CRESC Impact
The co-ordination of our knowledge transfer work is facilitated by the presence of sevem user representatives on our Advisory Board (which have included two senior business people, and representatives from the British Film Institute (BFI), Commission for Racial Equality, Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), Office for National Statistics (ONS), and Arts Council England) and through the mobilisation of specific user constituencies through theme related activities. CRESC develops a corporate presence through its website and a twice yearly Newsletter where short, accessible articles present CRESC research and activities to a range of users – academics, students, research users – in an attractive user-friendly format. Our Newsletter is also used as a vehicle for engaging with relevant user groups through column space where such groups can report on their work or comment on general issues of concern to them.
This structure has allowed us to mobilise four distinctive user constituencies, in all of which we can demonstrate impact and the elaboration of partnership relations which we expect to further develop in the next phase of CRESC funding. These are in the areas of (i) business research (ii) media research (iii) participation research and (iv) research on the cultural sector. As we will demonstrate, such knowledge transfer and impact in the different spheres rests on our interdisciplinary engagement, our mixing of quantitative and qualitative data, and our reflexive approach to methods in action.
Business Users
Our research into financialization, the giant firm, and the role of intermediaries have proved to be of significant public interest in the media because it uniquely combines a broad perspective on new elites with empirical research on their pay and rewards. CRESC’s work on elites figured prominently in a Radio 4 Thinking Allowed programme on elites (1 Nov 2006) while The Guardian (30 Mar 2006) featured CRESC research on Non-Executive Directors. The broadsheets have been steadily interested in CRESC’s developing argument and evidence first about Chief Executive Officer pay and then more recently in City pay. This aspect of the Financialization and Strategy book was noticed on publication in columns by the economics editor of The Guardian (23 Jan 2006), by John Plender in the Financial Times (6 Feb 2006) and was subsequently cited by the management editor of The Observer (10 December 2006). CRESC’s Theme 1 researchers were part of an affiliate project (ESEMK under Framework 6) on knowledge based capitalism whose research on private equity was extensively cited in a report by the European Group of Socialist MEPs. The team’s subsequent work on City pay was the basis for a workshop in April 2008 where panellists included Brendan Barber (secretary general of the TUC), and Jack Dromey (deputy general secretary of UNITE).
In the first half of 2007, this kind of ‘brand recognition’ allowed CRESC research (begun under an EU funded affiliate project and continued under a Business Engagement Scheme) to play a key role in the high profile public debate in the UK about the growing influence of private equity. This was initiated by Fidelity’s CIO when he wrote a critical piece in the Financial Times (16 Feb 2007) which cited CRESC Working Paper 31 on private equity as one of two key research sources. Evidence from that working paper then featured prominently in newspaper analysis including The Observer (25 Feb 2007) where CRESC statistics led the front page of the business section and once again in The Sunday Times (10 June 2007). A request for further information led CRESC researchers to produce a written submission for the Treasury Select Committee Inquiry into Private Equity in May 2007. Williams was then called by the Committee in June 2007 as an expert witness whose comments were subsequently reported by broadsheets including the Financial Times (18 June 2007).
CRESC has also worked with KPMG’s Performance and Reward Practice to research Chief Executive Officer pay and influence pay setting in practical ways through non-academic presentations and publications which began with Froud’s 2006 article in the IDS Executive Compensation Review. CRESC’s work on CEO pay in public companies in Financialization and Strategy led to a developing relation with KPMG’s remuneration practice, supported by an ESRC Business Engagement Scheme award. This led to a CRESC presentation at a meeting of KPMG’s Remuneration Committee Institute which brings together NEDS from FTSE 100 and 250; while Business Engagement Scheme funding allowed the placement of David Shammai from KPMG at CRESC for one month in autumn 2007. The results so far include two academic articles, a CRESC working paper and a practitioner report as well as short article in the June 2007 issue of KPMG’s Executive Compensation Update; all this is jointly written by Shammai and CRESC researchers. Their joint report, “New thinking on top management pay” shows that CEO pay is a kind of fee scaled according to size of company and argues that this insight has implications for what companies measure and disclose as well as how they control top management pay. This research aims to inform KPMG’s consulting recommendations and remuneration committee decision making on top pay design in the FTSE 250 companies over the medium term where our recommendation is for simplification of pay design and removal of implicit incentives for empire building.
