Reach
September 2024
The latest research and insights from Newcastle University Business School
Board diversity: could it help companies improve environmental and social performance?
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A message from our Associate Dean Engagement and Place
These are exciting times in the North East of England with a new Mayoral Combined Authority, led by the first North East Mayor, Newcastle University alumna Kim McGuinness, and a £4.2 billion devolution deal.
Dr Fiona Whitehurst Associate Dean Engagement and Place Newcastle University Business School
Our new North East Combined Authority has ambitions for a fairer, greener, connected, international and successful North East and we are well placed to play our part. This edition of Reach shows that our researchers have similar ambitions for their research, and its impact, regionally and across the globe.
Articles in this edition highlight work examining how greater gender diversity could help companies improve their environmental and social performance, and how sustainable supply chain management can benefit the food sector. Other articles explore mechanisms to ensure that the voices of parents and carers are included in the policy debate about parental leave, flexible working and workplace support, and consider how real-life experiences can counter loneliness caused by our relationship with technology.
You will see that our researchers collaborate with a huge range of organisations and individuals. We offer many opportunities for collaboration, and I hope you will be inspired to engage with us.
“We offer many opportunities for collaboration, and I hope you will be inspired to engage with us.”
In this issue
5. Can digital innovation help us create a better food supply chain?
9. Creating a toolkit to support parents and carers networks
17. Exploring loneliness in a digital world
21. The marriage and labour market: how are they linked and what does it mean for organisations and individuals?
Board diversity: could it help companies improve environmental and social performance?
23.
Design Thinking as pedagogy in practice
15. A cashless society? Exploring the behavioural drivers behind payment method intentions
27. Spotlight on: our PhD students
Can digital innovation help us create
a better
food supply chain?
Our global food system faces a number of challenges, including rising energy prices, waste and climate change. Can technologies such as Blockchain help create a more efficient, resilient and sustainable system, and where should companies along the supply chain invest to cope with disruptions while enhancing performance? Research from Newcastle University Business School is exploring these pressing questions.
The Author
Dr Haiyan Lu Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management
Newcastle University Business School
We have a problem with our global food system.
An estimated 700 million people now face hunger and extreme poverty around the world, according to the World Bank. The availability and quality of our food is being hit by political conflicts, health crises and devastating natural disasters such as wildfires, droughts and floods.
Farming and shipping of foods is also becoming more energy-intensive, at a time when energy costs are soaring. According to the International Energy Agency, up to 50% of the variable costs of cropping in advanced economies come from direct and non-direct energy costs.
In addition, a significant proportion of that food is wasted. The United Nations estimates that waste accounts for one-third of the total global food output, and 38% of the system’s total energy usage.
We need to be more mindful of how we produce, and how we consume. Could measures such as digital traceability help relieve some of the pressure?
Blockchain and sustainability
Dr Haiyan Lu is a lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Newcastle University Business School. Her main interests lie in how sustainable supply chain management can benefit the food sector.
More recently, she has been investigating how digitalisation – and the introduction of innovations such as Blockchain technology – can help the industry operate more efficiently, imaginatively and sustainably.
In a paper published in 2024, Dr Lu’s team aimed to provide companies with more information about how various investments into digital traceability affect sustainability performance. This research was particularly focused on how these investments impacted on the three pillars of Sustainability Oriented Innovation (SOI), namely product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation.
“Traceability is a big issue when it comes to food sustainability,” says Dr Lu. “When we have a food scandal, it’s usually because the food is not what it’s supposed to be, or something has gone wrong in the process.
“Is the customer really eating what’s on the package? We don’t really know. The purpose of technology such as Blockchain is to increase the visibility and traceability along the chain. For example, if we buy beef mince, how much can we find out about what it is and where it’s been by tracing its journey?”
The Blockchain system locks and encrypts a range of information about a product or process, promising a more reliable and open record for consumers and other stakeholders.
When applied to the food industry, a Blockchain system may work like this: if you buy an orange from Brazil, you will be able to see information from a range of suppliers. First, you might see something from its origin, including location, the weather and temperature, and the types of farming and pesticides used. Perhaps it then moves to a regional distributor, who inputs another code showing timings, environment, packaging, and so on. This would continue until it was sold to the supermarket or trader, giving companies and consumers a lot of important data that could be used to monitor – or improve – food quality.
“Obviously, the scope for digital traceability is broader than Blockchain,” Dr Lu adds. “Blockchain is the technology, but how do we implement it? We might need to look at machine learning, AI and big data analysis. It’s a broad scope, covering a lot of analytical techniques and what we call ‘Industry 4.0’.
“We might have the sensor on the farm, but how do we analyse and make use of the data to get the results we want?”
Making the case for sustainable, digital investment
On the surface, this sounds promising. However, supply chains consist of many different producers and distributors, each with their own cultures, experience and financial pressures.
For example, a farmer may have very valuable experience in producing crops, but may have a very limited budget to implement wholesale changes. They may also need to blend more modern approaches with their existing expertise, which may take time.
A supply chain does not work without the involvement of people at all stages. Which is why Dr Lu believes this change needs a forward-thinking strategic approach. In short, companies need to know what they need to invest – and where – to get the best return. Not just from an economic perspective, but also a sustainable one.
