Category Archives: Business and Law

Graduation Spring 2016: Teacher becomes student (Part 2)

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by Dr Frank Watt, who this week graduated from Birkbeck’s Department of Organizational Psychology. Sharing the platform with Dr Watt on the day was his PhD supervisor Professor Patrick Tissington, Head of the department. Not just that, he was also a previous employee of Dr Watt’s! Yesterday, Professor Tissington told his side of the story (read his blog entry here). Today, it’s Frank’s turn.

Dr Frank Watt

Dr Frank Watt

After gaining two masters degrees, I guess I could have been satisfied with academic achievement and left studying behind. For me however, the challenge of successfully completing a PhD was more than tempting, it would satisfy a personal desire or need. I could put it down to ambition, taking on something big or even sheer curiosity but, it was simply a love of research and learning and I really wanted to do it; no, I mean I really wanted to do it.

Having completed 33 years in the fire and rescue service I was able to retire and move on to do something else. So timing was perfect. The work associated with a PhD would perhaps fill the void created by not having to meet the demands of being an Assistant Chief Fire Office.

I enrolled at Aston University in early October 2008 with Patrick Tissington as my main supervisor. This was more complex than a than it would seem as Patrick, now Professor Tissington, was my student in all things fire service when undertaking his PhD during a secondment to the Fire Service College in Moreton in Marsh. The role reversal appeared to work as we had already established rules for working together only this time it would be me on the receiving end of feedback and timely reminders that a piece of work was overdue!

The following couple of years were mainly focussed on looking for a subject area that provided a gap in knowledge and sufficient contribution to research at PhD level. There were quite a few false trails but whilst attending a review meeting with Patrick, the conversation wandered into discussing efficacy at self and group level and there it was, the focus of my research. With my background in commanding natural hazard emergencies and developing pre and post disaster plans I was always curious as to how or if members of a community could contribute to deployed professional resources. By extending the concept of efficacy to community level would it be possible to measure the likelihood of a community getting involved in preparing for a natural hazard event.

Just as I was in the moment so to speak, I had a bit of a wobble. A very dear friend collapsed and died in front of me and despite my life saving efforts I was unable to help him. Thirty three years dealing with deaths and injuries had not it seemed prepared me for such an event. It would be six months before I could concentrate and return to my research. At this point, it may seem callous of me to suggest that ‘life happens, deal with it’, but that’s exactly how it is. People including you will be affected by deaths, births, marriages, divorces and all the other events that can and will occur during the time it takes to complete a PhD. I was fortunate as according to a 360 degree psychometric, I have a high degree of tenacity and personal resilience that kept me going.

Sometime later Dr P. Tissington became a professor here at Birkbeck and I was to follow. Now that I had moved and settled into the Birkbeck way my research started to gather momentum. I reached out to friends and family to test their responses to my research. Using social networks and a landing page for my questionnaire, I was able to tap into any number of sources including organisations that were involved in communities and risk planning.

(L-R) Dr Frank Watt and Professor Patrick Tissington

(L-R) Dr Frank Watt and Professor Patrick Tissington

One of the major successes was securing over 500 responses from residents living in high risk flood zones. This data provided me the quantitative results that both supported my qualitative results and the research rationale as a whole, leaving rather smug. However in my rush to submit my thesis in order to comply with a self-imposed deadline, I was careless in my writing and did not meet the high quality level demanded in order to gain a Birkbeck PhD and although passing the Viva, I was left with a substantial rework of the submission. This coincided with the selling of our family house and moving into a motorhome.

In all the upheaval I still managed to submit an amended thesis which was accepted allowing me to graduate in April 2016 some 7 years, 7 months after filling in a PhD application form in Patrick’s office. On reflection my research was at times a labour of love, a mill stone round my neck and all consuming. I believe I appeared selfish in my focuss to achieve and I apologise to my wife family and friends for any offence or discomfort caused.

The written element occurred anywhere I found time to sit down with my laptop, iPad, phone or just plain pencil and paper. I wrote substantial pieces on trains, planes and sat on the playas or waiting for the weather to clear whilst climbing in Scotland. The mantra must be ‘write, write and write some more’. During the seven years I have climbed 178 mountains, cycled 1000 kilometres across Spain and competed in many triathlons and endurance events, but my research which was never very far away was without doubt my most difficult undertaking.

