My colleagues at the Dunning Centre, James Walker, Chris Brewster and Rita Fontinha, completed the Report on the Consultation on the Impact of Covid-19 on the working lives of business, management and economics’ academics in UK - 2020 last week. Should you have difficulty with the link, I am happy to send you a pdf.

 

More than 2,600 UK based academics from business and management responded to the survey. The survey examined the effects of the pandemic on: 1. faculty research activity; 2. experiences of on-line teaching delivery and assessment; and 3. Individual academic work engagement. 

 

Some highlights with respect to research include:

• participants are concerned that the pandemic may be crowding out research income and grant funding  by shifting research efforts away from other debates, and reducing their willingness to throw their ‘hat into the ring’ and apply for non-Covid related grants.
• Researchers employing quantitative methodologies are likely to be less affected by the pandemic, than those using qualitative ones (such as ethnographic and archival research), with potentially damaging effects on multidisciplinary research.

 

• Wrt teaching,
• Respondents largely agreed that teaching online makes it more difficult to understand whether the students engage in learning and understand what is being taught.
• Both teaching and marking on-line was considered more time consuming, and more tiring increasing workload pressures.

 

• Wrt engagement,
• time pressures are unevenly distributed, but have typically risen in teaching, assessment, and administration in relation to work, as well as due to increased demands at the home (office) particularly parental pressures.
• academics exhibited the same dedication to their work, and suffered the same tendency to work long hours, that they did prior to the pandemic, but have struggled to maintain the levels of mental resilience and energy they had prior to the crisis.

 

 

 

Rajneesh Narula, OBE, PhD, FRSA

The John H. Dunning Chair in International Business

Henley Business School, Reading University

http://www.linkedin.com/in/narula1

http://goo.gl/Jk8QCj