Ignited – The Second Issue

Ignited The #SalfordBSchool Magazine

03.2016

2 the second issue

Our academics discuss seconds in Cyber-security • Scientology • Boxing Volkswagen • Invention • STEAM ...and much more

The Butterfly A transformational animal in the second stage of it’s lifecycle.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Maya Angelou 1928 -2014 American Author, Poet and Civil Rights Activist.

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It is a ‘dated’ cliché in the music industry that bands struggle to produce their difficult second album. University students often talk about a second year slump when they struggle to gain the marks they enjoyed in their first year. The challenge is to live up to the expectations and standards that you have already set for yourself. But rather than being a plea for forgiveness this issue of Ignited takes up the challenge and put the challenge of ‘second’ at the centre of our thinking.

In this issue colleagues of Salford Business School present their thinking about ‘second’ in a variety of ways. Alex Fenton offers advice about cybersecurity so you can avoid the need for a second chance, Shane Sullivan discusses recent legal decisions for Scientology and the likelihood there will be a second chance and Morven MacEachern considers the chances that Volkswagen will get a second chance from its ethical consumer base.

We also consider some inventions and people who got a second chance. All of this talk about ‘second’ is intended to provoke your thinking too. What would you do differently if you had a second chance? More importantly, what have you learned from the first time around?

Salford Business School also has its own ‘second’ to celebrate. In 2016 we enter our second decade in our current form and with so many students graduated, papers presented and published and awards won there is a lot to celebrate. Equally with new partnerships in Sri Lanka and Malaysia as well as new programmes under development, there are already signs that there will be just as much to celebrate in our second decade of existence.

Gordon Fletcher

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To find out more about Islamic Banking & Finance: Visit www.salford.ac.uk/business-school Call +44 (0)161 295 2222 Be the difference. Salford Business School.

16 SECONDS OUT

THE INSIDER

10 SECOND CHANCE INVENTIONS

STATUS ANXIETY

The Second Issue

THE WEAKEST LINK

10 SECOND CAREER SUCCESSES

THE SECOND AGE OF STEAM

DIESELGATE - THE SCANDAL

JUST GOOD BUSINESS

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INSIDE OUR SECOND ISSUE

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JUST G BUSIN Ethical Finance is great in theory, but does the reality match the rhetoric?

The Second Issue

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n 2015 Edinburgh hosted the inaugural Global Ethical Finance Forum, and with it came the opportunity for some second thoughts on the topic of ethical finance.

The forum covered myriad issues from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and socially responsible investment (SRI) to Green bond and Islamic finance. The speakers and participants included local and foreign dignitaries, financial institutions, media companies, practitioners and academics. The forum was supported by the Scottish Government together with a number of strategic partners including Salford Business School. During the forum views and opinions were divided, raising serious concerns regarding whether individuals and business practitioners have faith in ethical finance.

Ethical finance is not a new concept – CSR, SRI and business ethics have long been debated and practised, but the reality is far from convincing.

There is much evidence that global poverty is worsening and that the income gap is widening.

At various levels, the question is being asked: What is wrong with the social agenda? What is wrong with the social reporting function and disclosure requirements? What is wrong with corporate practice and corporate governance?

Even within the specialised field of Islamic finance, commonly viewed as finance with ethical precepts, is not without issue. While it is undeniable that the ethos of Islamic finance is to promote social welfare and justice, its current practice has been widely criticised, with concerns being raised about whether Islamic banks are really ‘Islamic’ and questioning the extent to which profit and loss sharing is used as an ethical model.

Exploring these issues in the classroom setting is equally interesting. In our MBA module; Financial Management & Social Accounting, the first part of the module deals with financial management topics that are largely drawn from the usual

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G OD NESS rational-expectation model of capitalism (e.g., corporate financing mix, dividend policy, the Euros and international foreign exchange environment, and financial risk management using derivative instruments). However, in the second part of the module the students are challenged with a much more critical discourse which questions the extent to which ethical finance and sustainability issues are embedded in corporate financial decision making. Importantly, critical discussion on rational versus behavioural based decision making and the ‘rhetorical’ extent of ethical finance concepts are the focus for the debate.