“If we want to make this dramatic shift toward more digital traceability, it will take a few years of investment,” she says. “So companies need to think ahead, and consider the percentage of profit they want to invest over the next three to five years at least. They also need to consider what they want to achieve, where they want to be, and what sort of investment makes the biggest impact.
“A small business at the end of the chain, for example, can determine whether they want to invest first in product innovation or process innovation, and benchmark better based on their capability and resource.”
Traceability and product innovation
In their 2024 paper, Dr Lu’s team gathered information from surveys sent to companies in the food sector. The data from these responses was supplemented by interviews with industrial managers and academic experts, and a subsequent workshop involving managers from the industry.
China was chosen as the subject of the study, due to its 2016 pilot initiative in which the government funded the implementation of digital systems in four provinces. By the end of 2019, the team had collated usable responses from 127 firms in Shanghai, 98 in Shandong, 74 in Ningxia, and 60 from Fujian.
These responses indicated that digital traceability “positively impacts” all three pillars of SOI. However, the impact was most pronounced when it came to product innovation. The paper noted that “the implementation of digital traceability provides as much information as possible about product updates, which can bring many new ideas to product development”.
The paper also reported that “food firms actively involved in digital traceability can reap environmental benefits if they value and implement process innovations”. It warned that companies who do not adopt more innovative practices in cleaner production, eco-efficiency and logistics “may struggle to create economic benefits and may lose their social reputations”.
While all three pillars benefit from more innovative and strategic digital traceability, Dr Lu says that the impact of investing in product and process innovation results in “more tangible” benefits, particularly for smaller, more financially constrained companies.
“If you’re a company that wants to invest in sustainability and digital traceability, it can result in significant improvements if you focus on product and process innovation initially. These may be more straightforward investments, such as adding new features for a product or reducing waste.
“Organisational innovation is valuable, but can also be more complicated.”
The paper also revealed that investing in digital traceability can have a positive impact on supply chain learning into process and product innovation. Unexpectedly, this was not the case when it came to organisational innovation. Respondents indicated that this investment resulted in no positive effect in this area.
However, the actions companies take will ultimately depend on where they are and what they want to achieve. The report suggested that investing in product innovation is “fundamentally important to improve food chain sustainability” and that digitalisation can “enhance product innovation”, empowering companies to “consider product life cycle and the green ecosystem in product design and material usage”.
Companies are also urged to “restructure their operational processes to improve operations and logistics efficiency and optimise the use of resources”, and encourage upstream and downstream supply chain partners to do the same.
There is even an opportunity for “proactive companies” to invest in making systematic transformation for sustainability practice, including “organisational and inter-firm arrangements to redefine, reconceptualise and restructure”.
Giving companies the ability to act strategically
Dr Lu hopes that her ongoing work will give companies the insights they need to plan out strategic and impactful improvements over time, which will then result in more efficient and innovative food supply globally. She is continuing to work with companies in the UK, China and Chile to explore the operational and institutional factors that contribute to issues such as food waste and food safety.
“We’re keen to understand how to use the tech, of course, but also how to integrate the data, and create a more autonomous system that records and analyses information and predicts patterns.
“We’re looking at sustainability-oriented innovation. The main purpose of innovation is usually to increase economic benefits. The concept of SOI is to shift the focus of economic focus to make fundamental changes that better facilitate sustainability goals with environmental and social improvements.
“We appreciate that achieving sustainability is of complexity and that requires a high level of integration among governments, third-party institutions, and food chain companies. It will be a long and impactful journey, yet proactive entities are making visible changes incrementally.” ■
Creating a toolkit to support parents and carers networks
Comment piece
Workplace policy for parental leave, flexible working and support should include parents and carers in discussions. The inclusion of staff networks representing parents and carers is crucial to campaign for change and to drive improvements in policy and organisational culture.
The Author
Dr Ana Lopes Senior Lecturer in Work and Employment
University
Parents and carers at work
Parents and carers face the daily challenge of balancing work with caregiving duties. They often feel unsupported by their employers and organisations, leading to feelings of isolation. This is an important part of the policy debate about parental leave, flexible working, and the provision of support for parents and carers within the workplace. Clearly, parents and carers should be involved in this debate, but how can this be achieved? Increasing and improving staff networks aimed at representing the voices of parents and carers could be a positive way of making this happen.
What is the nature of parent and carer networks? How can these staff networks best organise? I have been looking at this with Dr Mark Gatto, Lecturer in Critical Organisation Studies at Northumbria University. We have been investigating how parent and carer staff networks are developing in UK higher education institutions and how they are coming together in a broad, national level.
Investigating parent and carer networks
Our project incorporates multi-methods and has included ‘mapping’ the field to identify where parents and carers are organising in UK higher education. In this, we were supported by Dr Nosheen Khan, Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Newcastle University Business School. We also conducted a survey and qualitative interviews.
We found that there is great deal of diversity amongst these networks: some are very well established, some are brand new, or are in the very early stages of being set up. Some are formal networks that sit within the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and HR structures of larger institutions, others are informal and independent. There is also diversity in terms of visions and aims, challenges, relations with management and trade unions. All networks provide valuable peer support and a safe space for parents and carers to discuss their experiences and needs; many also influence university policy by voicing the needs of parents and carers and campaigning for changes and improvements in policy, practice and organisational culture.
