University News Last updated 04 April 2014
Professor Gary Holt of Birmingham City Business School has been awarded a prestigious ‘Best Paper’ award from the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence, 2014.
The accolade was conferred for his paper on construction business failure, published in the journal Construction Innovation: Information, Process Management (Vol. 13, No. 1, 2013). The paper resulted from his study of business failure causal agents, based on a meta-study of research in the field published over the last three decades.
The study demonstrated how three generic failure agents expounded as managerial (in)action, internal financial conditions and company characteristics, reciprocally interact within the broader macroeconomic business environment. It also identified sub-causal agents attributable to these generic classes and showed how innovation in particular, can present negative as well as positive, influences on business survival.
Professor Holt has been at Birmingham City Business School for just over three years and this represents his fourth Literati award conferred during that time. His primary research foci are machinery management and innovation; although he also holds a fractional professorship in construction management and economics at the University of Central Lancashire. Professor Holt stated that this unique academic subject combination allowed him to effectively combine his many active facets of business research, with his construction economics expertise.
On receiving his award Professor Holt said, “It is always an honour to have one’s research recognised in this way but as importantly, it also acknowledges the fertile research environment within which we work here at Birmingham City University."