Media Organisations
CRESC’s work on public service broadcasting has had major national and international impact. Drawing on his CRESC research, Collins was expert advisor to the House of Lords Committee on the BBC Charter Review and the South African Broadcasting Co-operation’s Governors on public service broadcasting. He organised a seminar on television news for IPPR, wrote Broadcasting and Public Value for the Work Foundation, was consulted by Channel 4 on broadcasting and public value, and was invited to speak to regulators in Germany, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan, the USA and the UK. A comparative study of UK and Dutch broadcasting systems carried out by Collins and Vis was the focus of a successful international workshop which fed into policy debates. On a lighter note, Gillespie’s research on the changing face of British comedy, jokes and humour in an age of cultural transnationalism led to an OU/BBC series which received coverage in over a dozen press articles. Findings were also reported in numerous non-academic contexts – ‘The Social Life of Jokes: A Survey of British Jokes’, for example - and in the OU’s Society Matters.
CRESC has influenced the research practices of the Public Sector Broadcasting, especially through the affiliated AHRC project ‘Tuning In: Diasporic Contact Zones at BBC World Service’, directed by Gillespie. We have collaborated with staff at the BBC World Service Trust, introducing them to ethnographic methods, and undertaking research with them on production processes and on the socio-cultural impacts of their dramas on audiences’ attitudes and behaviour regarding AIDS, environmental issues, migration and displacement. We have also worked closely with BBCWS Audiences, Marketing and Communications researchers, researching and writing a working paper ‘Mapping digital diasporas’ which contributed to their re-thinking about how audiences, diverse diasporas especially, make use of a range of BBCWS online foreign language services. We are continuing to work with the Foreign FCO, who fund the BBCWS, particularly the Head of Public Diplomacy (Jolyon Welsh) and BBC World Service liaison (Holly Tett and Sanjeev Aluwalia). In particular, we are liaising on the planning of a conference to be held at Wilton Park in October 2008 on public diplomacy. The findings of our research with regard to the high levels of trust placed in, and the credibility of, the BBC World Service among certain diasporic groups were disseminated among the Public Diplomacy Group at the FCO.
CRESC research, especially the affiliated ‘Shifting Securities’ project, has also had a broader influence on government policy vis-a-vis diasporic groups. In two FCO seminars (February 2006 and September 2007), Gillespie presented research findings to constituencies including research analysts, the Islam Research Team, the Public Diplomacy group, and Home Office personnel. Her presentations were subsequently distributed to FCO colleagues at the British embassies in Paris and in Washington DC. Follow-up meetings testify that these seminars contributed to re-shaping internal research objectives and research strategies, permitting a more nuanced understanding of the social and cultural consequences of security policy for diverse diasporic groups as well as an appreciation of the value of collaborative ethnographic methods which are currently being adopted and adapted in FCO research. Thus, Gillespie was invited to present CRESC research at the Wilton Park Conference (an academically independent and non-profit-making Executive Agency of the FCO) in December 2007. A database consisting of over 350 transcripts of in-depth qualitative interviews with news audiences/citizens, military and security policy-makers, and broadcasters was accepted and has been deposited at the National Economic and Social Data Services (ESDS) archive for wider use.
The Shifting Securities research has also been influential among media policy makers. Ofcom research analysts (John Glover and Alison Preston) consulted with us about their major research initiative on news cultures and political participation, and invited us to outline major developments in the field and to respond to their findings. We also participated in Ofcom’s media literacy consultation. The project website www.mediatingsecurity alongside the special issue of the European Journal of Cultural Studies which presented the collaborative audience ethnographies entitled ‘Media, Security and Multicultural Citizenship’. Vol 10 No 3 August 2007 Guest Editor, Gillespie) has been widely circulated among policymakers and academics through events and word of mouth and is proving to be useful among both security and media policy analysts. The research has stimulated two comparative research projects in North America by Dr Minelle Mahtani of the University of British Colombia and by Dr Christopher Bail of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.