From our work, it became clear that staff networks can function to voice parent and carer needs and advocate within their institutions, enabling parents and carers to influence organisational policies. However, we have also come to recognise that there is a risk of being ‘co-opted’ by management, particularly when networks are fully integrated into formal structures of the organisation, paying lip service to the goals of equality, diversity and inclusion.
A toolkit for networks and future developments
We have found that these networks and the staff who make them possible have a lot to learn from each other and there is an appetite to share experiences and lessons they have learned.
A key output of our work is a toolkit for networks. This toolkit will be housed on a new website we are developing with support from the School Impact Fund. It will be owned by an emerging national structure that this project has supported and nurtured. The toolkit is being coproduced with the project participants and will be a live document to which network chairs and members can add to and contribute. This is in line with the community engagement ethos of our project. The aim is to help networks establish themselves and grow in size and level of influence so that we make academia a better place for all.
We have plans to broaden the project in the future to include other sectors, as we believe there is scope to impact policy not just within the higher education sector but more broadly. After all, parents and carers are a majority group in the labour force. ■
Board diversity: could it help companies improve environmental and social performance?
Featured article
Companies across the EU are now working to add more women to their boards following the announcement of a new law. Based on the stock market reaction, there is an expectation that this could be good news, particularly for companies with poor environmentaland social performance.
In June 2022, a decade-long deadlock was broken.
After many years of debate, the European Parliament announced that the Women in Boards law would finally become a reality. The law states that women must make up at least 40% of non-executive boards at large companies in the European Union by mid-2026.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen hailed its potential to “break the glass ceiling” for women.
The path of the Women in Boards law was not smooth. Austrian politician Evelyn Regner argued that removing “informal male networks” was a necessary step to help women get top jobs. However, some EU members – most notably Germany –argued that these measures should be decided at a national level.
The Author
Dr Shams Pathan Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance
Newcastle University Business School
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We are still several years away from being able to measure its full impact. However, stock market analysis by Newcastle University Business School indicates there’s a general sense of optimism about how it will benefit businesses in the EU. Furthermore, the research reveals that positivity is highest at firms who need to improve their environmental, social and governance performance.
The
wisdom of markets
When researchers want to gauge the prevailing opinion about a new development, they often look at stock market reaction.
Sometimes, what people say in public can be very different from what they say in private. But it is possible to learn a lot about what people really believe by looking at how money moves afterward.
“Market reaction is often more unbiased, as you’re observing people’s reactions based on their trading behaviour,” says Shams Pathan, a Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Newcastle University Business School.
Dr Pathan was part of a team that investigated whether traders honestly believed board quotas would be good news for the businesses affected. They examined 1,241 firms from 18 different European countries, tracking daily returns to get a sense of how the markets were reacting to the news.
The paper came to three interesting conclusions. First, it revealed “significant positive market reactions” to the announcement across firms listed in Europe. Returns of 0.89% were spotted on the day of the announcement, and 1.23%, 1.25% and 1.16% in the ensuing days.
However, it also showed that this positivity was “more intense” at firms with lower Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores. At these companies, the return was 0.7% higher on average than at firms with strong performance.
“The message there is very clear,” says Dr Pathan. “The reaction to the introduction of the law was good on average. But if you dig down, some are expected to benefit more than others.
“At firms with poorer environmental and social records, the market has reacted more, as they are seen to have a greater opportunity to benefit from the changes.”
Finally, it also showed that companies in countries with fairer social and economic systems, such as better workplace equality and conditions, benefit more from having diverse gender representation. This means having more women involved can really boost sustainability efforts, particularly in places where women’s welfare is prioritised.
A sign of changing attitudes –or more information?
The positive market reaction to this announcement was by no means certain.
In fact, the previous two major directives of this type received a more negative response from the markets. In 2002, Norway proposed a law threatening public-limited companies with liquidation if they did not establish gender-balanced boards within two years. The law came into force a few years later, and all affected companies had complied by 2008. But studies into the initial market reaction showed a “significantly negative” response, partly sparked by the severity of the penalty as well as the unexpected nature of the announcement.
In 2018, California became the first US state to mandate board gender quotas. Senate Bill 826 required public companies headquartered in the state to have at least one female director by the end of 2019, and at least two women on boards with five members by the end of 2021. Studies at the time identified a “large” and “negative” reaction, particularly for companies who would need to appoint more female directors.
Dr Pathan believes that the more positive reaction to the EU announcement can be explained by two factors: the existence of more information on the impact of such laws globally, and the cultural differences between Europe and the USA.
“When Norway introduced its quotas, investors did not have much information about how the gender diversity of boards might contribute to how a company runs its business operations. Today, there is much more research and evidence.
“The other aspect is that Europe has a very different perspective on mandatory measures such as these, and has always been more proactive in terms of promoting stakeholder orientation than the US.”
Following the announcement of the California bill, female representation on boards rose from 15.5% in 2018 to 33.33% in September 2022. Notably, after the law was ruled unconstitutional in 2022, that figure fell to 32.75% by September 2023.
Dr Pathan adds that the positive reaction to the EU law could partly be down to the markets recognising that all countries would be operating under the same rules in future. This could stem from a general sense that voluntary, piecemeal measures are largely ineffective in driving this sort of change.
“The countries that were expected to benefit more were the ones that were expecting more changes.”
“In countries such as France, Germany, Portugal and Sweden, you have better regulations to ensure sustainability and gender equality. Firms in those countries with better workplace equality and conditions, also expected to benefit from gender diversity.”
