With Brexit looming, UK farmers stand to lose or gain the most of all industries. The worst case scenario is the devastation of the farming sector by the ending of EU subsidies, which currently constitute 60% of the income of the average UK farm. The government has promised to match EU subsidies until 2020, but has so far been silent on what happens after that.
MBAs are a scientific approach to management stemming from early 20th century industrialisation. It is in their DNA to prepare people for management careers in large corporations. Among much else, you’re taught about Business Process Management, TQM, Six Sigma, and all kinds of other management theories and their relative merits and applications.
A new short video course aims to eradicate slavery from supply chains by educating procurement teams in taking action to prevent human exploitation. A supply chain can consist of hundreds of contractors, subcontractors, agencies and suppliers with complex relationships and varying standards. It might be possible for companies to know all about the provenance of suppliers in the first and second layers in their supply chain, but exploring it in depth to trace materials right back to their origins is nearly impossible.
Some of us remember TV ads from when we were kids telling us not to climb over fences by railway tracks, play ball games around tracks, fly a kite near overhead wires, and to be generally wary of railways. It makes sense to warn children not to go near railways when they are playing, but what about adults who have to be around railways in their work?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, even with the Third is still in progress. Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are three of the driving forces behind it. While the term ‘Industrial Revolution’ has always applied mainly to manufacturing, it now also involves service industries such as banking and insurance, who are investing heavily in Big Data to help them model credit risk, fraud, marketing success and other key data.
The man responsible for the UK’s finances, Chancellor Philip Hammond, issued the nation’s 2017 budget last week. In his budget speech, he acknowledged that the UK trails much of the rest of the world when it comes to post-16 education in vocational subjects. In an effort to tackle this problem and boost the nation’s productivity, he plans to overhaul how technical education is administered and taught.
What did the Romans ever do for us? Well, they gave us roads, sanitation, a legal system, and lots of cool gadgets. The Greeks weren’t half bad either. Some of the great engineering feats of history were accomplished two millennia or so before our own era, which we tend rather arrogantly to consider the pinnacle of technology.
The Open College in the UK is offering a course in Dog Psychology. Upon completion you will have earned the right to have after your name the designatory letters Dip.Dog.Psy and will be awarded with a Diploma Certificate bearing the title.
It’s a cruel fact that the world’s call centres and fast food restaurants are full of workers who have an arts degree but don’t know how to capitalise on it. World famous Central Saint Martins arts and design college aims to change this. It doesn’t just train people to be arty and then release them into the wild to fend for themselves – it also offers a trio of courses in business skills aimed at helping students live their dream and make a living from it.
Despite globalization, each country and region has its own business systems and culture. From one country to another there can be dramatic differences in how people view authority, how much personal responsibility they take for their companies’ fortunes, and how organisations are structured. Finance and accounting methods vary widely. HR practices are by no means homogeneous around the globe. So executives working in global business need to be made aware of these regional differences and develop the ability to function effectively within them and transition smoothly between them.
Bletchley Park, a suburb of Milton Keynes in England, was central to World War Two intelligence efforts. Scientists including Alan Turing designed the first ever electric programmable computer there (Colossus) and used it to crack the Nazi’s Enigma Code. Bletchley Park is synonymous with British codebreaking and also now houses the National Museum of Computing.