My last observation would be, procrastination was my enemy, tenacity and resilience were my friends. I’d be glad to introduce you to my friends.

(Read part 1 of this story)

Watch below to see Prof Tissington and Dr Watt speaking after the spring graduation ceremony

https://youtu.be/G6zqhpEVZ-0

Find out more

Graduation Spring 2016: Teacher becomes student (Part 1)

2 Replies

This post was contributed by Professor Patrick Tissington, Head of the Department of Organizational Psychology. This week, Professor Tissington attended the School of Business, Economics and Informatics’ graduation ceremony – a special occasion of course, but extra special given he was able to witness his former boss (and latterly his student) Frank Watt claim his PhD. Here, Professor Tissington gives some background to his professional relationship with Frank, and what it means to have seen him cross the graduation stage.

Professor Patrick Tissington

There is no such thing as an ordinary PhD because they make extraordinary, superhuman demands on the student and a really complicated relationship with the supervisor. I think some things about my latest PhD student illustrates quite how complicated that relationship can be. Let me explain because I think it is a story worth telling.

And as such, needs to start at the beginning:

Frank Watt was brought up in a remote part of Scotland with absolutely no ambition to go to university. He did have a sense of adventure and public service and so a career in the fire brigade was a great fit. And he did well. As he studied for his professional qualifications first as a Fire Fighter and then to lead other Fire Fighters, he discovered an aptitude for study that surprised him. Never shy of a challenge, he discovered that more qualifications would be available if he studied hard and wanted it enough.

So, with no first degree, he managed to get himself onto the MBA Programme at the University of Strathclyde and sponsorship from the fire service. This was a major challenge but he worked hard and graduated. This helped bring him into an informal fast track for promotion and he soon found himself seconded to the UK Fire Service’s central leadership training facility – the Fire Service College and Moreton in Marsh – to lead programmes on leadership for Fire Officers. Out of the blue, one day in 1996 he was introduced to a civilian who had been hired to research the psychology of incident command. He was told abruptly (in the way of uniformed services) that he was now the lead for the project.

That civilian person was me.

And so for three years, Frank was my boss. We worked on several projects together – all of them intricate, challenging and problematic. This meant we became close and so it was natural for me to invite him and his partner Lorraine to my wedding. And later I attended his. As my funding ran out, my PhD wasn’t quite finished (OK – it was quite some way off!) so I left to earn a crust as a consultant. Somehow I managed to complete my doctorate and land a job as an academic at Aston University. Frank also moved on and was promoted to become Assistant Chief Officer at Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service. To be honest, our contact was sporadic at best from this point as we threw ourselves into our careers and he with had considerable operational responsibilities in Derbyshire.

I was still lecturing and researching with the fire service so plugged in to the grapevine. This is how I heard that Frank was due to retire so I got back in touch. It turned out he was looking for new challenges. We met at my office in Aston to enlist his services to lecture on health and safety. During our conversation I reminded him that he had always said that he really wanted to do some research. I was looking to expand the research centre in crisis management I had co-founded so it seemed obvious that he should start a PhD. And so it was. Frank discovered that a well understood individual level personality concept – self-efficacy – could be applied to groups.

(L-R) Dr Frank Watt and Professor Patrick Tissington

(L-R) Dr Frank Watt and Professor Patrick Tissington

Little was known about the way in which this might happen save for considerable evidence that it varied by context. Frank had led the emergency service response to major flooding for years and had noticed that some communities bounced back more easily than others. He wanted to know if there was a way of measuring this and whether there might be a variant of the construct of self-efficacy that held at the community level. And so after many challenges including the birth of a child, promotions and change of job (for me) and for him numerous challenges at home and a break in studies so he could taken on an interim executive post, he has finally made it and graduates today.

To be honest, at the time it didn’t really occur to me how odd this all was. The person who had been my boss and as important in my life as my PhD supervisor, now became my student. I still asked his advice from time to time which of course required a complete turnaround from the normal PhD supervisor/student relationship. As a supervisor, it is always hard to have to say to your student that their work isn’t at the level required. With Frank, I found it even more difficult and the gear shifting in our relationship has been sometimes uncomfortable when giving honest, necessary feedback on drafts.