An opportunity for better environmental and social performance
So what impact could more gender-diverse boards have on companies?
In a paper entitled “ES(G) Performance and the Impact of Board Gender Diversity Through the EU Gender Quota Directive”, Dr Pathan’s team including co-author Carlos Fernandez Mendez from The University of Oviedo, Spain, suggested that the biggest impact could be at firms which need to improve their social and environmental focus.
The paper noted that “societal expectations impose a pro-social set of personal traits on women”, in that they are perceived as being more empathetic, sensitive to social issues, and altruistic compared to men”.
This was reflected in the stock market reaction. The most pronounced reactions occurred in companies which needed to improve their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores, especially in EU states which do not have a reputation for strong sustainability and equity regulation.
Dr Pathan’s paper hypothesised that “it’s reasonable to anticipate that companies with sub par social and sustainability performance would gain significantly from implementing the EU gender quota rule. This measure would guarantee a sustained critical mass of women directors, likely enhancing the company’s overall performance in these areas”.
Furthermore, the favourable responses to the law at firms with poor ESG performance could be the foundation of a “compelling business case for advancing Sustainable Development Goals”, which were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to tackle issues such as poverty, hunger, climate change and gender equality.
The paper concluded in saying that “actions promoting environmental sustainability, health and equality are not solely matters of social justice; they also align with broader societal interests and directly benefit investors”.
The team will continue to investigate the effects of the law over the next few years, to observe how companies perform as they diversify their boards. Dr Pathan expects the impact to vary strongly by country and company, but he thinks the law is a good example of the EU working in the interests of its community as a whole.
“In the European Union you’ve got countries with good established performance, and other countries that aren’t doing as well. With a law like this, you’re bringing them under one umbrella and doing things that are beneficial, even if some have more stakes and others less.
“After all, the EU is there to strike a balance, and do things for the benefit of all countries.” ■
“Companies in countries with fairer social and economic systems, such as better workplace equality and conditions, benefit more from having diverse gender representation. This means having more women involved can really boost sustainability efforts.”
A cashless society?
Exploring the behavioural drivers behind payment method intentions
Professor
of Finance Darren Duxbury, sits down with us to share his research on payment method behaviour and his collaborative project with NatWest Bank exploring the decline in cash as a transaction method. He also discusses his involvement in the design phase of the digital pound.
The Author
Professor Darren Duxbury Professor of Finance
Newcastle
University Business School
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What is your area of research expertise?
My research aims to understand how and why people make the financial decisions that they do. Much finance theory is premised on people making fully informed, rational decisions. However, we now know that people don’t behave like that at all. Many decisions are made using rules of thumb and heuristics, so actual behaviour can look very different from rational behaviour.
My research provides behavioural insights to better understand the financial decisions that people make either at the individual level, the household level, or at the corporate level. My research covers themes such as debt, savings, pension decisions and investment behaviour.
You recently joined the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Academic Advisory Group to support work being undertaken by the Bank of England and HM Treasury. Can you tell us about your role and what it involves?
The CBDC Academic Advisory Group is an interdisciplinary collection of academics with expertise across a range of disciplines including finance, law and philosophy, who have the collaborative goal of guiding and advising on the design phase of the digital pound. The UK hasn’t yet committed to a digital pound and is still exploring the concept. However, if the digital pound is approved, the implementation will be informed with academic guidance and support. I contribute behavioural expertise to the group, drawing on insights from psychology and decision research to suggest factors that could drive a person’s decisions.
A key feature of my research involves experiments or surveys employing different scenarios and treatment conditions to explore how these factors influence behaviour, attitudes and perceptions; my financial behavioural expertise has been crucial to my inclusion in the Academic Advisory Group (AAG).
The first formal meeting of the CBDC AAG took place on Tuesday, 19 March 2024. In the meeting, I was invited to present findings from my research on ‘Behavioural Drivers of Intentions to Use Cash: UK Survey Evidence’ and to discuss the implications of this work for the adoption of the digital pound.
In conversation
You have been conducting work with NatWest Bank, can you tell us more about the significance of this project?
Yes, this is the ‘Behavioural Drivers’ research just referred to. Alumni connections at the University approached me with the NatWest opportunity to inform how the bank could forecast the decline in cash use. It is widely believed that because the decline in the use of cash has been so dramatic, not just in the UK but globally too, we are going to become a cashless society. NatWest was interested in understanding if this was true, and the behavioural drivers of people who might never become cashless. The collaborative research project was fully funded by NatWest, but academic independence was retained throughout.
What did this work entail and what did it show?
A survey of the UK adult population was designed and distributed to understand their attitudes towards using cash over non-cash forms of payment, such as credit card or debit card.
While industry practice is to use social demographics to categorise individuals’ payment method preferences, this research project argued that it’s more complex. Whilst these factors influence behaviour and attitudes towards payment methods, there are also underpinning behavioural drivers that might help further explain payment attitudes even when we control or take account of social demographics. The research collected information on potential behavioural drivers such as mental accounting or budgeting, fungibility of money (money is perfectly interchangeable irrespective of how it is sourced or stored), loss aversion, habit, financial literacy, emotions, and social demographics such as age, gender, income and education. The data allowed the analysis to control social demographics and demonstrate how the behavioural factors influence the intention to use of cash versus electronic payment.
