Professor Robert MacIntosh reflects on tenure as Chair of the Chartered ABS

From October I am taking up a new role as PVC for Research and Innovation at the University of West Scotland. Whilst the new role is exciting, I will no longer be directly responsible for a business school which means that I will have to step back from one of the best roles in the higher education sector. It has been a privilege to have served on the Chartered ABS Council since 2014 and to have acted as Chair.  

Working with the Council and the leadership team of the Chartered ABS has been quite simply brilliant. I have had the opportunity to work with not one, but two great CEOs (in Anne Kiem and Flora Hamilton), to work with an energetic and talented group of staff, and to serve as a trustee alongside a wonderful collection of business school deans. Together, we champion the cause of business schools to the wider world whilst simultaneously supporting and nurturing those who work within our member schools. It is important, inspiring work, and it makes a difference.

Both the Chartered ABS and the Small Business Charter deliver advocacy, training, support and impact on behalf of almost every UK business school. These days we even support a few schools that lie beyond the UK’s borders. I have been lucky enough to be Chair during a period when we have redeveloped our strategy, launched new initiatives and delivered significant national programmes like the Small Business Leadership Programme and the Help to Grow: Management Course. These big, national activities have involved taking risks and doing new things, but our influence and profile have grown as a result of them. I’m immensely proud to have been part of the journey.

Lucky is not necessarily how I would describe the timing of being elected chair, just as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown became apparent. But our community quickly formed a unique-in-sector support network during those crucial months of 2020. Whilst the Chartered ABS has always been warm, inclusive and welcoming, the regular digital gatherings of Deans and of our various committees fostered a step change in our sense of community. Each of us in our own leadership roles were facing multiple pressures and multiple unknowns. The shared learning and access to peer support represented the very best of what the Chartered ABS stands for. It is no surprise that some of those digital gatherings continue today and now run in parallel to our in-person events and programmes. 

As I prepare to stand down as Chair, I would reflect on two related themes that strike me as having changed significantly as an inadvertent consequence of shared experiences during the pandemic. 

First, our sense of confidence has grown enormously. The Chartered ABS is now much more proactively making the case for the many and significant contributions that our member business schools offer to the economy and to society. We now produce a steady stream of reports, surveys, analyses and infographics that make clear the remarkable achievements of business and management. We are using the scale of our own member schools to generate insight and information on student recruitment, research funding and many other topics faster than the official sources. A great example of this was the data we were able to produce on the immediate impact on student recruitment when changes to the visa regulations were introduced last year.

Our newly formed Policy Committee formalises the growing importance of this work as we look to shape the environment in which our business schools operate. Whether it is building the case within our own universities, speaking to employers, research funders or policymakers, the Chartered ABS is much more visible than we have been in the past. We have been trusted to deliver national programmes by the UK government and we are much more vocal about the diverse range of research and education that we do at a scale that few other disciplines can match. The recent adjustment to our mission makes clear that we are good for business and for society.

Secondly, we have begun to make explicit some aspects of who we are and what we value. Working in partnership with the British Academy of Management, we published a guide to running inclusive events which has had influence beyond our own community. Anyone running an event, conference session, panel discussion or development programme for us now has some explicit guidance which embeds the EDI agenda at the heart of how we operate. Our conferences continue to grow, recruiting record numbers of delegates, and they now role model the inclusivity that our community so values.

Most recently, both the Council and the staff of the Chartered ABS also co-created a set of values which you can find here. Our values capture how we aspire to interact with each other. The real strength of our community is the sense of support amongst what are, after all, competitor member schools. I am in no doubt that our community is our most valuable resource. It has always been there; it was hugely amplified by the challenges of the pandemic and I am delighted to see it being crystallised in a clear statement of our values.

Being Chair of this remarkable organisation has meant that I have been regularly been afforded a platform to speak on our collective behalf. Speaking to journalists, policymakers, politicians or offering a welcome at our many events is part of the role that I have enjoyed, but only because of the support I’ve been given. The core team are always on hand with briefings, data and advice. I would also like to thank each and every one of you for the conversations, ideas and inspiration you have offered at conferences, in development programmes, at our Council and Committee meetings, or digitally.

As business school academics, we are very, very lucky to have the Chartered ABS. It provides a space in which we work together to advance the cause of our amazing business schools.

For my part, whilst I may no longer sit on Council, I don’t plan to be a stranger. I trained in engineering in the dim and distant past, but I will always regard business schools as my true academic home. Our member business schools have a key role to play in the turbulent higher education landscape and I will continue to champion our cause from a slightly different vantage point.

Thank you and continued good luck.