Does ethical finance require a second thought? Is it fair to question a corporation’s intention to pursue ethical finance and sustainability agendas? Perhaps it is time to reflect on the writings of Milton Friedman in The New York Times Magazine on 13 September 1970. 45 years ago he claimed that: “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

The Second Issue

People have been asking: What is wrong with corporate practice and corporate governance?

What seems to be forgotten is that currently business exploits the ‘limited liability’ status of public and private companies. These types of organisational and legal structures were first allowed by law in Britain in 1855, where the legal and financial liability of shareholders was limited to their share capital and not to their total wealth.

Parliament spent a great deal of time discussing the issue of limited liability and finally decided it would be allowed, according to the debate at the time this was because it ‘was morally just and economically beneficial’. Surely this means that businesses that are not morally just or economically beneficial to society, should not be allowed the benefits from their particular legal status?

Article Nazam Dzolkarnaini Kevin Kane

Do the rules for creating a limited liability company need to be changed?

#ethicalfinance Comment @salfordbizsch on Twitter

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DIESE LGATE

THE SCANDAL The Second Issue

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Salford Business School

After Volkswagen were found using software to cheat emissions tests, will customers give the company a second chance?

Article

Morven McEachern

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ith cars responsible for 12% of the total European Union’s emissions of CO2 (European Commission, 2015), new emission reduction targets have been set by the European Commission, and car manufacturers face potential fines of up to $US 1billion for failing to meet emission targets.

Rather than taking these warnings seriously and pursuing more eco-friendly manufacturing solutions, the Volkswagen Group (VWG) chose to deceive the regulatory inspection process.

It did so by installing an illegal device into some of its cars with software that minimises emission measurements during testing. After the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a violation of emission irregularities by the VWG on the 18th September, the company responded two days later with an apology, a resignation from the then CEO Martin Winterkorn, a promise to co-operate fully with the authorities and an internal and external investigation into the situation. Two days later, 11 million vehicles (1.2m of which are from Europe) were believed to be affected and €6.5 billion was set aside by the company to cover recall costs. As a result VWG’s share price plummeted by a third (BBC News, 2015).

On November 2nd the EPA announced a second notice of violation in emissions levels of both diesel and petrol cars, revealing a further recall cost estimate of €2 billion. The significance of Volkswagen’s behaviour is on such a scale that it is now has labelled as ‘dieselgate’ by the media.

The Second Issue

While it is anticipated that further lawsuits and criminal charges for the VWG will be forthcoming, little media coverage covers the reputational damage to the company and its potential impact on loyal customers. In addition, no information from the company has been issued as to how the VWG means to address customer anxieties and, most importantly for those affected, when. Ironically, VW has traditionally been recognised as a brand of integrity and greenness, using terms such as ‘clean diesel’ technology and ‘truth in engineering’ in its advertising campaigns for the VW Passat and Audi A3, both of these models were identified as being affected by the emissions scandal. Therefore, it is no surprise that VW sales have been affected in the short-term since the scandal was reported.

One substantial difference in the case of the VWG and its relationship with its customers is that they have a much bigger following from ethical consumers.

As recently as April 2015, Ethical Consumer magazine awarded the VWG its best rating for cutting CO2 emissions by 30% between 2006 and 2015 and setting a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Germany by 40% by 2020. In contrast to the conventional consumer, the ethical consumer is much more highly involved with the product/brand and, as a result, is more likely to pro-actively seek out a wide assortment of environment-performance-related information.

Therefore, having specifically sought out such performance-based evidence and invested a substantial amount of time and effort in comparing car models, an extensive boycott of the affected VW brands is inevitable from ethical consumers, who are far less likely to give the company a second chance.

Forgiveness from consumers is also typical in other industry sectors.

But based on consumer online responses and Tweets, it is anticipated that mainstream consumers will give the VWG a second chance to make amends, just as Toyota and General Motors customers have done in response to mechanical failures and engineering faults. Initial outrage followed by forgiveness from consumers is also typical in other industry sectors, where companies are revealed as behaving underhandedly. For example, Starbucks’ avoidance of corporation tax resulted in a short-term boycott by consumers, but after the company promised to pay its ‘fair share’, sales have returned to pre-boycott levels.

