Academic Spotlight – Peter Case

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Academics from many backgrounds gravitate to Bristol Leadership and Change Centre. Today we spotlight Professor Peter Case, who amongst other achievements has most recently become Editor-in-Chief for a new journal, The Journal of Tropical Futures. Here he takes the opportunity to discuss his interests as well as the new journal, it’s importance and how you can get involved.

Q1.  Tell us a little about your background.

I’ve been a professional academic for over forty years and worked in various universities in the UK – for example, Bath, Oxford Brookes, Exeter and UWE – and overseas in Australia and Singapore with James Cook University (JCU). I’ve also held visiting positions at Helsinki School of Economics in Finland and the University of Humanistics at Utrecht, the Netherlands. I obtained my first chair at Oxford Brookes University by way of internal promotion and then moved to Exeter shortly after that. I joined UWE in 2005 and currently have part-time roles as Professor of Organization Studies at Bristol Business School and Professor of Management at James Cook University.

Q2 . How did you became interested in your research areas?

From a young age I’ve had eclectic intellectual tastes and my academic studies took me initially into the fields of economics, sociology and philosophy, whilst at the same time reading more widely in the humanities and social sciences. This eclecticism and broad curiosity are what brought me to disciplines of Organization Studies and Leadership Studies as they enable me to pull together the various fields I’ve studied over my lifetime as an academic. For the first twenty-five years or so of my career, I focussed on scholarly work and published mostly on topics related to organization theory and critical management studies. For the past several years, however, I’ve been turning my attention to more applied work in the areas of international development and global health. Again, I’ve discovered that these are fields in which I can draw on an eclectic intellectual background to work collaboratively with other colleagues on tackling the complex challenges that face societies, institutions and communities – particularly those in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Q3. Tell us more about your research and research projects, are there any projects you want to highlight? Any you would like to work on in the future? … Collaborations?

My research ranges across organization development, international development, rural development, global health, leadership studies and organization theory and philosophy. For more than a decade now I’ve been collaborating with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco –one of the top medical colleges in the USA – who are based in the ‘Malaria Elimination Initiative’ (MEI) research centre. My move into the global health space came about as a consequence of work I’d been doing on rural development in Southeast Asia – particularly a set of projects in Laos – aimed at improving the way that the government supported smallholder farmers. It was in this context that I and some other colleagues, who were expert in the local farming systems, began experimenting with the use of something called ‘Participatory Action Research’  – which, as the title implies, involves bringing different stakeholders together to participate in a process of researching challenges and, through structured exchanges and facilitated processes, co-creating and implementing solutions to those challenges. The work I did in Laos, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research over a period of about nine years, proved very successful in coming up with practical solutions and changing institutional governance structures.

The three projects l was responsible for, for example, led to the application of management tools co-designed with stakeholders and resulted in an increase in gross incomes for approximately 1,350 smallholder households, translating to an economic impact of more than £2m over a seven-year period (2012-19). One of the projects involved encouraging the formation of farmer organizations and resulted in the establishment of a whole new organic coffee growing region in Northern Laos. The impacts of the project led to more consistent central government support for the delivery of agricultural extension services, more autonomy for district-level offices and, in the longer-term, directly influenced the Government of Lao’s national strategy for commercialising smallholder farmer production. These successes also attracted further investment from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank.

My work in Laos caught the attention of the then Director of the Malaria Elimination Initiative and I was invited to join a small team of senior malariologists to assess the state of programme management of malaria, globally, and write a report for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation setting out findings and recommendations. As the management expert in the group, I was the person who ended up presenting the paper to a strategy committee at the Gates Foundation and this, in turn, led to many doors opening. I started out being asked to join a team of US medics working on malaria elimination in Vietnam and, amongst other things, as I’d done in Laos, began experimenting with the use of Participatory Action Research methods to tackle thorny issues relating to delivery of malaria healthcare services. This experimentation led to some promising outcomes and I was given my own funding to ‘prove the concept’ in another context – this time in southern Africa – initially in Zimbabwe and Eswatini but then extending the work to Namibia. The research culminated in the team developing a set of Organization Development and Quality Improvement tools that can be applied in tackling a range of health system-related challenges.

The composite toolkit is called Leadership and Engagement for Improved Accountability and Delivery of Services (LEAD) Framework and is now available as an open access resource. Our work in the malaria space led to significant improvements in elements of programme delivery, including data quality and communication, as well as fewer drug stockout events. These programme delivery improvements subsequently resulted in improved detection, testing and treatment facilities for more than 3 million people living in malaria zones in Zimbabwe alone. Additional benefits, such as capacity building of healthcare professionals and development of UWE accredited training of National Malaria Control Programme staff also resulted in sustainable impacts in these regions.

Most recently I co-led an organization development project funded by the Gates Foundation which applied the LEAD Framework to assist with restructuring and improving HIV prevention services at national and subnational level in Zimbabwe. This was a collaboration between the Zimbabwean Ministry of Health and Child Care, USCSF, UWE, the Women’s University in Africa and two international NGOS – the Clinton Health Access Initiative and Population Services International. We’re currently writing up the final report for this project and have plans to publish the findings in the coming year; but we already know that the programme of Participatory Action Research has had a significant and far-reaching impact on HIV-prevention service delivery in Zimbabwe.

