Position Details

Department: Business School, College of Social Sciences

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Grade: Grade 6

Hourly rate: £16.10 per hour plus holiday entitlement

Casual Contract start/end: Monday 20th May 2024 - Monday 29th July 2024

Advert closing date: Tuesday 7th May 2024, 23:59pm 

If you have an active account on Core Systems, please apply with your staff email.

If you are encountering any issues applying, please attempt again with an alternative email. If you are still unable to apply, please let us know by contacting us via our portal.

The application deadline is 07/05/2024, though it may be adjusted based on the volume and quality of applications received. We recommend that candidates submit their applications promptly.

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university.  We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate.  We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site.  On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum, and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham 

Background:

Birmingham Business School (BBS) is globally renowned for the quality of its research and teaching. It is consistently found in global ranking tables and is one of the few Schools that has achieved triple crown accreditation from the three major accreditation bodies AMBA, EQUIS and AACSB. BBS programmes are taught in Birmingham, Dubai and Singapore, attracting a diverse student body from more than 100 countries. With an international faculty conducting research all over the world, and a global alumni community of around 44,000 graduates, the school has a global footprint that ensures worldwide impact. At Birmingham Business School (BBS), the belief is that business is not just a profitable entity but also creates impact and value for society and the environment and the School’s mission is to promote curiosity and thought leadership for responsible business across all of our world-class teaching and research activities. As part of this, we have a strong commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and have embarked on a School-wide decolonisation project. 

This research is led by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at (BBS) working across BBS Decolonisation Project, the Work Inclusivity Research Centre, the Centre for Responsible Business and the BBS PRME leads. This research will support research activities that are core to WIRC’s mission and principles of interdisciplinarity as well as the mission of the Centre for Responsible Business and BBS’ commitment to PRME and the decolonisation of its activities. 

The literature on responsible business and management is inherently interdisciplinary and crosses all business and related disciplines. These disciplines have seen the emergence of contributions calling for their decolonisation (see for example, Allawatage et al., 2021; Boussebaa, 2023; Eckhart et al., 2022; Jammulamadaka et al. 2021). However, at the moment, most of the contributions looking at decolonising responsible business and management tend to be developing separately across its three domain (sustainability, ethic and responsibility) and within single disciplinary perspectives. As such, there is still a limited understanding on how these two research fields can overlap and cross-fertilise each other. This is why, the objective of this systematic review will be to consolidate the debates around responsible business and management and the decolonisation of business studies across all business disciplines and the three domains related to responsible business and management (ethics, responsibility and sustainability). In doing so, this systematic review will help the research team in starting an interdisciplinary conversation and research agenda across BBS and beyond moving forward. 

Role Summary:

We are looking for a Research assistant to support the development of a systematic literature review at the intersection of the literatures on decolonisation of business studies and on responsible business and management across the management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, and strategy and international business and related disciplines. 

The research assistant will be a full member of the research team and will meet with the team on a regular basis to discuss research directions, findings and ideas. More specifically, their role will be to focus on the initial search and screening of the literature to support the establishment of a relevant and cleaned database of academic resources to analyse for the review as well as help in conducting some preliminary analysis of the database where relevant. The full research team will join the research assistant in the detailed analysis of the selected resources and the write-up of the academic output. It is expected that the review will lead to an academic output to which the research assistant’s work will contribute.

This is a casual assignment for 150h of research assistance work that is expected to take place from Monday 20th May to Monday 29th July 2024, i.e. 15h of work per week over a period of 10 weeks.

Main Duties:

The responsibilities will include:

• In conjunction with the research team, the successful applicant will manage key steps of the systematic literature review to ensure effective and timely delivery.
   
• Initial search and screening of the literature to support the establishment of a relevant and cleaned database of academic resources.
   
• Conduct some preliminary analysis of the database.
   
• Produce an overview of the methodology to feed into the final academic output that will be co-written with the research team. 

Person Specification

Candidates should have at least a master degree in management, business, social sciences or humanities. Ideally, they should also have a higher degree relevant to the research area or equivalent qualifications and/or experience. In addition, they should have and some knowledge and understanding of the literature on the decolonization of business studies and responsible business and management. They should have strong research, project management, organisational and interpersonal skills, be familiar with the creation and organization of bibliographic datasets and be able to communicate complex information clearly for a variety of audiences. It is important that the candidate is able to work across disciplinary perspectives. Experience with bibliographic platforms such as Scopus, Web of Science, etc. is not essential but would be preferred. 

Additional Information:

This assignment is a great opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary research team within BBS and to take part in an applied research project that will contribute to the development of the School’s mission and activities. 

View our staff values and behaviours here 

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment

We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working.

The University of Birmingham restricts all students to working up to 15 hours per week during term time. If your application is successful and your course does not follow the usual academic term timetable (e.g.  PGT, PGR or PhD student), you and your supervisor must formally agree vacation periods if this role exceeds 15 hours per week. In addition to this, please be aware if you are an International student, you will be required to apply to the Registry for the appropriate Authorised Absence.

You are only eligible to apply to this role if you are a current University of Birmingham student. If you are not a University of Birmingham student your application will not be considered.

To work you will need to carry out a right to work check. These checks will need to be completed prior to work commencing.