Ironically, a progressive outcome of ‘Dieselgate’ is that there is likely to be more consumer interest in hybrid cars, which can only be good news for our eco-system – allegedly!

How has your attitude to VWG changed?

#dieselgate Comment @salfordbizsch on Twitter

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THE

SECOND AGE OF

STEAM STEAMing will be the foundation of a successful Northern Powerhouse.

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e are in a new STEAM age. It is an age that is markedly different from that of the first steam age, when railways and large-scale industrial and mechanical processes dominated the economy and the environment. In this first age of steam, the north of England literally became a powerhouse that produced goods for the rest of the world, ranging from bedding to ships. The first steam age created the factory of the world, bringing employment.

The current rhetoric of the UK government would suggest that the Northern Powerhouse will bring back this original prosperity, with the development of infrastructure that extend the grand works of the original STEAM age with rail and road infrastructure. In one of the first statements by the Chancellor there was even a reference to the creation of a supercomputer in Daresbury.

In saying this, the Chancellor pointed to a more modern but equally historic heroic period of industrial development that ignores the current power and widely distributed nature of cloud computing.

The Second Issue

But rather needing more big iron projects that push cars and trains back and forward between cities, the north of England is already creating the second STEAM age through more contemporary tools and knowledge. The STEM agenda – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – is well known for the long term and worldwide shortages of students taking up these subject areas.

Yet these areas are essential for the development and maturing of the digital economy. STEAM extends these key building blocks of the digital economy to include Art because, in effect, without art the apps, websites, ecommerce and blogs of the digital economy would not be intuitive to navigate, would lack a professional appearance, would be inaccessible to many online users and would not generate a sense of trust with consumers. STEAM is not just about potential current or future skills shortages but is the key to initiating, driving and testing innovation across all types of business.

In this new STEAM age the north of England is already well positioned to deliver this innovation with the intersecting high levels of capability found in locally based science, technology, engineering and arts businesses. The real challenge to create the Northern Powerhouse is not to lay rails or tarmac between these businesses but to find methods that enable them to successfully collaborate in new and unexpected ways. This is a challenge because the research and development time needed to innovate is a luxury for all, but the largest organisation and the need or preparedness to collaborate in these organisations is often at its weakest.

Innovation for its own sake – or what might be described as research more generally – is largely the privilege of universities rather than business.

For a business to justify and make the investment in innovation it must result in new growth (or reduced operating costs) for the business. So the second challenge for the Northern Powerhouse is to connect the research capability of the northern (and other) universities with businesses who can then realise and apply these innovations in practical ways that brings them new growth in a sustainable way. Collaboration is key. It is perhaps no surprise that the current digital economy itself offers the tools to enable its own further development. The answer is not found in just more use of social media but, for example, the systematic sharing of business data (suitably anonymised), providing open external software hooks into internal business systems, and sharing, outsourcing and clustering business functions. Of course, many of these changes to current business practice requires the input of STEAM professionals.

Collaborative STEAM innovation and new growth (or STEAMing) between universities as well as large and small businesses will ultimately be the foundation for a successful Northern Powerhouse.

Article

Gordon Fletcher

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Salford Business School

PEOPLE who succeeded in their second career Colonel Harland Sanders Tram Car Conductor to Fast Food Mogul More or less everything to Fast Food Franchise, Harland Sanders had been a tramcar conductor, a solider, life insurance salesman and a ferry boat operator by the age of 30. It was only when he was 40 in 1930 that Sanders began selling chicken from a service station in Kentucky. It took him another 10 years to perfect his secret recipe and the technique of pressure cooking his chicken. The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise was sold in 1952. But Sanders only committed fully to the franchising of his concepts when the Interstate bypassed his own restaurant in Kentucky. The decision made sense. At the time of Sanders death in 1980 there were 6000 KFC’s in 48 countries.

Vera Wang Journalist to Fashion Designer Wang had shown promise as a competitive figure skater before she turned to journalism. Wang was working at Vogue as senior fashion editor when she was overlooked for the editor-in-chief role. At the age of 40, she decided to move into fashion design and took a role with Ralph Lauren as design director.

