners who work alone. Three quarters (44%) of owners felt they could rely on fellow owners or staff in such circumstances. More than half (53%) admitted they had no insurance protection against illness or injury that would make them unable to work.

Professor Rebecca Taylor, Dean of The Open University Business School said: “The economic downturn has created a number of serious challenges for Britain’s SME owners. Our latest survey findings suggest that many owners, particularly those with smaller businesses, are having to make significant changes as they plan for retirement and succession. While some owners may never have intended to give up the business, many now expect to work for much longer than they had envisaged.”

Sue Hayes, Barclays business banking, said: “It is never too early for business owners to start planning their retirement. These research figures show that, especially in the current economic environment, the need for retirement planning advice is even greater, particularly for those who are nearing or beyond retirement age. Our business relationship managers are available to provide support and advice to older entrepreneurs so that their businesses can continue to thrive when the time comes to hand over the reins.”

The survey also examined SME performance and prospects, and asked owners and managers about the major problems they were facing. While some SMEs remain optimistic, the picture is mixed with large variations by sector and region. SMEs in the East Midlands reported the best sales performance (+24%) for the sixth time in the last seven surveys. It was a different story for their neighbours in the West Midlands, which saw significant deterioration in the sales balance (from +20% to just +4%), and were the only region to report a negative sales expectation balance (-1%) for the first quarter of 2012. Scotland’s SMEs were the most optimistic, with a balance of +19% expecting an increase in sales. Yorkshire and the Humber’s SME owners reported a marked sales improvement from -7% to +14%, and they rated themselves as the most entrepreneurial region in the country. The East of England rated itself as the least entrepreneurial region.

As in every survey in the past year, retailers reported the worst sales performance (-16% compared with -6%), cutting jobs far more often in this survey. Manufacturers, wholesalers and agricultural firms saw the best sales performance. SMEs once again cited ‘economic climate and demand’ as their top problem (59%), as per the last four years, followed by ‘cashflow, payment or debtors’ (31%) and competition (31%).

Open to both students and anybody who has graduated with the OU within the last five years, the second edition of the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards offers a cash investment to those who can demonstrate a commitment to the development of an innovative business proposition.

What’s on offer?
All 57 UK universities in the Santander Universities network have been invited to submit two student or alumni business proposals for the national competition – one each for undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The prizes are:
Undergraduates: 1st prize £5,000; 2nd prize £3,000; 3rd prize £1,000.
Postgraduate: 1st prize £20,000; 2nd prize £10,000; 3rd prize £5,000.

How to enter

• To request an information pack please email Platform
• Send your completed business plan of no more than five double sided pages plus a maximum of two appendices to Platform entitled ‘Santander awards’
• Business plan text must be no smaller than Arial font, 10pt
• All applicants must be students at the university or alumni who have graduated within the last five years

Deadline for entries: Friday 20 April ** Now closed**

All entries will be judged by a panel at The Open University. The best proposals will then go forward to the national competition.

The inspiration behind Go-Safely was actually a client from my first company, Virtual PA. Virtual PA is a pay-as-you-go service where your calls are answered by your named PA in your company name and your administration is sorted. This client's Virtual PA was looking after his interests in a very manual way, literally scheduling his meetings and calls and text messages to check he had arrived at his meetings and then returned home safely. It was a great idea, but onerous, labour intensive (and therefore expensive) and prone to error.

So we decided to create a platform which clients could set up for themselves via text message and simply ‘check-in’ at that time to confirm they were okay. That way, the Virtual PA (or other half, employer, parent or whoever was looking out for their well-being) would know that by virtue of no contact – all is well, ideal for late night arrivals or check-ins during a busy day. 

It’s very simple to use, clients simply add Go-Safely to their mobile phone contacts and text the date, time and check-in description to Go-Safely. So for example, for an estate agent, they might schedule a check-in for the time they are due to leave a viewing. If they don’t check-in via text to confirm safety, Go-Safely will text them a reminder or two, if radio silence persists, Go-Safely raises the alarm to a team member who is briefed on how to escalate the situation from there.

The benefit of Go-Safely is that it removes the burden of intrusive or disruptive checking up on an employee or loved one and replaces it with the peace of mind that comes from knowing no news is effectively good news.  It is used by all kinds of lone workers, from security and sales people to community workers and by Gap Year travellers and sports people.  

Go-Safely runs as a client of the Virtual PA Co. And is offered as a free subscription to existing Virtual PA Co clients. It’s an example of where Virtual PA Co runs at its best, where clients can effectively brief all but the core business out, a total front of house, head office solution, or an overflow when required, where calls are answered and dealt with (not just messaged), the sale closed, the payment taken, the meeting diarised. It works so well for hundreds of clients every day and costs a fraction of single salary.
 

About Gail:

I graduated as an MBA from the OU in the late 90s and haven’t looked back. It was great for my career before I left corporate life to set up on my own. As a marketing manager, the knowledge I gained enabled me to look at more general management roles and make the move in to a more multi-discipline environment. In turn this stood me in great stead for setting up my own business, with the knowledge and more importantly, the confidence to tackle new areas of expertise. I still draw on elements of the MBA on a regular basis; like any training once received, it’s easy to forget what you learned and I find myself flicking back and referencing key learning points which act as a reassurance in what I’m doing now.

The finance elements were particularly helpful to me as knowing the numbers is critical in business. In summary I would say the MBA gave confidence to my employers and confidence to me when I decided to go it alone. 

Once you get the bug for setting up a new business, it’s easy to get distracted and since I set up Virtual PA Co over ten years ago, I’ve also dabbled in online and offline retail businesses, an online estate agency and helped my husband set up his surveying business. Now though I am determined to focus on Virtual PA Co and the Go-Safely service, there is so much that they have to offer to small, medium and large businesses.

Gail is kindly waiving the sign up fee for both services to all OU alumni.  Visit her websites for further details:

www.go-safely.com
go@go-safely.com

www.virtualpa.co.uk
gail@virtualpa.co.uk
Tel: 01733 297580