Dr Mike Simpson
Senior Lecturer in Business Management
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Dr Mike Simpson has a PhD in Physical/Analytical Chemistry; an MBA with Distinction, an MSc in Marketing Practice, the Dip. M., MCIM of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education.
Mike´s early career was in the semi-conductor and electronics industry working at Plessey Research (Caswell) and Marconi Electronic Devices Limited, Lincoln. He has worked in a number of high technology companies and has been a consultant for small and medium sized businesses both as a Technologist and as an Operations Management and Marketing specialist. Since then Mike has been a part-time Lecturer and Research Associate at the Management School, appointed as a Lecturer in 1997 and then promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2005. Mike was, for 9 years, an External Examiner for the Advanced Diplomas in Marketing and Marketing and E-Commerce at Tunku Abdul Rahman College, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is the subject group leader for Operations Management and was, until recently, the subject group leader for Marketing. Mike has been the Teaching co-ordinator for the Management Division within the School. Mike was also a Moderator for the Business, Management and Organisation franchise with several Further Education Colleges.
Research Interests
Mike´s current research interests are in the area of Marketing and Operations Management and particularly concentrates on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) but not entrepreneurship.. Mike has published 3 books, 3 book chapters, over 140 articles and conference papers in both scientific and management areas. He supervises a number of PhD students mainly investigating topics in small and medium sized enterprises but not entrepreneurship. He welcomes PhD applications in any area of small and medium sized enterprise research but not entrepreneurship. He is particularly interested environmental issues in SMEs, issues of achieving a competitive advantage in SMEs, marketing in SMEs, success factors in SMEs and measuring the performance of SMEs.
Teaching
Mike currently teaches MGT6150 Operations Management on the MBA programme and MGT6046 Operations Management and Supply Chain Management on the MSc programmes.
Operations Management (OM) is concerned with the production of goods and services and is concerned with the effective and efficient marshalling of the organisation´s resources to meet its objectives. Operations Management is the only business function that generates income for the organisation and is therefore central to all commercial businesses. These modules also cover some Project Management which is becoming increasingly popular.
The subject of Operational Research (OR) is also introduced. This is a systematic and logical approach to the solution of management problems, often involving the construction and manipulation of mathematical models. It is used extensively in Operations Management as well as in other functional areas of an organisation as an aid in decision making. Thus, there is a strong emphasis on rational decision making supported by logical quantitative analysis and other analytical techniques.
Both these modules are core modules and consist of the application of some Operational Research and quantitative techniques to real problems in manufacturing and service organisations. These modules are taught with lectures, seminars and tutorials where a variety of audio-visual materials are used as well as traditional question and answer sessions on case studies and worked examples of calculations.
Funding
Mike has obtained funding of £10,000 from the Higher Education Innovation Fund to develop closer links with the local and national business community. This project has been extremely successful and has brought business into the curriculum across a wide number of modules at all levels. In addition, a number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships have also resulted from this activity. A successful collaboration with Professor Cameron McLeod in the Centre for Analytical Sciences in the Chemistry Department has resulted in an Objective 1 grant of £624,000 for new specialist mass spectrometry instrumentation, 2 years funding for a Post Doctoral Research Fellow and a spin-out university business in advanced analytical chemistry. Mike has also obtained funding from the National Association of Supported Employment for a research project on Marketing in workshops for disabled people. Other funding has been obtained from the Centre for Mexican Studies, University of Oxford, UK; the Knowledge Transfer Opportunities Fund; University of Sheffield PhD bursaries and fee waivers and two grants from the Social Sciences Devolved Fund.