Donald Rumsfeld Politician and CEO to App Developer Rumsfeld’s political career is well-known having been involved in key historical moments in recent US and world history. However, more recently Rumsfeld has been learning to code and has just released an app called ‘Churchill Solitaire’ which has mixed reviews.

JK Rowling

Oprah Winfrey Harrison Ford

Teacher and Bilingual Secretary to Author

Cornerstore Worker to Media Commentator

Carpenter to Actor

Rowling’s early work included a range of roles, but most notably as a English teacher in Portugal and then as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International in 1990. It was during this period while on a Manchester to London train that she came up with Harry Potter. It took another six years and 12 publisher rejections before Bloomsbury agreed to publish the first book.

The success of Harry Potter has made Rowling the richest living author and a regular entry on lists of the rich and influential.

Winfrey’s career is long as a consequence of the relative poverty that she grew up in. Winfrey was working from early teens in a local cornerstore while attending the local high school. However her media career did not begin until much later when she began reporting for the school’s radio station as well as the local broadcaster. This first experience of media rapidly led to her becoming the youngest and first black female news anchor on Nashville’s WLAC-TV, and from there eventually national and international fame.

Ford’s acting career initially developed in parallel with his carpentry. Although Ford moved to Los Angeles to work in film, his career was stalling and forcing him to find alternative work. Ford’s particular claim to fame is that he was working as both an actor and a carpenter for Francis Ford Coppola when he appeared in Apocalypse Now in 1979. This was two years after Ford had appeared in the original Star Wars film in 1977.

Peter Roget

Winston Churchill

Doctor to Thesaurus Compiler

Soldier to Statesman and Author

Roget had already completed his career as doctor in 1840 at the age of 61. He had published a number of medical papers in his first career and had been keenly interested in education. Roget was involved in the establishment of the University of London and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

The Society itself was connected to Mechanics’ Institutes that, in turn, led to the development of many UK universities. In 1849 Roget began compiling his Thesaurus at the Portico Library in Manchester and in 1852 the first edition of his work was published. Both Roget’s son and grandson expanded and refined the Thesaurus into the form that is still used today.

Churchill’s long career involved a wide range of roles including, most notably and famously, the UK’s wartime Prime Minister. Being born to a privileged background meant that Churchill started his career as an army officer in Sudan, India and the Boer War before becoming a politician. As a politician Churchill’s career was long but chequered. At these low points, Churchill found solace in other activities including bricklaying, painting and writing. During his first term as Prime Minister, Churchill wrote ‘A History of the EnglishSpeaking Peoples’, one of the works that in 1953 help him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Second Issue

Jack Dorsey

Marcus Pincus

Dispatch Logistics to Twitter

Finance to Internet Entrepreneur

The Twitter and Square CEO started out writing code to dispatch couriers and taxis to the right place at the right time. Dispatch logistics is a challenging problem for all businesses that need to deliver physical goods and some of the open source code Dorsey wrote in the early 1980s is claimed to still be in use today. Dorsey’s interest in dispatch logistics, providing short status updates to clients and drivers, was the path that led to the creation of Twitter.

After graduation Pincus worked in the finance sector and with venture capital projects, spending part of his time in Hong Kong. This experience in venture capital clearly influenced his activity after returning to the US. Pincus founded support.com in 1997 and then tribe.net in 2003 – an early social networking site. Pincus then founded Zynga in 2007, and the social gaming company is claimed to be the world’s largest social gaming network.

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THE WEAKEST LINK The Second Issue

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Salford Business School

With cyber-attacks on the rise, are people doing enough to protect themselves and their companies?

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here’s no doubt that the explosion of online services, e-commerce, smartphones and super fast connections has opened up a world of opportunities for people and companies. With great power, though, comes great responsibility.

Talk Talk hack impact

The threat of cyber-crime is rising at an alarming rate, creating chaos for unprepared companies and major inconvenience for customers. Here, we explore a recent high profile example and some practical solutions for cybersafety, to help reduce the possibility of a cyber-attack on your business.