We found clear evidence of the importance of behavioural factors in shaping intentions to favour cash versus non-cash payment, above and beyond the influence of socio-demographic background. For example, individuals more likely to use mental budgeting and to view money as non-fungible have a higher intention to use cash. A higher likelihood to pay electronically is more the result of a cognitive and deliberative process than automaticity or habit, with financially literate individuals tending to favour electronic payment methods.
We also found strong evidence of a shift in how the behavioural factors explain intentions to pay as transaction sizes increase. For lower-level transactions, increased financial literacy is associated with higher intentions to use cash, while generally, and for high transaction values, it is associated with a lower intention to use cash. The influence of emotions on payment intention diminishes as transaction size increases. So, it seems that as transaction values increase, emotive feelings towards a particular payment method matter less and financial acumen plays a growing role.
We also used scenario-based testing to see how external shocks, such as security breaches or economic downturns, might cause payment intentions to shift. For security breaches, for example, people high in financial literacy are more likely to switch towards cash and away from contactless payments, likely due to increased security risks. So, while payment intention habits might form, such habits are not immune to change.
Going forward, with the use of cash declining in the UK, can you foresee widescale adoption of digital currency?
It is important to recognise that whilst cash is on the decline globally, and has been for several years, it is still the second most frequently used payment method in the UK for transaction purposes after debit cards. Our behavioural insights show that the use of cash for transactional purposes is influenced by mental budgeting and people’s views on money, and by their trait habits and levels of financial literacy. Therefore, I don’t believe the UK will become a cashless society.
What role will the digital pound play?
The extent to which it is embraced will depend on early adopters and their experience. Early adopters will be at the forefront to seek the benefits and their experience will determine who follows, consequently the Bank of England needs to ensure their experience is favourable to achieve mass adoption. ■
Exploring loneliness in a digital world
Featured article
The World Health Organization has identified tackling social isolation as a global public health priority, with loneliness affecting a quarter of older people and up to 15% of adolescents. At Newcastle University Business School, we’re exploring how interaction with technologies such as social media can be associated with loneliness, and lonely individuals’ preference of technology, such as service robots.
The Author
Dr Qionglei Yu Reader in Marketing
Newcastle
University Business School
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Loneliness is complex. It can find you, even in a crowded room.
For some, it can be fleeting. But for others, it can become a chronic issue that affects their sense of self, their ability to connect with others, and even their health.
Many of the factors that contribute to this are well established. Perhaps the person is seeing less of friends or family, due to their work location or working hours. Perhaps they find it harder to make new friends or discover new communities. But there’s another factor that has emerged in recent decades: our relationship with technology.
Dr Qionglei Yu is a Reader in Marketing at Newcastle University Business School, but over the last few years she has also started exploring the relationship between technology and loneliness from the perspective of social interaction.
“With the emergence of technologies such as social media, people’s ways of interacting have changed significantly,” she says. “That can bring benefits and advantages, particularly in connecting to people who may be a long distance away.
“It serves a function, but emotionally it may be a bit different. You can be surrounded by contacts and information, but not feel like you have the relationships you need.”
Dr Yu, and co-authors, aim to investigate how our technology usage impacts – and perhaps even shapes – our mental health and social interactions. This is particularly important as humans enter a new phase in how they interact with technology, featuring automated service machines, and Artificial Intelligence friends and helpers.
Meet the robots
It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that Dr Yu started becoming fascinated by the social shockwaves caused by increasingly ubiquitous technologies.
“You’d see a lot of tech being set up to help us avoid human contact, in bars, shops and restaurants. That only continued afterward.”
Most of us are now familiar with the supermarket self-checkout terminal, and the check-in screen at a hotel. But the space is evolving even further. Amazon Fresh stores have also trialled “Just Walk Out” technology – which enables customers to buy products without “checking out”.
Dr Yu notes that “service robots” of various types are growing in popularity in sectors including retail, tourism, healthcare, nursing and hospitality. While they’re largely designed to satisfy functional needs, we’re now being promised a not-too-distant future where we routinely chat to more “life-like” robots, powered by Generative Artificial Intelligence. AI chatbots are already a feature of customer care, with products such as Anima promising to streamline consultation services. Conversational chatbots such as Replika have also emerged, promising an “AI partner” experience.
“There’s a huge trend toward human and robot interaction everywhere,” says Dr Yu. “This makes it the perfect time to raise awareness of how it affects us, how we should develop human/robot interaction, and what human-to-human relationships might look like in the future.”
Defining loneliness
Loneliness is frequently discussed as a major global issue. The World Health Organization has even set up a Commission on Social Connection to explore solutions and take action.
On the surface, it might seem simple enough to respond to it by prescribing more social interaction. But Dr Yu argues that this oversimplifies what loneliness actually is, and how it manifests.
In the recent study, titled “The Paradox of Technology: Pros and Cons on Social Connection and Service Preference”, she explains that loneliness is not a simple static concept. It can stem from inadequate social networks – producing a loneliness which is known as “social loneliness” – or from a lack of intimate relationships – resulting in “emotional loneliness”.
During the study, research subjects were given a hotel check-in scenario, and asked whether they’d prefer to engage with a human or service robot. By analysing data from interviews with participants across the UK, the researchers found that people’s relationships with service robots differed based on the type of loneliness they were experiencing.
