Reflections on building a Centre of Excellence

1
Reflections on building a Centre of Excellence

• Charles Woolfson
• European Centre for Occupational Health, Safety
  and Environment
• (ECOHSE)

2
Reflections on building a Centre of Excellence

• Why a Centre?
• ECOHSE An example of a CoE
• Five Steps on the Road to CoEdom
• Final Reflections

3
Why a Centre?

• There is a key issue, problem or theme
• This cannot be entirely addressed with existing
  research/academic configurations
• It requires reaching across disciplinary (and
  national) divides and mobilizing new capacities
  and networks
• An opportunity for academics to have some real
  world policy influence

4
European Centre for Occupational Health, Safety
and Environment (ECOHSE)

• http//www.gla.ac.uk/ecohse/
• ECOHSE has as its primary aim to serve as a focus
  cross national research projects and for the
  exchange of academic, policy and practitioner
  experience.
• ECOHSE aims to stimulate advanced comparative
  academic research in the fields of Industrial
  relations and social dialogue, corporate social
  responsibility, and workplace health, safety and
  the environment.
• ECOHSE has particular experience and expertise in
  joint projects between member state countries of
  the EU and candidate countries of Central and
  Eastern Europe.
• ECOHSE provides a forum for the conduct of annual
  symposia, innovative research, fellowships, and
  the exchange and dissemination of information.

5
ECOHSE Major outputs

• Three year core funding from 5th Framework
  Programme and British Academy grants
• Major funded research project on health care
  workers and privatisation for ILO (Lithuania,
  Romania, Czech, Ukraine
• Two international symposia organised in CEE
  (Lithuania 2000, Bucharest 2001)
• Organising committee and rapporteur of European
  TUC Brussels conference 2004 on OHS in an
  enlarged Europe
• Marie Curie Fellowship survey project on
  Employees Attitudes to Health and Safety in
  Transitional Lithuania 3500 respondents

6
ECOHSE research dissemination

• ECOHSE Web site (Lithuanian and English versions)
• Delphi news web site, BNS
• Verslo Zinios feature article, etc
• National Labour Inspectorate Web site
• ETUC/Trade Union Technical Bureau, Brussels Web
  site
• Baltic Sea Occupational Health and Safety Network
• European Agency for Safety and Health at Work,
  Bilbao
• Stakeholders conference

7
ECOHSE actors and audiences
8
Five Steps to CoEdom

• Step 1 Creating the Roadmap
• Step 2 Achieving Critical Mass
• Step 3 Realising the Outputs
• Step 4 Achieving Sustainability
• Step 5 Weighing Losses and Gains

9
Step 1 Creating the roadmap Are we matching
ambition to reality?

• Realistic aims and timescale
• Short-term constitution, supporters, launch,
  web site and email base (0-12 month)
• Medium-term inaugural symposium, workshops,
  working papers, newsletter, media work (13-24
  month)
• Long-term academic articles, teaching,
  symposium proceedings, new conference, policy
  interventions and dissemination(24-48 month)

10
Step 2 Achieving Critical Mass Can we actually
get our act together?

• Material Resources Premises and equipment, web
  space, email address etc
• Personnel Resources Administrator, conference
  support, core academic staff
• Moral Resources Convening regular meetings,
  recording and carrying out decisions etc
• Financial resources internal seed corn
  institutional and external grant acquisition

11
Step 3 Realising the outputs What is it that
we need to do to prove ourselves?

• Multiple mode product dissemination-
• Continuous web update and email postings
• Conference proceedings on line
• Working papers online
• Academic articles, edited volumes etc
• Targeted policy and practitioner outputs
• Popular media (online and print)
• Policy/consultancy reports

12
Step 4 Achieving sustainability Are we
actually there, or still on the way?

• Maintaining a diverse portfolio of research and
  consultancy work
• Personnel continuity and recruitment securing
  key movers or new blood
• Personnel discontinuity leaving the door open,
  roll-over provisions, ongoing career advice
• Generating new funding proposals and grant
  applications the unending task
• Cooling out the opposition

13
Step 5 Weighing Losses and Gains Why are we
actually doing this at all?

• ECOHSE failures - (point size 28)
• Failed to secure funds for organising a third
  independent symposium and had to combine forces
  with the ETUC
• Failed to launch an online journal to encourage
  publications of CEE colleagues
• Failed to change focus and profile when needed
• Failed to develop into an Institute with major
  longer term funding
• Failed to breach the disciplinary boundaries

14
ECOHSE successes

• (Point size 32)
• Raised the European level profile of the issues
  academically
• Research and policy outputs generated
• Established some space for critical approaches
• Enabled limited avoidance of unpleasant
  departmental teaching and administrative duties
• Brought the Director to the Baltics (?)

15
Jackson Browne Running on Empty

• You forget about the
• losses..
• You exaggerate
• the wins..

16
Final Reflections

• A Centre is a form of academic entrepeneurship
• It is the academic equivalent of a small to
  medium sized enterprise
• You are your own boss, but it is immensely time
  consuming and usually involves the whole family
• It is difficult to grow the Centre into a larger
  sustainable enterprise but niche marketing helps
• Like the SME it has a relatively low market entry
  price but a high failure rate
• Failure may actually be a good thing, provided we
  can recognise it for what it is
• Success brings its own problems and is anyway
  difficult to measure
• Excellence is even harder to measure