Institutional background

Northampton Business School, part of The University of Northampton, has two successful and established research centres, The China Centre (led by Professor Richard Sanders) and the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Enterprise and Governance (led by Professors Simon Denny and Nada Kakabadse).

The China Centre

The China Centre was founded in 1999 at an international conference addressed by its then patron, past Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath and by the then Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ma Zhengang. The Centre was established by its current director, Professor Richard Sanders, with the objective, of encouraging research activity and scholarly exchanges between Britain and China, as well as social, cultural and commercial links between the two countries.

Professor Sanders was, himself, a lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) between 1991 and 1993, working as a ‘foreign expert’ on a British Council sponsored project to establish an MA in British Studies at that university.  In 1992-3, Sanders was the only British Council lecturer on the project with the brief of embedding it strongly within the institution and ensuring its sustainability over time. As the British Council in Beijing will know, these tasks were achieved: the course has been strongly subscribed to in the intervening years and remains one of the most important and enduring offerings of BFSU’s English Department to its postgraduate students.

Since 1999, the China Centre at the University of Northampton has gone from strength to strength, carrying out published research in the Chinese political economy and establishing good relations with a number of Chinese universities and institutes, including Nankai University, Tianjin, Shaoxing University, Zhejiang Province, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, the Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing and the Organic Food Development Centre in Nanjing (where Sanders is a visiting research fellow) as well as BFSU, where Sanders has been awarded a guest professorship in the English Department.

In all the above, scholarly exchanges and/or joint research work has been undertaken. The Centre has run international conferences in both the UK and, in partnership with the Department of Economics at Nankai University, in China. The China Centre has also recently undertaken a successful project on corporate governance in China funded by that university. Thus Sanders and other staff in the China Centre have considerable experience and have a good track record of working closely and successfully with a number of Chinese universities.

Additionally, Sanders has jointly edited two books on the Political Economy of China in 2007 (see CV) both of which discuss issues pertaining to difficulties in the Chinese labour market. Though clearly much of the expertise associated with the Chinese labour market will be possessed by our Chinese partners, the Northampton side will also be able to bring its own understandings of the dynamics of China’s labour market to bear, as demonstrated in Sanders’ published works.

The Centre for Entrepreneurship, Enterprise and Governance (CEEG)

Northampton Business School has also developed considerable expertise and enjoys a growing reputation in the field of Entrepreneurship with a wide portfolio of courses for both undergraduates and post-graduates under the leadership of Simon Denny, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Peter Ratcliffe, Principal Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Head of the Entrepreneurship Group. The University of Northampton was one of the first UK HEIs to offer a BA in Business Entrepreneurship in 1998 since when it has developed the first Foundation Degree in Enterprise in the UK. A key feature of the course, supported by the East Midlands Development Agency, is that students start up their own businesses while completing the course. Meanwhile, for 2009, the group will be offering a BA in Social Enterprise Development and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Social Enterprise Management, the development of the curriculum for which will underpin much of this PMI2 proposal.  Northampton Business School manages and delivers business start-up services for Northamptonshire –the only UK HEI to do so – while the University Enterprise Club has more than 400 members.

CEEG has generated over £3.5M in funding for applied and pure research since 2004 and has secured research funding worth over £5M between 2007 and 2011. CEEG staff deliver, under the Business Link brand, the new business start up service for Northamptonshire. This includes a comprehensive training, mentoring, and advisory service to would-be entrepreneurs. CEEG has two Professors, eight research active staff, nine project management and administrative staff, and seven PhD students. The Centre entered a submission to the RAE 2008. One member of CEEG (Wray Irwin) is a past chair, and current active board member of Social Enterprise East Midlands. He, and other staff, have extensive and recent experience in establishing and managing successful social enterprises. CEEG is currently negotiating to take over a social enterprise based in Corby in Northamptonshire from March 2008.

CEEG is active in international collaborative projects. Current partners include Missouri State University (USA), Swinburne University (Australia), and universities in Russia and Turkey.

Professor Simon Denny is an acknowledge expert in entrepreneurial competence and enterprise creation. He currently advises the East Midlands Development Agency on new business support and has recently been working with the European Commission on projects to encourage and support young entrepreneurs. He is a member of Enterprise Educators.