All of this means that, although he started out at a different university, the nature of the twists and turns in his studies, the adult-adult relationship between supervisor and student and of course the many and various personal challenges that Frank has overcome: pure Birkbeck.

I hope he doesn’t mind that I say that his studies over ran. The plan was to graduate and then head off on a Grand Tour of Europe with Lorraine. But as always, life doesn’t turn out so easily and a combination of finalising his thesis fell at a time when the house sale went through unexpectedly quickly. This means that his PhD was completed in a motor home on a camp site in Derbyshire. I dare say this is a first in the 200 year history of Birkbeck!

All of this can be summarised by saying that it is completely fitting that today he graduates amongst a peer group consisting overwhelmingly of mature students. All of whom have had massive challenges to overcome. And I can say, hand on heart, I empathise. For I too was a mature student. I studied for my PhD part time. I worked all the way through my first degree and my A levels…. well I’d prefer to forget what they were.

So the reason for this blog is to show what an amazing journey this has been for Frank but also for me. Frank is writing about the challenges from his own point of view to give a realistic preview of what it is like to set yourself such a high bar of academic achievement later in life. As for me: I am something of a British mongrel. The English in me would prefer not to talk about this too much but the Welsh in me will be in tears on the platform as he graduates. And as for the Scots part of me? Suffice it to say I may sample a wee dram after the ceremony. The English will then kick in again and I won’t mention this again.

As for Frank? He will be flying in from a climbing holiday in Tenerife for the degree ceremony. And shortly after it, heading off in the motorhome for warm places, stiff breezes to sail and mountains to climb. But this time, the mountains will be literal and he will be climbing them with Lorraine. And Lorraine for once will have no complaints about being unable to sit anywhere for research papers being strewn on all of the seats.

(Read part two of this story)

Watch below to see Prof Tissington and Dr Watt speaking after the spring graduation ceremony

https://youtu.be/G6zqhpEVZ-0

 

Find out more

Role of law expands in evolving football transfer market

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by Nick Eisen, Business Engagement Reporter, Birkbeck School of Business, Economics and Informatics

Football transfer deals require greater legal input than ever before, being more complex and involving more money, parties and issues than in the past. A presentation organised by the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre (BSBC) focused on these developments.

Titled The Football Transfer Market Uncovered: An Insider’s Perspective of How Things Work in Football, the presentation took place at the British Medical Association in Tavistock Square on Monday 22 February, and was part of the BSBC’s Public Seminar Series.

The speakers were Daniel Geey, Partner, and Jonny Madill, Associate, at the Sports Group of media law firm Sheridans, a long-term supporter of the Public Seminar Series. The two lawyers offered an overview of current issues in a complicated and often-misunderstood subject, and facilitated extended and lively question-and-answer sessions, in which the presenters and audience of sports industry professionals, academics, students and public explored evolving issues.

The evening divided into four main areas: the player contract, the lawyer’s role in the transfer process, the transfer window, and key commercial issues. On another level, lawyers had also been advising on intermediary (agent) regulation.

Football-transfer-market---Sheridans

Individuals, organisations and change

In an era of big money, new markets and revenue streams, new media, increased media coverage, and globalisation for football, one general theme was reconciling individual and organisational interests (such as player and club). Another theme could be seen as the sheer pace and level of change to which lawyers and others have to adapt.

Parties requiring legal advice in a transfer include the buying and selling clubs, player, player’s agent and the leagues and federations involved. Documents that lawyers negotiate and draft include the transfer agreement, employment contract, image rights, performance-related pay, release clauses and work permit. Failure to agree any one of these could mean the failure of the entire deal.

With such multiple parties and issues, one example of a contract strikingly indicated the challenge of adapting some mid-20th century procedures to the 21st century, and showed that rapid change in one area might not always entail rapid change in another: a multimillion-euro transfer deal was framed in a contract effectively less than five pages long. Daniel Geey pointed out that it was very unlikely that any other business would handle such a valuable deal and all its component parts so briefly.

Performance-related pay

Pay is one indicator of the changing relationship between clubs and players: there has been a shift away from unvarying, guaranteed remuneration and towards variable, performance-related reward: “giving players more control over their earnings”, as Jonny Madill described it. Here, the objective is to incentivise the player to aim for team benefit rather than personal benefit. Performance analytics (explored in an earlier BSBC/OptaPro event) help in devising incentives. Some have objected to the lower guaranteed earnings. Others stress the potential to earn more through performance rewards. Further tensions have arisen when rewards have not matched expectations.