A BBC expert stated that this latest breach came through an “SQL injection attack” that could have easily been prevented with the correct security in place. It is still unclear exactly what happened, or what customer data was stolen by hackers, but this incident is just one high profile example of a growing number of cyber-attacks on companies large and small. This incident has led business leaders to call for urgent action and education to tackle this increasing threat for companies.

It remains to be seen what long term damage this will do to the brand of a company.

On 22nd of October 2015, telecommunications company Talk Talk released a statement saying that their website had been hacked. It appears that hackers launched a DDoS (Denial of service attack) aimed at breaking the website. It’s been reported that this attack was a smokescreen for a second attack, aimed at stealing customer data details from the website.

Will they get a second chance to improve their cyber-security or is the damage already done?

What can individuals do to improve their online security?

Some simple steps to protecting yourself online include: 1 Use strong passwords – use a variety of lowercase, uppercase, numbers, symbols and unfamiliar words.

2 Understand your privacy settings – read the small print and take note of any changes.

3 Cash cards – protect your pin codes and credit cards.

4 Be wary of spam emails and phishing attacks – these could arrive by email or phone. Think before you click and Google anything that looks suspicious.

5 Practise ‘clear desk working’ – do not leave important documents, passwords and other secure materials where they can be found.

6 Use up to date virus and anti-spyware software.

7 Keep up to date with the latest developments and undertake training. For example, there is a free Introduction to cyber-security MOOC from Futurelearn.

Small companies and online security All of these steps to security can be applied to all employees and company accounts. In addition, keep your website software and plugins up to date. If you are using website software such as WordPress, make sure you or your web developer keeps it up to date.

Choose software and hosting companies based on their reputation for security.

Sarah Green from Xyone Cyber Security works regularly with small companies. She says: “Small companies often think that they may not be a target for cyber-attack, when usually the opposite is true.

Cyber-criminals are getting smarter, and they know where the weak links are. Unfortunately, this tends to lie with the smaller organisations who are usually part of a wider supply chain, and may be used as the point of entry for a large scale breach. Smaller organisations may have less resource to invest in training and cyber-security solutions, which presents a real risk. However there is lots of guidance and help to be found online and I would really urge any small business owner to put the basics in place now“.

It’s not just large companies that are affected by online security. Individuals and smaller companies can do a lot to reduce the chance of a security breach.

Article

Alex Fenton Small companies think they may not be a target for cyber-attack, when usually the opposite is true.

Will you need a second chance to get online security right or will you take action today?

What steps are you taking to protect your company and yourself?

#weakestlink Comment @salfordbizsch on Twitter

The Second Issue

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The Second Issue

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Salford Business School

J.M. Barrie Novelist and Playwright

The Second Issue

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Why the Church of Scientology should eschew a second opportunity to turn a dog into a vegetable.

The Second Issue

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Salford Business School

Article

Shane Sullivan

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omething interesting happened to Scientology in late 2013. The Supreme Court decided in R (on the application of Hodkin and another) v Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages [2013] UKSC 77 that Scientology would be considered a religion for the purposes of S2 of the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855, and consequently that a wedding conducted according to this faith would be classified as acceptable for the solemnisation of marriage under the Marriages Act 1949.

In short, a wedding conducted by the Church of Scientology could be recognised as a legally valid marriage. This overturned the Court of Appeal decision in R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal [1970] 2 QB 697, in which Lord Denning proclaimed that Scientology “seems to me to be more a philosophy of the existence of man or of life, rather than a religion.”

The Supreme Court decision sparked concerns that Scientology would now be accepted as a religion for charitable purposes, and that it would enjoy the tax benefits that would accrue from this position, as well as the legitimacy that might be bestowed upon what many suppose to be a cult. However, it is clear from the decision of the Supreme Court, delivered by Lord Toulson, that whilst Scientology was recognised as a religion for the purposes of the Places of Worship Registration Act, this decision has not changed the status of the Church of Scientology in relation to any other area of law.

Whilst the Telegraph, Independent and Guardian newspapers gave voice to concerns regarding an ‘evil cult’, ‘a money-making venture’ and fear at the prospect of state-funded Scientology focused schools, none of this has transpired in the almost two years since the Hodkin ruling.