The research indicated that social loneliness did not appear to have a clear impact on robot or human choice. However, there was a much more pronounced effect when it came to emotional loneliness. Instead of actively seeking out social interactions, people characterised with emotional loneliness actually chose to do the opposite.
When probed further, respondents rationalised their choice by arguing that “interacting with technology would be quicker” and it wouldn’t be “necessary to make small talk”.
Participants were asked to describe their reasons to select their service choice, and two had a “significant” impact on their decision-making. These were a preference for solitude, and a desire to avoid “surface acting”: a scenario where people are asked to display emotions they aren’t genuinely feeling in order to not make social interactions uncomfortable.
Factors such as the internal motivation of the participants, their demographic profile, their previous experience with technology and the popularity of the technology also had a significant impact on their decisionmaking process.
The study noted that people experiencing emotional loneliness may be inclined to use service robots “as a means of selfpreservation, reducing social threats and embracing solitude”.
“People who experience emotional loneliness often adopt a passive coping strategy where they avoid human contact. So if there’s a service robot, they could well be more likely to approach that than a human.”
A human or robot future?
Dr Yu contends that any exploration into loneliness has to take on board the idea that it is no longer a simple, single construct. Through our exposure to modern trends –including the broader-but-looser connections of social media – loneliness has now “evolved”.
She says that – in today’s world of technology and social networks – “the scarcity is not in social connections but in intimate relationships”.
This means that companies and policymakers need to consider the different needs of individuals while designing the human-robot interfaces they offer. This is further complicated by the fact that people often experience some form of loneliness at certain points in their lives, so their preferences and reactions may change.
She adds that care should also be taken to predict and address any functional issues with service robots, which might lead to “embarrassment and inconvenience” for those using them.
Most of all, she advocates avoiding a complete automation of services, and perhaps even the introduction of “proactive interventions”, such as guidelines and policies to safeguard the wellbeing of human staff.
“There is an industrial impetus for service robots to completely replace human staff in many situations,” she says. “Although that can seem very beneficial for organisations, we also need to embed our consideration of individuals who suffer from psychological disturbance, even when they may not be aware of it.
“The availability and authenticity of human staff might play a crucial role in benefiting these individuals, even if their choice is to avoid it for some services.”
Perceiving the world differently
While Dr Yu insists that technology has had a lot of positive effects, she urges policymakers and other institutions to be aware of the impact it has had on how we perceive the world.
To explore this idea further, Dr Yu partnered with Allenheads Contemporary Arts through an impact project called “Connect: Walking, Sensing and Creating”. The project aims to explore the value of real-life encounters, bringing people together through stimulating experiences to explore, converse, sense and create.
“I hope these activities can encourage people to spend quality time with themselves, as well as with others.
“By establishing interest group-based occasions, we want to cultivate a positive environment for social connection, thereby reducing feelings of social isolation and loneliness,” she says.
Whether we’re excited or cautious about the way that technology is developing, there’s no doubt that it is changing how we interact with each other. As AI evolves and becomes more ubiquitous, it may even reshape what we expect from social interactions, and how we engage on a human level. Dr Yu is keen to explore what that means and spark a discussion on the topic between people from different backgrounds and experiences.
“I’d love to encourage further discussion around this topic. All sorts of different sectors are considering how they might adopt technology and AI tools, from education to healthcare. In many cases, technology can be very helpful, but we also need to consider the human elements, even something as basic as a human touch giving you comfort,” she says. ■
“People who experience emotional loneliness often adopt a passive coping strategy where they avoid human contact. So if there’s a service robot, they could well be more likely to approach that than a human.”
The marriage and labour market: how are they linked and what does it mean for organisations and individuals?
What is your area of research?
I specialise in search theoretical models to study decisions related to the marriage and labour markets, and how these influence one another.
Dr Roberto Bonilla Trejos discusses his research into the link between the marriage and labour markets to explore real-world issues such as the gender pay gap.
The Author
Dr Roberto Bonilla Trejos Lecturer in Economics
Newcastle University Business School
When applying this theory to marriage decisions, specifically heterosexual markets, reality must be simplified as much as possible – so these can be modelled mathematically. In such models of a simplified reality, the consequences of decisions made by individuals are more direct and immediate than in real life. When developing these mathematical models, I look for predictions to test them empirically. I am not judging or favouring any view on how the world works; motives for marital decisions may be for reasons we don’t understand.
How did you develop your interest in this area?
When I started my PhD, I found search theory a very intuitive way of thinking about markets such as the labour and the marriage market, in which two parties (i.e. a worker and a firm, or a man and a woman) must meet for a relevant decision to be taken (will the firm employ the worker, will the man and the woman marry).
At the time, there were no models linking the two markets, only separate models for each. Empirically, there are many regularities that show how decisions and outcomes in the labour market and the marriage market are interconnected. One of these is called the marriage wage premium where married men, on average, earn higher wages than single men. This demonstrates how decisions made in the marriage market affect, and/or are affected by, decisions in the labour market.
Can you explain the findings from your research paper “Endogenous gender-based discrimination in a model of simultaneous frictional labour and marriage markets”?