Such structures can also create anomalies; sporting success can threaten financial failure: bonuses due to players for competition success at one club (Barcelona) led it into financial difficulties in paying those bonuses. The FA allows clubs to insure against such a possibility, though insuring against negatives (such as relegation) is prohibited.

In another area, changing approaches have also threatened to increase individual players’ liabilities. In one case, a club (Chelsea) sued a player for breach of contract and compensation on his transfer fee, due to an issue of illegal drug use. The club subsequently dropped the lawsuit. Players’ representative body FIFPro has questioned why players should be held liable for transfer fees negotiated between clubs without involving the players concerned or their advisers.

Release clauses

To balance the interests of player and club, release clauses also require careful drafting, consisting, among other things, of multiple triggers specific to different contingencies (such as approaches from certain clubs, relegation or time period).

Image rights

In the UK, image rights can now be 20% of a top-level player’s earnings (limited by UK tax authorities) and a valuable endorsement tool for that player’s club. Legally agreeing how the club can use the player’s image is therefore vital. Paying such earnings to a player’s image rights company rather than to the player reduces tax liability. Here therefore, the lawyer’s role is to negotiate between club and player’s company, as well as between club and player.

Work permits

The FA has an intricate new work permit regime, with one tier for European Economic Area (EEA) players and the other for non-EEA players. Lawyers have to navigate a complex system of qualifying points dependent on what minutes a footballer has played in which league in which jurisdiction and can appeal points decisions before an Exceptions Panel – divided into two levels… The UK’s EU referendum result could change the situation again.

Transfer window

The transfer window can also pit individual players against clubs. Some see restricting periods in which players can change teams as providing clubs with some stability. Others argue this restriction conflicts with normal employment rights. FIFPro has complained to the European Commission (EC) that the transfer system is incompatible with EU law, questioning transfer fees and why players’ employment rights should be different from other employment rights (again, how this will affect the UK will depend on the result of the UK referendum on EU membership).

Players’ agents also have a dispute about regulations. The Association of Football Agents has complained to the EC that world football governing body FIFA’s regulatory 3% cap on agent commissions constitutes price-fixing incompatible with EU law.

Jonny Madill concluded the evening by heralding ongoing and likely future issues, including that of transparency in football.

The evening was another event in the BSBC’s active strategy of engagement for all. Closing the evening, BSBC Director Sean Hamil emphasised the role of the Public Seminar Series as a forum for academia, industry and public to meet and explore important developments in sport

Image: Courtesy of richardobeirne under CC via Flickr.co

Find out more

Understanding the European financial crises: Martin Sandbu at Birkbeck

Leave a reply

Martin Sandbu, the economics leader writer for the Financial Times (FT), was the special guest at a recent talk at Birkbeck on 19 February. This event was organised under the auspices of the Birkbeck Politics Department’s MSc programme in European Politics & Policy in association with Birkbeck’s Departments of Management and Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.

As one of the UK’s most influential UK economics commentators, Martin provided his insight into whether Europe’s economy has turned a corner, and whether the Eurozone’s fragile recovery is sustainable. Here, Charles Shaw and Ahmed Razzaq of the Birkbeck Economics and Finance Society report from the event

In a recent talk at Birkbeck, FT’s Martin Sandbu located the economic failure of the Eurozone in institutional arrangements and policy choices that laid the basis for organisational deficiencies.

Financial Times columnist, Martin Sandbu

Financial Times columnist, Martin Sandbu

During the Eurozone crisis, the message from European policymakers was abundantly clear: that the euro fostered many of the recent problems, or at least was a strong contributor to the high budget deficits at the heart of the crisis, and that there was no alternative to the bailout packages. Subsequent large transfers from Germany to the debtor countries were therefore justified along these lines, in exchange for harsh austerity, overly tight monetary policy, and structural reforms.