Having been turned down for charitable status in 1999, there is good reason to believe that the Church of Scientology should not apply for charitable status a second time. To understand why, it’s necessary to consider whether Scientology meets the charitable definition of a religion, and if the organisation could also satisfy the Public Benefit test.

The Second Issue

Lord Toulson in Hodkin was quite clear in affirming that there was not a single universal definition of the term ‘religion’ for all legal purposes, and that the meaning of the term is context specific, hence the meaning of religion for the law relating to charities, is somewhat different to that in relation to places of worship.

The first statutory reform of the definition of the Advancement of Religion in the Charities Act 2006 (repeated in the Charities Act 2011) confirmed that the law has moved a long way from Lord Parker’s requirement of a monotheistic theism in Bowman v Secular Society [1917] AC 406. Under S3(2) of the Charities Act 2011, a religion includes a belief in god, gods or no god. The Charity Commission provided further guidance by stating that a religion was a belief in a god, gods, divine being, entity or spiritual principle which involves a relationship of worship or veneration and a degree of cohesion and seriousness in the belief system. The 1999 application for charitable status by the Church of Scientology failed to meet the definition of religion because, whilst the belief system was held to have a supreme entity, the core practices of auditing and training were not considered to be consistent with worship or veneration.

In light of the Hodkin ruling, would Scientology now be accepted as a religion for charitable purposes? First we must avoid a temptation to assess the merits of the religion because, as per Cross J in Neville Estates v Madden [1962] Ch 832, “As between different religions the law stands neutral. But it assumes that any religion is at least likely to be better than none.”

However, this is not a temptation that has always been resisted. In the Church of Scientology v Kaufman [1973] RPC 635 Goff dismissed Scientology as “pernicious nonsense” and Denning considered in Hubbard v Vosper [1972] 2 QB 84 that the church “contains such dangerous material that it is in the public interest that it should be made known.”

In 2004 a spokesman for the Anglican Diocese of Birmingham said that Scientology was “as much a religion as a dog is a vegetable” when criticising a council decision to allow Scientologists to use the city’s Centenary Square. An assessment of the quality of the beliefs is legally irrelevant. Arguably, in those terms, the only difference between Scientology and the more established forms of religious belief is that, the former is a rather more modern form of irrational belief, and hence does not possess the legitimacy or respectability bestowed by a history of hundreds of years of cultural and traditional familiarity.

The definition of religion under the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 includes both worship and service, and hence is much broader than the charitable definition of religion. If a second application was made to the Charity Commission for charitable status it is clear that the Church of Scientology would fail for the same reason as the 1999 application.

The second requirement of Public Benefit is an even tougher hurdle for the Scientologists to clear. Prior to the 2006 and 2011 Charities Act this test was a relatively easy requirement to meet.

If the religion had a public element then the public benefit was to be presumed under authorities such as Gilmour v Coats [1949] AC 246 and Neville Estates v Madden [1962] CH 832. But even under this simple test the 1999 application for charitable status failed resoundingly.

The Supreme Court decision sparked concerns that Scientology would be accepted as a religion for charitable purposes, enjoying the tax benefits that accrue from this position.

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L. Ron Hubbard Author and founder of the Church of Scientology.

The present test for public benefit under S4(2) of the Charities Act 2011 means that public benefit cannot be presumed and hence must be proven. The church would still fail this test on three grounds. First, the core practices of Scientology such as auditing are carried out in private. Second, substantial payment must be made to gain access to the core activities of the church, which precludes a public benefit element under Principle 2c of the guidelines published by the Charity Commission in 2008.

Third, and more controversially, there is the issue of the “suppressive activities” of the church (activities which will be familiar to those who have watched documentaries such as Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and Scientology and Me).

The 1999 application was met with very substantial submissions to the Charity Commission, by a broad section of society expressing concerns regarding the ethical behaviour of the church.

It is clear that any subsequent application by the Church of Scientology will fail on the grounds of Public Benefit and the definition of religion. Indeed the Church would be unwise to attempt such an application. To have any real prospect of success, Scientology would have to substantially reduce or perhaps even remove all the financial costs associated with participating in the religion, and that would cost more than is to be gained by the tax benefits of charitable status.