This paper is part of a series of papers; it is a theoretical – mathematical – study that delivers results which can be tested empirically. One regularity that is almost ubiquitous is that the labour supply of women weakens after marriage, especially after childbirth, more so than men. Another one is the gender wage gap, in addition to the marriage wage premium mentioned above. In many research papers, including ours, some of these are used as modelling assumptions, and some of these are obtained as results. In conversation
For example, if one assumes women will get detached from the labour market even partially, then women will choose a “marital reservation wage” and they will not marry any man earning less than this. Then men choose a reservation wage (minimum wage they would accept to work) with the knowledge that the woman will not marry them if the wage they accept is too low. Therefore, suggesting the possibility of men choosing to accept wages for work that are lower than the wage women accept for marriage. When this is the case, a marriage wage premium arises endogenously. In this example, women’s detachment from the labour market is an assumption, the marriage wage premium is a result.
In the paper mentioned, there is no assumption that one gender or the other will be detached from the labour market after marriage. Instead, it shows women’s weakened labour supply after marriage (more than for men) is a result and does not need to be assumed as in the previous models. Think of a married couple who plan on having a child. They understand one of them will need to partially quit the labour market and this should be the person who earns the lowest wage. In the mathematical model, if women do reject low earners for marriage, then men increase their reservation wage, since it must compensate them for giving up the option of marriage. Since the same doesn’t apply to women, then you start seeing a gender wage gap. Therefore, when childcare or caring responsibilities are required, it is more likely to be the woman who quits the labour market. In turn, because women’s wages are temporary (in the model, because they will quit after marriage) and men’s wages are permanent (in the model, because they will never quit), men’s wages are more important to men than women’s wages are for women – reinforcing the gender wage gap and the fact that it is women who quit after marriage. The different strategies by men and women reinforce each other.
What other results have you found in this line of research?
The implications are part of the series of papers covering the same issue. We also study male heterogeneity in the marriage market (in terms of attractiveness) or the labour market (in terms of contract length for example). According to the analysis, given a wage, a woman prefers marriage to a more attractive man, or to a man on a long-term contract. All this has implications for the pattern and magnitude of the marriage wage premium. Having tested these and several other extensions successfully, we have shown that these factors contribute to
the existence of marriage wage premium, and other related observations like gender wage gap and differentiated attachment to the labour market.
Econometric studies suggest men are selected into marriage on the basis of wage and/or wage growth, for reasons we don’t judge in our studies, but we distinguish that the marriage and labour market are interrelated. We may not fully understand the motives, however it is important to address the sources of gender wage gap, marriage wage premium and the differences in attachments to the labour market to address and design policy and identify the consequences of such policies.
Are there any recommendations or considerations for countries to mitigate the gender wage gap?
The issues discussed have been researched both theoretically and empirically. We are now moving towards the policy analysis stage. Our results show that the labour market will start treating women and men equally, when women and men start treating the labour market equally. While this sounds intuitive, it actually does not result from standard labour and marriage market models. The importance of this is that standard models cannot be used for policy analysis or recommendations. Instead, models like ours are required for this.
Although the analysis simplifies reality, the principle could be applied to maternity leave. Maternity leave is desirable and if support increases, this will give couples more incentive for women to quit the labour market after childbirth, for this to happen more often and for longer than men. The links between the marriage market and labour market defined in my research would be exhibited. If there are policies in place that don’t allow firms to discriminate wages across genders, when it comes to selecting a candidate, they will hire the person who is less likely to quit and, in this scenario, it is the man. This has implications in several dimensions, and that is what can be identified using formal frictional models of the search and marriage market. This is a very delicate issue which is politically sensitive but needs to be understood to be addressed. ■
Design Thinking as pedagogy in practice
Comment Piece
The process of Design Thinking, commonly used in design schools, is a powerful tool to explore issues and topics. Using this method in a business school setting can achieve innovative solutions to global challenges.
The Authors
Dr Lucy Hatt Reader in Entrepreneurial Education
Newcastle University Business School
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Dr Jenny Davidson
Senior Lecturer Leadership Development, Climate Change Fellow
Newcastle University Business School
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What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is an approach that mimics how designers think and work, which has evolved over time and through different contexts. Consequently, it is no longer something practised solely by designers. It is becoming very popular as an idea generation, innovation and problemsolving process in many new contexts, including education.
Designerly ways of knowing, thinking and acting can be relevant to tackling a broad range of problems, but should not be regarded as “a universal issue-resolving cure-all”. Critics point out that the popularity of Design Thinking approaches can downplay or even ignore the skills and expertise that professional designers have, and using this approach does not make us all designers.
However, organisations are increasingly recognising the value of design activities and their impact on various organisational indicators such as customer satisfaction, market performance and financial outcomes.
Design Thinking in an educational setting
Design Thinking has long been used as a pedagogical approach in design schools to explore an issue or topic through different lenses. In this article, we highlight the benefits and outcomes of using Design Thinking as a pedagogical approach in a business school – where students generate ideas and solve problems whilst also developing their innovative thinking skills. The value of this and the impact on learning are not just in the output, but in the process itself.
The benefits of a Design Thinking approach
As part of the programme design process for one of our Executive Education programmes, employers told us that they wanted our graduates to be able to explore global challenges in new and innovative ways. We chose to introduce Design Thinking as a powerful way of tackling some of the big global challenges and themes that organisations and individuals are facing in the world of work.
Design Thinking is of particular relevance to the sustainability agenda because it enables many different disciplines to come together around a complex issue and collaborate using what is a relatively neutral process.