In his new book – “Europe’s Orphan: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Debt” – Martin Sandbu perceptively argues that this accepted orthodoxy is in fact at odds with history and evidence from the period. Nothing is wrong with the euro itself, he suggests. It is rather the policies of the governments of the Eurozone and the European Central Bank that were and are wrong. If true, what implication does this have for our understanding of the wider economy and the implementation of policy initiatives? Further, what can we expect in the short to medium term, given the costly spillover effects of a sustained drop in energy and commodity prices, and revived fears of a new recession in advanced economies?

BNP Paribas recently noted that last month was “the worst for risky assets for many years, if not on record.” Given this current affairs backdrop – of a recently announced date for the UK’s referendum on EU membership, and extremely negative levels of sentiment and investor positioning – Martin’s talk on the politics of Eurozone debt could not have been more timely.

Dispelling some of the post-crisis myths

European Central Bank in Frankfurt (Image copyright Eoghan OLlonnain via Flickr)

European Central Bank in Frankfurt (Image copyright Eoghan OLlonnain via Flickr)

On the evening, Sandbu lucidly examined the case for the Euro, not by focussing on virtues of a single currency, but focusing instead on the failure of European macroeconomic policy and in particular the inflexibility of the European Central Bank, European Commission, and Member State Governments to allow for restructuring of private, and later sovereign, debt.

Many analyses of the crisis blamed an unholy trinity of weak financial regulation, ineffective supervision, and profligacy on the periphery. Sandbu was able to provide an important corrective to such gross simplifications and dispel some of the post-crisis myths by pointing out, for example, that profligacy was not at the core of the problem. With the exception of Greece, the economies that had to resort to bailouts were not those with the highest debt-to-GDP ratios.

This and other forms of evidence allowed Martin to convincingly make a nuanced case for the Euro being more of a scapegoat than catalyst in this affair. If there was a smoking gun in the run up to the crisis then, Sandbu argued, it was not the Euro per se. He went further, stating that the sovereign debt crisis would have likely occurred without the single currency due to the magnitude of nominal rigidities observed at macro level, incomplete institutional infrastructure, and the fact that Eurozone governments that ran into trouble had no lender of last resort.

When questioned on whether he would agree that a more centralised Europe would be better able to cope with these issues in the future, Sandbu would not be coaxed. Whilst sceptical of the utility of European fiscal and political union, Sandbu did identify efforts made in establishing Eurozone equity markets as conducive to heading off some of the risk of a similar debt crisis in the region going forward.

The ‘liquidationist’ alternative

If there was one take away from the evening it is that the Euro may not have caused the crisis but the main actors, in dealing with the crisis, compounded the severity of events. In what Martin Wolf described as the “liquidationist” alternative, Sandbu made the case for restructuring of debt and a softer landing, albeit with the pain of haircuts for bond holders.

This was a point of view recently echoed by Professor Lord King, Governor of the Bank of England throughout the period, who, in a recent talk at the London School of Economics, supported Sandbu’s call for a restructuring of Greek debt as the only way out of a Depression that he could not fathom getting so out of hand in the post-war period, let alone in the twenty-first century.

Sandbu is not a lone voice on this issue. Others, such as Ashoka Mody, the former IMF bail-out chief in Europe, have argued that ECB not only failed to provide stimulus to the Eurozone economy when needed, but, as a result of an apparent battle between political will and economic arithmetic, allowed it to slip into a “low-inflationary trap” (i.e. a negative feedback loop where inflation is dropping because the economy is weak, whilst the same economy being weakened by falling inflation).

According to Mody, the fact that ECB allowed the Eurozone to slip into such a predicament is a reflection of the monetary union’s faulty architecture. Such comments echo Milton Friedman’s infamous 1997 letter to The Times, which suggested that the economic foundations for the Eurozone are built on sand, and that the demise of the euro is possible, if not probable.

The Eurozone crisis appears to be in remission. However, with the expectation of a U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate rise, combined with the possibility of global shocks due to China’s rebalancing, the Eurozone cracks look set to increase in prominence. Martin Sandbu’s timely analysis is carefully defined, clearly presented, and one that serves as an important contribution to the current debate. His book, “Europe’s Orphan”, should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the European financial crises, and is a sophisticated and accessible insight on an otherwise too commonly obfuscated and misrepresented topic.

Further Information

The School of Business, Economics and Informatics will hold an Open Evening on Thursday 14 April 2016. Find out more