Social Impact, Leadership and Management

Social Impact Leadership and Management (SILM) group aims to engage with missions through research enabling change addressing major challenges across wellbeing, empowerment and equality;  and providing solutions that lie beyond the capacity of governments or markets alone. The need for social impact and ethically informed leaders and managers is growing fast with disruption emerging continuously from multiple social, economic and technological forces.

These missions include theorising and advancing new forms of ethical leadership and management development; developing new systems and models of social care; progressing equality and diversity; changing organisation cultures.

Engaging with these global challenges and missions, and the leadership and management to implement them in work and employment, opens up scope for a breadth and depth of research questions and projects.

With the social context of all work and employment relations being challenged by political, economic, social and technological developments the nature and purpose of leadership and management is being questioned and tested. This is reflected in the concerns and agendas of stakeholders in organisation, world and employment at the national and international levels. This is seen in;

• Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework; especially Outcomes Poverty, 4. Fair work and Business , 7. Economy and 11. International
• UN Sustainable Development Goals; 3. Good Health & Wellbeing; 5. Gender equality; Decent Work and Economic Growth;9.  Industry, Impact & Infrastructure; 10. Reduced Inequalities.
• The UK Research Excellence Framework Unit of Assessment (UoA) 17 expectation and promotion of inter-disciplinarity, integrating across traditional business disciplines.
• The strategic plans of UWS and the School of Business & Creative Industries

Related programmes

• BA Business
• BA Human Resource Management
• MBA
• MSc International Management
• MSc Human Resource Management
• DBA

Research Themes

Social Impact is concerned with the goals of empowering, improving equality and wellbeing promotion, through key actors in organisations, work and employment. Understanding and enabling the social Impact journey is a growing and integral part of the leadership and management of a wide range of businesses, organisations, institutions and labour/professional and community groups. 

Leadership and management embodying and delivering SI are key enablers, in organisations, work and employment; along with governments and communities, of ultimately achieving fairer, wealthier, sustainable and dynamic organisations, economies and societies.

All disciplines in business and management have a role to play in the analysis and enabling of empowering, equality-oriented and  wellbeing promoting relations. effective, ethical and environmentally responsible and sustainable approaches in the private, public and third sectors. Together we can generate an evidence-based, systemic, critical and internationally comparative body of knowledge.

Those who get the development of empowering, equality-oriented and  wellbeing promoting relations right, locally and globally, will be best positioned to meet the challenges and opportunities we are encountering. These will thrive through changing work and employment systems, business environments, organisational processes, collaborations and partnerships.   Probably the most prominent and shared goal of SILM is culture change for fairer, wealthier, dynamic wellbeing economies and thriving societies; at the levels of organisations, sectors and countries.

We currently have staff and PGR active and publishing and developing impact in projects, some of these with cluster leads noted, with potential to ‘spin out’ as and when criteria for a group/center in their own right can be met;

Ethical Theory and practice of leadership and management; Leaders and managers equipped for change within their organisations and societies, to bring about positive social, economic and environmental impact leading to productive and wealthier economies and greater individual and community wellbeing. 

Equality, diversity​ and inclusion; Multidisciplinary research spanning the disciplines of sociology, politics, and the wider discipline of business and management incorporating HRM with specific focus on race, religion and gender. Research on workforce diversity; discrimination and harassment; promotion and career progression; cross cultural management; recruitment and selection; equality laws and regulations; leadership; immigration; integration; and social cohesion.

Fair and Decent work; Progressing FDW is a major local and global challenge , at the heart of employment and social policy in many countries , cities and organizations.  We research experiences, challenges and needs in a variety of sectors as trends towards enabling or eroding FDW emerge are and are encountered. From how to describe Employer Value Propositions (EVP) to  the attractiveness of social care work for new generations.

Corporate Social Responsibility; CSR is both critical and pragmatic, concerned with the design and implementation of new solutions that imply conceptual, process, product, or organisational change, which ultimately aim to improve the welfare and wellbeing of individuals and communities.

Care and caring; Care is a major them, from social policy on paid and unpaid care work to prosocial organisational practices in many other sectors and contexts of work and employment. Perspectives on care and caring include social policy and governance of care systems, prosocial behaviour in the workplace, and feminist ethics of care.

Talent Management/Skills; Work, careers and employment: sustainable and inclusive employment and career systems; women’s work and careers; work and employment in arts and creative industries; low-status work and low-prestige sectors; fair work; informal work and employment; shadow economy; gig work, policy-driven sectors' growth/expansion, social innovation in work, workplace and the labour market.

Arts sectors, cultural and creative industries: cultural leadership and management; arts/cultural SMEs; social arts, measuring social impacts of arts, communicating cultural and social values; arts and imagination; arts and artists in non-performing contex

Members/Key staff