Users of Research on Social and Cultural Participation
Our combination of novel survey research and critical use of analytic methods has opened up another sphere of influence amongst those interested in the nature of social and cultural participation. CRESC has been identified as a key strategic partner by the DCMS Evidence and Analysis Unit for its ability to produce high quality, rapid response data. In connection to this, Scherger has produced models from the national Taking Part data which predict ‘drivers of demand’ for cultural opportunities and services, and Miles and Savage are working on a series of briefings from mid 2008 which are designed to inform the development of the new DCMS Research Strategy. We have been influential in shaping the content of ongoing research surveys into participation. Savage was consultant to the 2006 and 2007 DCMS Taking Part surveys, which with their 29,000 sample size has considerably enhanced the empirical survey base for cultural policy in the UK He was also chair of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) working party on ‘Social Participation’ (on which Majima, Moore and Silva were also involved), which advised the National Child Development Study on questions to use in its 2008 wave. Subsequently, Savage and Miles were successful co-applicants with Elliott from CLS for an ESRC project which will interview a sub-sample of 180 NCDS members in depth to ask about their participation over their course of their life, so permitting qualitative research to be linked to longitudinal survey data in ways which build on the innovative model developed in the CCSE affiliate project.
Research from the affiliated Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Study co-ordinated by Bennett, which has produced the most comprehensive mapping of cultural taste and participation for any nation, has been widely disseminated in seminars to the DCMS, Arts Council, and funded reports by the BFI. CRESC’s work examining the activities of ‘hard to reach’ deprived groups has been important for criticising the marginalisation of white working class culture and considering how to more effectively understand such groups. Savage is on the Advisory Board of a major Young Foundation project (funded by the National Lottery) on ‘unmet social needs’. Gillian Evans’ ethnographic work on the cultural values of the white working class in Bermondsey led to appearances on BBC News 24, on BBC Radio 4 You and Yours as well as an opinion piece in Guardian Society in response to the BBC’s White season. Tampubolon’s analysis of friendship patterns derived from BHPS data was reported in ten national newspapers.
CRESC research has raised new questions about the cultural significance of survey and interview data, and more specifically about the limits of sociological sample surveys in a world where new kinds of digital data cover whole populations. Savage and Burrows’ paper ‘The coming crisis of empirical sociology’, which drew directly on CRESC research, argues for the growing importance of new forms of digital business knowledge. It has attracted considerable attention from the research methods community, setting the frames of reference for two seminars organised by the ESRC’s Research Methods programme. It has also been especially influential amongst commercial market researchers, and Savage and Burrows have subsequently written a short version of the paper published in the International Journal of Market Research to encourage debate about the relationship between social science and commercial research. In an affiliated project funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund (and in association with the North West Development Agency (NWDA), Miles’s work exploring how administrative and transactional data can be a useful resource alongside more conventional interview and survey methods to generate knowledge of the demand for cultural institutions has developed into a regular forum.
CRESC’s work in developing innovative methods to examine socio-cultural change includes the elaboration of sequencing methods, which examine trajectories over time. Savage, Miles and Tampubolon (in association with CRESC PhD student Schröder) have recently completed a commissioned report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the career mobility of different ‘equality groups’ (organised on the axes of gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation and religion) which has applied these methods to BHPS data. The EHRC have commented that the report is ‘full of important findings, with critical policy implications’, and are keen to explore the possibility for new projects to build upon this. Miles has also been involved in affiliated projects examining the significance of ‘cultural interventions’ in key policy areas, notably REACCT concerned with the efficacy of art interventions in the criminal justice system.
