Practitioner Research
Research at the Academy of Multi-Unit Leadership has developed out of the close working relationship between Academy experts and multi-site retail businesses, focusing upon enhancing performance through accelerated organic growth.
Key strengths of the Academy include:
- Unique books which ensure that Academy research is contemporaneous and has first mover advantage (see ‘Effective Multi-Unit Leadership’ and ‘International Multi-Unit Leadership’ by Professor Chris Edger).
- An International dimension which enables cross-national comparisons of MUL excellence.
- A significant body of knowledge derived from over 100 group-led in-company projects and MSc dissertations (generated by the 600 students that have passed through Academy programmes to date).
The research has been a central part of the postgraduate and Masters courses, focusing on some of the following areas:
- Maximising profit from the Area Manager unit portfolio
- Developing a sales-led culture in the Area Manager portfolio
- Local innovation within the confines of brand compliance
- Multi-site franchise optimisation
- Increasing the engagement of service delivery teams
- Evaluating graduate intake Area Managers against General Manager progression
- Area Manager competencies required for different types of brands
- How to increase employee engagement through Area Manager development
- Classic food service brand turnarounds
- Knowledge sharing across brands
Areas of research
Building on these areas we have developed four main research areas of Local Leadership; Multi-Unit Leader Competencies; Serviceable Market and Service Innovation.
Contact us
For more information contact Chris Edger
Phone: +44(0)121 331 5221 / Email: chris.edger@bcu.ac.uk