The Aim Initiative: A Rejoinder
| Author | Robin Wensley,Andy Neely |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12152 |
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 455–457 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12152
The Aim Initiative: A Rejoinder
Robin Wensley and Andy Neely1
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, Buckinghamshire, UK, and 1Institute for
Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 17 Charles Babbage Road,
Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK
Corresponding author e-mail: robin.wensley@warwick.ac.uk
The core claim in this commentary seems to be that
the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) Re-
search initiative reinforced elitism among the UK
management researchcommunity and will be ‘little
mourned’. We would wish to question the second
of these two assertions anyway, but will focus our
attention on the first, while also highlighting some
basic factual inaccuracies.
As the commentary acknowledges, a process of
peer review is almost inevitably correlated with
various symptoms of so-called elite behaviour.
However, it would be na¨
ıve in the extreme to
expect a government-funded research agency to
foreswear peer review for this reason. Central
to the Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC) missions, and there-
fore also those research programmes funded by
them, is the principle that they should only fund
highly rated research,and that such a rating should
be derived primarily from a process of peer re-
view. We therefore make no apology for the pro-
cess of selecting fully funded fellows based on peer
review and an ESRC-appointed selection panel,
which involved the Director or Deputy Director
as a non-voting member. However, it is worth not-
ing that the distinct AIM Scholars scheme was de-
liberately designed to encourage and engage the
next generation of management research talent.
This was the only groupwhere Deans were encour-
aged to nominate individuals who they thought
would benefit from exposure to the AIM net-
work. It is interesting to note how frequently the
commentary confuses AIM Scholars and AIM
Fellows.
The AIM had four objectives: (i) to conduct
research that identified actions to enhance the
UK’s international competitiveness; (ii) to raise
the scientific quality and international standing
of UK research on international competitiveness;
(iii) to expand the size and capacity of the active
research base for UK research on management;
and (iv) to develop the engagement of that capac-
ity with world-class research outside the UK and
with practitioners as co-producers of knowledge
about management and other users of research
within the UK. All fellows that were appointed
understood these objectives and the expectation
that they would engage in further interdisciplinary
work and provideinputs to both research capacity
building and policy and practice engagement. In
all these four areas, Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) were developed, approved and over-
seen by a Steering Committee, which consisted
mainly of practitioners, consultants and public
policy-makers. The AIM Steering Committee met
quarterly and often noted the significant progress
made on our various performance measures. As
the Technopolis evaluation clearly states, AIM
made eorts to build management research ca-
pacity in the UK, and again we make no apology
for focusing our attention on improving research
grant proposals and on writing research papers.
Of course, this can be framed as reinforcing elite
networks, but we would see it, particularly in the
light of the more general demands made by busi-
ness schools, universities and research funders, as
much more about developing important research
capabilities among a wider group of research
scholars. In a similar manner, AIM’s engagement
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