News

Video highlights from 4th May 2016 Breakfast Briefing, the OU's Vice-Chancellor Peter Horrocks responds to questions from Dr Andrew Lindridge, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the OU Business School - discussing the future of the OU, the importance of our students’ success, and how to operate in an environment of change in turbulent times.

The government aims to extend the new pension freedoms to those who have previously bought an annuity by allowing pensioners to sell their annuities from April 2017. However an independent study published by The Open University Business School, suggests there are fundamental barriers to effective competition for secondary annuities that are likely to prevent pensioners getting a fair deal, and that current government proposals appear insufficient to address this.

Learners will now be able to use its massive open online courses (MOOCs) to earn academic course credits towards degrees and an MBA, professional qualifications and formal CPD accreditation.

A forum held by True Potential PUFin to launch its latest free online course asked financial luminaries on the forum panel “What one piece of personal finance advice would you give?”

The new productivity culture replaces top-down coercion with bottom up empowerment strategies and HR is at its heart, but what is the dark-side of this shift?

The Open University Business (OUBS) is pleased to announce two new External Advisor appointments. Dr Priya E. Abraham has been appointed as the External Industry Advisor and Professor Colin Beard joins as the External Academic Advisor.

In the West, we are all living longer. While this is undoubtedly a triumph in terms of advances in medicine, nutrition and lifestyle, at the same time, it has thrown up a huge challenge for families, communities and institutions who have to work out how to care for elderly people for much longer periods of time than ever before.

Today there is potentially an “always on workplace”, and this introduces exciting possibilities of better balance between work and leisure with many reporting increased levels of satisfaction. However, a potential increase in work intensification, and people’s struggles to detach from work, reminds us that with the possibilities come the problems.

Headlines can paint a picture of the UK economy struggling with extreme weather conditions – businesses forced to close, employees not paid because they can’t get to work, and road and rail networks grinding to a halt. But we’ve found, from our three-year project investigating how businesses and people react during disruptions, that this isn’t the case.

The media and political establishment have been ready to write off Bernie Sanders for some time. Not so fast.