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Business and Law in the time of COVID-19

The current pandemic has brought both threats and opportunities, overturning economic and social norms but also pointing towards new ways of doing things. In the OU’s Business and Law Schools, our response has been: what can we learn?

This series of reflections on the pandemic highlights how management and legal insights from research and scholarship can help us consider and interpret the current context. How can business and the institutions that support it respond to the challenges, adapt and hopefully look forward to a post-pandemic world?

Photo of Dr Leah Tomkins

Where is Boris Johnson?

Dr Leah Tomkins, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Studies in the OU Business School has written for the International Leadership Association. Read her new blog 'Where is Boris Johnson? When and Why it Matters that Leaders Show Up in a Crisis'

9th September 2020
Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash - charity workers unloading boxes

Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership leads COVID-19 research

Dr Carol Jacklin-Jarvis, Director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership, is part of a consortium awarded £44,000 by the Lloyds Bank Foundation for a research project, ‘The Value of Small Charities in the Response To and Recovery From the COVID-19 Pandemic’

4th September 2020
Photo of a stressed student with a book on her face

Why the government must learn to trust teachers

This article, written by Jacqueline Baxter, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management in The Open University Business School, looks at how the recent exam fiasco has highlighted the urgent need for the UK government to start trusting teachers

25th August 2020
Acorn members in Bristol successfully resisting an eviction during the pandemic.

'Solidarity is a weapon' - addressing the housing crisis together

This blog explores how resistance to the lifting of the UK evictions ban is being organised. It was written by Owain Smolović Jones and Saniela Smolović Jones, both in the OU Business School and Kulsoom Jafri, an Acorn member and trade union organiser

25th August 2020
Photo of women walking in Piazza Duomo, Milano, Italy by Simone Viani on Unsplash

The absence of women from Italy’s COVID-19 pandemic response

A new publication written by Dr Cinzia Priola, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Studies at the OU and Dr Lara Pecis, Lecturer in Organisation Studies in Lancaster University Management School, explores the role of Italian women in society and at work during the pandemic

24th August 2020
Healthcare workers getting ready for their shift in a hospital - photo by Francisco Àvia Hospital Clínic

Healthcare Innovation: Lessons from COVID-19

It is anticipated that post-COVID health service provision and organisation will look very different. Professors Richard Holti and John Storey highlight how the design and delivery of the 'new normal' will require 'imaginative and skilful innovation work by actors at many levels'

17th August 2020
Photo credit: German Naval Yards by Can Pac Swire, shared with a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

Reading during lockdown: Insights from Global Ethnography

'In times of a global pandemic, we are constrained to live in confined local spaces instead of travelling across the globe. But what does ‘global’ mean?' Carolin Decker-Lange, a Senior Lecturer in Management in The Open University Business School explores this question

12th August 2020
A photograph of Zoe smiling into the camera

MBA Skills for Hacking COVID-19

Social entrepreneur Dr Zoe Lawson, an MBA alumna and member of The Open University Business School Alumni Council, describes how her OU study experiences are helping with an ongoing project in her adopted Switzerland

11th August 2020
Professor Edoardo Ongaro

Collaboration on dealing with a future crisis

Edoardo Ongaro, Professor of Public Management in the OU Business School has been working closely with fellow editors of the scientific journal Public Policy and Administration on a range of projects in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

10th August 2020
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash - a clock on a pink and blue background

Time is of the essence. Why don’t we spend more time teaching it?

As the pandemic continues to force students online, Dr Terry O'Sullivan, Senior Lecturer in Management in the OU Business School, reminds us of the importance of what he calls 'the key barrier to learning online', time and how we manage it

6th August 2020

PhD Studentships

The Open University Business and Law Schools also invite applications for a number of full-time funded PhD studentships beginning 1 February 2021 on ‘Responding to COVID-19 and the Climate Emergency’.