Cultural Sector
Our engagement with the broader cultural sector has been both wide-ranging and influential. We have worked with an array of user groups, which has included cultural producers, regional agencies and government departments. We have collaborated directly with the sector in carrying out primary research informed by issues of common interest and current policy concerns, and we have developed important alliances with strategic bodies at the regional and national levels.
A HEIF2 (High Education Innovation Fund) project on Manchester’s cultural institutions led by Miles, looked at how to build closer links with the local and regional cultural sector by understanding its research needs, working with the sector to assess the quality of current evidence and methods, and exploring where an academic input could add value. This began with a series of consultations with the senior managements and marketing teams at a number of the City’s key cultural venues (e.g. Manchester City Art Gallery, The Lowry, The Royal Exchange, Urbis, the Green Room), augmented by discussions with City-wide and regional strategic bodies, which identified audience development and hard-to-reach groups as the issues of major concern. Miles then worked in collaboration with the Greater Manchester arts marketing consortium and a leading City-based marketing company to investigate the non-users of cultural institutions by surveying 400 local residents and carrying out more than 100 in-depth, face-to-face interviews. The findings have been fed back into the cultural sector via seminars, briefings (including a recent meeting on the ‘Social Effect of Culture’ organised by the Boekman Foundation and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in the Hague) and non-specialist publications.
A second major output of the HEIF project was the development of a cross-sector cultural network and a seminar series on cultural engagement and participation, which was co-produced with the Northwest Cultural Observatory (part of Culture Northwest, the regional cultural consortium). Exploring issues such as public value and the role of social and cultural capital, this brought together academic, sector and market researchers with cultural practitioners, managers and policy makers from over 50 organisations. The relationship with the Northwest Culture Observatory has subsequently developed into a productive ongoing partnership, which has maintained the CRESC/COIN cultural research network and produced a further two popular seminar series on research questions around key policy themes, culminating in well attended one-day sector-wide conferences. Anticipating the findings of the McMaster review, the first of these examined issues of perception and quality in the cultural sector by exploring the concept of ‘world-class’ culture. The second, Surveying Web 2.0: Digital technologies, market intelligence and social media, for which CRESC won funding as an official ESRC Festival of Social Science 2008 event, and which was 100% over-subscribed, examined the implications for the sector of the explosion in ‘virtual’ participation and the routine collection of transactional data on the UK population. A recently published booklet, Taking Part in the Northwest: understanding engagement and participation in culture, authored by Miles, is the first in a series of co-produced publications aimed at disseminating cultural research intelligence to a broad cross-sector audience.
CRESC has also played a wider consultancy role with respect to the development of evaluation methods for major cultural events in the region. A research model designed by Savage to examine the development of audiences and to capture the longitudinal impact of large-scale city-based events subsequently influenced the ‘Impacts 08’ evaluation of Liverpool Capital of Culture 2008, while Miles’ work arising from the HEIF2 project was incorporated into the planning of the evaluation for the Manchester International Festival.
More broadly, many of our affiliate and core funded staff work closely with institutions in the cultural sector. Rees Leahy has advised the Museums Association on workforce development and training issues for museum staff. She is also part of an advisory group on The Social Impact of Museums organised by the National Museums Directors Conference. McDonald has worked with the Royal Armouries in Leeds and addressed the ICMAH (International Committee for Museums of Archaeology and History) as part of ICOM’s 2007 annual conference. Bennett’s work on cultural diversity and museums was focused around his contribution to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Museums and Global Public Spheres programme. Our interest in visual archives is being carried forward in partnership with the BFI through Bennett’s role as Chair of the Advisory Group for the BFI’s InView project digitising documentary film and photographic material and placing them on line for researchers and higher education teaching purposes. CRESC and the BFI are planning a two-day conference on researching visual archives to mark the launch of InView in March 2009. CRESC is also hosting a series of National Centre for Research Methods funded seminars in 2008 on the archives which include core members from the National Archive and the MIMAS Archive hub.