The Design Thinking approach
Over the years and through the popularisation of Design Thinking, expert design thinkers have attempted to capture its process and communicate it to non-practitioners. As a result, there are now numerous Design Thinking models.
Three models were combined for use in our teaching and learning context – the IDEO.org model (2015), the IBM Design Thinking ‘Loop’ (2021) and the Design Council’s ‘Double Diamond’ (2023).
We introduced Design Thinking as pedagogy in two modules of our Executive Education programmes at the School. At the core of our pedagogy is the aim to challenge “business as usual”, and to focus on the messiness of things; the complexity of leadership and the intractability of issues, facing up to the wicked problems of society. Design Thinking as pedagogical practice aligns well with this paradigm.
As educators, we offered our disciplinary expertise, using the Design Sprint as a social learning process. The learners were then able to apply it in their own context, in the module assessment.
“The process ensures that you’re targeting the real issue, not the problem that the client organisation thinks needs to be solved.”
Working in partnership and delivering real impact
The Design Sprint process lent itself to working on live projects with external partner organisations. The diverse range of organisations included charities, social enterprises and community interest companies. The focus then, was not on issues from the learners’ own organisations, but about bringing a different perspective to someone else’s challenge. Learners weren’t invested in the solution necessarily from a direct personal or professional point of view, meaning that they could think at a meta level about what they were doing perhaps more clearly than they might had they been working on issues and opportunities in their own organisations.
Value was added back into the community as learners were applying their learning to their workplaces in real time, regionally and in some instances nationally. Specifically, we co-created the scope for each project with the partner organisation, inviting them initially to think of a material issue or problem that they wanted to tackle. We were then able to map these against the UN Sustainable Development Goals. There was value for the learner and value for the partner organisations. This approach develops relationships and enables stakeholder engagement. By having external partners in the classroom, working side by side with the learners on the brief, the process also integrates the workspace and the educational space.
The process ensures that you’re targeting the real issue, not the problem that the client organisation thinks needs to be solved. Some of the most transformational moments came when the group said, “Actually, we’re not asking the right question”.
Using real projects from client organisations, our learners were immersed in a humancentred problem-solving process, developing creativity, empathy, and the ability to identify innovative solutions to complex organisational challenges.
Bounded creativity
Design Sprints have all the components needed to enable bounded creativity, allowing the whole team to express themselves and make a contribution. The process forces participants to come to a solution and enables them to demonstrate how they arrived at that solution. Importantly, an independent facilitator is vital to hold the process, allowing the team to fully immerse themselves in it.
Design Thinking processes have allowed us to shift away from the transactional way of working with live projects and partner organisations that we’re used to. The value was evident during the scoping phase before the Design Sprint even started. Having a template for scoping the project which was agreed collectively meant that we did not prescribe the problem to the client organisation but developed the brief with them. That’s not traditionally the way it happens.
Design Thinking is already used in a range of different sectors and there are countless case studies captured by some of the early pioneers such as Google to illustrate this. Our approach has sought to bring Design Thinking into a new space – our classrooms and teaching practice within a business school. In doing so, we have not only tackled some complex and topical issues but have also delivered added value for individual learners, their organisations and the wider community. Design Thinking has served as not only a process for innovation, but also as a process for developing the ability of the workforce to think more innovatively and creatively, in order to create value of all kinds. ■
Spotlight on: our PhD students
Nida Shamim Year two Pakistan
Effects of Ergonomics on User Engagement in an Immersive Environment
“Metaverse”, where head-mounted displays (HMDs) and haptic technology is used to immerse in the dynamic world of virtual reality, is rapidly gaining popularity. Nida’s research explores how ergonomics of HMDs, haptic technology, and avatars enhance immersive experiences and engagement, shaping the future of virtual travel in the Metaverse.
He Zhu
Year two
China
Harvesting the value of the secondary use of electric vehicle batteries: A reverse supply chain model
With the increasing number of retired electric vehicle batteries (REVBs), it is a major concern how to properly handle this while meeting sustainable development goals. He’s research proposes a reverse supply chain model considering secondary battery use, aiming to better utilise and harvest the value of REVBs.
Jingyao Hou
Year one
China
A
study of the affordances of generative Artificial Intelligence and the academic labour process
Jingyao’s research focuses on the effects of generative Artificial Intelligence on the academic labour process of producing research. It introduces a mechanism for looking at technology in the organisation by merging the concepts provided by the labour process theorists and using ‘affordances’ as a conceptual tool.
Final thoughts
“Many thanks for taking the time to read this edition of Reach, which shows some of the important work being undertaken by Newcastle University Business School colleagues. This edition shows how vital it is to balance digital and human interventions in seeking a more just, equitable and sustainable society.
Contributions highlight the impact of gender asymmetries in personal and working lives and emphasise the need for support for parent and carer networks. The effects of technology on people is explored to show how the human touch and social connectedness remains vital in this ever-changing, digital world. From our global food supply chains to Design Thinking in pedagogy in practice, the need for people-centred problem-solving facilitated by technology remains key.
As I read our colleagues’ contributions, I was struck by how innovative, significant and impactful our work is and how together we can make a positive difference in society.”
Dr Susan Kirk Professor of Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour
Newcastle
University Business School
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Acknowledgements Edited by: Newcastle University Business School
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