The Second Issue

In addition, the Public Benefit requirement could only be met by opening up the practices of the religion to the public gaze – a step the church has been fiercely resistant to. Finally, the suppressive activities of the organisation would undergo greater scrutiny, including an annual assessment by the Charity Commission. If the only gains to be made from charitable status are measured financially and in terms of increased respectability, then neither of these are likely. Indeed the Hodkin ruling provides some degree of respectability that is a safer location for the church at present. In summary, the chances of a successful application for charitable status are rather remote without the scale and nature of changes that would likely be unpalatable to the Scientologists.

The concerns in this area raise a more profound issue in relation to the charitable status of religions and the desirability of continuing to provide substantial tax concessions to religious organisations. If the Church of Scientology had obtained charitable status, the organisation would have been entitled to very substantial concessions on a range of taxes. The church would have been exempt from £107,000 of business rates per annum just on its headquarters in East Grinstead, Sussex.

If the tax exemption were to be removed then the law would not have to choose between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ religions.

Such a move would also alleviate a very real tension in the law at present. The societal direction is towards equality and tolerance as per the Equality Act 2010, and hence a great deal of public resource is devoted towards this aim. However, at the same time substantial indirect public resources are being used to frustrate and oppose these aims via tax concessions for religious organisations who withstand initiatives such as the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. This contradiction would not exist if the tax environment for those religions, which are recognised as charitable, did not prove the claim L. Ron Hubbard is famously rumoured to have made: “You don’t get rich writing science fiction.

If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”

Should the charitable status of religious organisations change?

#statusanxiety Comment @salfordbizsch on Twitter

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COMBINE SPORTING PRESTIGE WITH AWARD WINNING LEADERSHIP Developed by the University’s respected research Centre for Sports Business, this MBA is ideal for executives working within sports related industries seeking the highest levels of management. Take advantage of the North West’s rich sporting heritage with BBC sport as a neighbour and MUFC / MCFC on our doorstep, with us you will forge strong links with industry including connections to the Class of ‘92.

To find out more about our courses: Visit www.salford.ac.uk/business-school Call +44 (0)161 295 2222 Be the difference. Salford Business School.

Article

David Kreps

As technology gets closer to our bodies and our lives, wearable tech will soon be as normal as the logo on your T-shirt.

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omputers have touched all of our lives in recent decades.

The ubiquity of computing at work, at home, in our transport and social infrastructure hardly bears mentioning – it has become ‘second nature’.

But computing is set to bring a ‘second touch’ to all our lives in the coming years: indeed this shift already seems well underway. From distant mainframes to personal computers to handhelds, we are now witnessing the phenomenon of so-called wearable tech, arguably with devices implanted directly into humans not far behind.

Contemporary technology is on a trajectory that brings it closer and closer to us – to our bodies and to the most intimate details of our lives. Health devices and applications, logging the metrics of our physicality such as heart-rate, blood pressure, exercise and sleep patterns, seem to be leading the way. From FitBits and the Adidas miCoach to Nike’s FuelBand and the Jawbone, the most popular of these wearables, seem to focus on our bodies’ readiness for sport. But other devices, such as the cardiac sensor BodyGuardian Remote Monitoring System, and a wide range of applications for smartphones that make use of the technologies already in our pockets – sometimes with innovative accessories – capture metrics much closer to the data favoured by the medical profession.

The defence and entertainment industries will not be far behind.

Wearables will soon act as tutors in helping us reach our goals.

The notion of ‘lifelogging’ has come to the fore.

Sometimes called the ‘Quantified Self ’, it marks a significant shift from the traditional diary entries in which, for centuries, we have merely recorded the data we found interesting when we felt like recording it. Now devices and applications can record a range of data automatically, and continuously, enabling us to ‘mine’ that data later in a range of ways we may not yet have thought of.

The Second Issue

Evolving from merely collecting data to providing us with guidance based on predictive calculations, these wearables will soon act as tutors in helping us reach our goals. Apple’s Health App that came with iOS8 was an early signal that the data collected by wearables could be gathered and processed in one place, offering wider capture than single devices and even greater predictive power.

