Playing the whole team

THES reporters look at how departments prepared for and responded to last week's research assessments.

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT: WARWICK

1992 rating: 5

1996 rating: 5

"We weren't prepared to mess around simply because the research Olympics was coming." Robert Galliers, chairman of Warwick Business School, wants to get something off his chest, writes Phil Baty. He is uncomfortable with the tactics of some of his rivals.

"I was always confident of achieving a high grade," he says, "but it worries me that some leading institutions have been buying in experience and putting up only a select few of their stars for the assessment exercise. That makes a nonsense of the whole thing."

Business and management at Warwick has 55 full-time research staff and a further 95 teaching staff who are research active, most of whom are relative fledglings brought in through Warwick's research development nurturing scheme.

"We put in every one of our researchers for the exercise because we are a research-active school, despite the danger that the less experienced could bring the average down. We have a role to play in developing the next generation," says Professor Galliers.

The additional funds offered by the high HEFCE grade are very welcome. A 4 rating could have meant losing Pounds 150,000 a year.

But HEFCE funds play only a small part of the school's research activities. The school's 1995/96 earned research income from grants and contracts was Pounds 2.74 million. Of this, the private sector contributed Pounds 352,000 and the European Union provided Pounds 379,000. Funds from government departments and local authorities amounted to almost Pounds 900,000, and research councils provided only 25 per cent of the income with Pounds 673,000.

The private sector is of increasing importance not just for cash, says the school, but for quality applied research. Most of the school's private money comes from subscribers' clubs.

"Individual companies may be reluctant to contribute large sums of money," says research professor Paul Stoneman, "but if a larger group of companies each contribute a smaller amount, they reduce their burden, and we get the benefit of networking to get closer to the market."

The balance between fundraising and maintaining academic integrity is a fine one, admits Professor Stoneman. "But we are not a cheap consultancy," he insists. "All the academics could be private sector consultants and get paid three times as much as we do. But we want to remain academics."

Professor Stoneman has just completed a market study of the effects of government regulation on the market performance of green products. The team concluded that legislation is the key to bolstering flagging consumer demand for eco-friendly products.