Far from creating some kind of 1990s cyborg, these wearables are likely soon to be almost unnoticeable, blending into contemporary fashions like the badge on a football shirt – echoing the familiar ‘tick’ on the Star Trek uniform.

This journey from the impersonal monolithic technology of the 1950s, towards today’s intimate intertwining of devices and the self, from first to second ‘touch,’ is the focus of a forthcoming conference – the 12th IFIP TC9 Human Choice and Computers Conference, ‘Technology and Intimacy: Choice or Coercion?’ – which will take place in September 2016, hosted by the Business School’s Digital Business Centre at MediaCityUK. This conference series has marked every stage of this journey to wearable technology from 1974 until today. Manchester, home of the computer and now European City of Science in 2016 and Salford will welcome HCC12, and its scrutiny of this ‘second touch’.

What is the next step for wearables?

Would you wear implanted technology?

#insider Comment @salfordbizsch on Twitter Visit www.hcc12.net for more information.

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SECONDS OUT BLUE The Second Issue

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Salford Business School

Predicting the result of a boxing match using a stochastic model.

Article

David Percy

H

ow does the balance of power vary during a boxing match?

If such a combat exhibited deterministic behaviour, we would know the result explicitly and the fight would be futile. As it doesn’t, our best method for predicting the outcome is to combine professional experience with a suitable stochastic model for the uncertainty.

A simple stochastic model for this contest involves a pair of point processes, which separately model each competitor’s propensity to deliver a point-scoring punch or a knockout blow. The first components are smooth log-linear or power-law functions of time, which model the general deterioration of the boxers’ performances due to tiredness and injury as the fight progresses. These functions are then supplemented by multiplicative scaling factors at time points when particular events occur, such as the beginning and end of each round, or the delivery and receipt of significant punches. A minor yet aesthetically pleasing modification to these scaling factors allows for decay, whereby the effects of the interventions wear off as time progresses.

Such models involve unknown parameters, which is where professional experience can best contribute to this analysis. Elicitation of expert knowledge to determine prior probability distributions for model parameters, is an interesting academic challenge that is now fairly well resolved. We subsequently update this knowledge by collecting data from previous boxing matches and applying standard rules of probability and statistics. These generate posterior probability distributions, which increase the accuracy of initial parameter estimates. Our outcome predictions are starting to improve upon a good guess.

The Second Issue

The simple stochastic model can then be embellished in several ways. Firstly, we could link the two competitors’ point processes by sharing common parameters to create a bivariate point process.

Secondly, we might include some predictor variables in the combined model, to take account of associated covariates and factors such as each boxer’s fight history, height, mass, reach and age. The fight history might include the numbers of fights, wins and losses, corresponding results in the near past, and any results arising from major competitions.

A pair of point processes separately model each competitor’s propensity to deliver a point-scoring punch or a knockout blow.

With some extra adjustments, it would then be feasible to calculate the probabilities of victory for each boxer in a particular bout. These predictions can even be updated dynamically as a bout progresses, especially as the amount of data collected during sporting competitions nowadays is quite phenomenal. Such predictions would be useful to tournament schedulers, match officials, broadcast media, bookmakers, gamblers and competitors and coaches – indeed these models have been used successfully to determine optimal strategies during the course of play.

Of course, there is no need to restrict the use of stochastic processes and dynamic learning to boxing. They have been used in other sports including football, but could have much more widespread application to rugby, hockey, swimming, skiing, cycling, running and sailing. Moreover, the models described here are for continuous time, whereas some sporting contests are held over discrete time for which a different form of stochastic process is more appropriate. Discrete-time Markov chains are well established models for this scenario, and apply to sports such as cricket, golf, darts and snooker in which measurements are made at distinct time points.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Sport is a relatively recent beneficiary of stochastic processes and dynamic learning. These models were developed in the related areas of reliability analysis, where they help to avert system failures in defence and industry (energy, water and communications), and healthcare, where they help with diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many illnesses.

Do sports predictions make watching sport more or less exciting?

#Secondsout Comment @salfordbizsch on Twitter

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