Q4. You have recently become Editor-in-Chief for a new academic journal the Journal of Tropical Futures. What gaps does this journal fill and what is its importance?

Well, as you’ll have probably noticed, a great deal of my work in recent years has taken place in the tropical zones – and, of course, one of my academic posts is based in tropical North Queensland, Australia. I have a passion for working in the tropics and there are a great many challenges facing populations in the region. I’ve been working closely with colleagues based at James Cook University, Singapore, for several years who share my interests in the region and, together, we came up with the idea of creating an academic journal that could be a mouthpiece for research on sustainable business, development and governance in the tropics. It took us about two years to get to a point where SAGE Publications – who saw potential in our proposal – agreed to contract the journal. We were able formally to launch in January of this year (2023). There are very many journals that focus on tropical environmental science, marine science, human and cultural geography and so forth but, surprisingly, very few are concerned with sustainable business and development. In other words, these themes are conspicuously under-served by academic journals currently.

We should be paying close attention as scholarly and practitioner communities to the complex dynamics of the tropics, in my opinion. Here are few telling facts that are worth pondering: about 4 billion people are currently living between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and by 2050 one in every two people and 55% of the world’s children under five, will reside in the tropics. 99% of the population of the tropics reside in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, while 80% of the planet’s terrestrial biodiversity and more than 95% of its mangrove and coral reef-based biodiversity is located in the tropics. Most GDP (about 65%) is generated by the Global North yet, the externalities of this economic productivity are having disproportionate impacts on the Global South and tropics.

We’re currently experiencing a collision of tectonic plates globally, in my view, as the conventional drives toward economic growth clash with the interests of indigenous populations and environments. The tropics are disproportionately disadvantaged by the deleterious impacts of climate change, pollution of lands and seas, monocultural agricultural production and deforestation; to name just a few of the more pressing issues. What are we to do to halt exploitative policies and practices? How can the multiple inequalities that characterize the North/South divide be mitigated or reversed? In short, what is to be the future of the tropics? The key mission of the journal is to help address challenges relevant to sustainable business and management, social and economic development, as well as to governance in the tropics.

Q5. How can someone get involved with the journal, is there anything you would like to see in the future? 

The journal is still in its infancy; so, as with any new journal, the immediate challenge we face is establishing a profile for JTF and attracting high quality manuscript submissions. Our plan in 2023 is to publish e-versions of articles using the SAGE OnlineFirst system and then release Volume 1 (Issues 1 & 2) in 2024. We plan on having two open issues per year initially and then expanding once the journal is more established.

We welcome contributions to the following themes: 

  • Sustainable Tropical Environments
  • Public Policy, Regional Development and Governance
  • Human and Workforce Development
  • International Business and Trade in Tropical Regions
  • Sustainable Business and Social Responsibility 
  • Sustainable Tourism, Hospitality and Marketing

Our plan is to publish rigorous empirical analyses (based on quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research), as well as case studies, theoretical articles and conceptual reviews. Please visit  Journal of Tropical Futures for more information.

I hope that anyone interested and enthused by the journal aims and scope will be encouraged to write for this exciting new publication. I’m happy to discuss ideas for articles or look at draft manuscripts so would encourage people to get in touch directly with me by email if they’re considering submitting something. If anyone would like to serve as a reviewer for manuscript submissions they should also get in touch. My email address: peter.case@uwe.ac.uk

For more information about Peter, his work or his publications please visit his staff profile.

ISLC 2022 – Leadership and the future of humanity

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Bristol Business School at the ISLC

Several representatives from Bristol Business School at UWE Bristol are attending this years International Studying Leadership Conference (ISLC) in December. We are delighted that this year’s conference will be held in person, the first able to do so since Bristol Business School hosted the ISLC in 2019, where we hosted over 140 delegates from across the globe to discuss “Putting Leadership in its Place “. The conference featured three keynote addresses and five parallel streams (including almost 90 separate papers) exploring Place in leadership theory and practice and led to the publication of special issue of the journal leadership, which can be accessed here.

This year’s conference hosted by the University of Sussex Business School, in the city of Brighton and Hove continues to challenge the status quo of leadership research. Looking to explore ‘’Leadership and the future of humanity’’, the ISLC has put a spotlight on the need to develop better models of leadership more widely, not only within business organisations but also political networks, communities and countries. This conference will examine new ways of theorising about leadership that challenge mainstream approaches by showcasing papers that ask big questions about important issues such as leadership in politics, the issue of climate change, the growth of social inequality and other significant global issues. Further details can be found here.

Bristol Business School has always had a strong presence at the ILSC conference, this year is no different with four papers by academics and research leads from Bristol Leadership and Change Centre that will be discussed at the conference.


Apocalypse then and now: ‘End of the world’ cosmologies and the future of humanity

Jonathan Gosling, Visiting Professor, UWE Bristol

Peter Case, Professor of Organisation Studies, UWE, Bristol

This paper examines the ways in which collapse is understood, the prescriptions that follow, the kinds of organising and leading around these prescriptions. We want to enumerate the cosmologies at play here, and how they influence the ways in which collapse is foreseen and the responses they invoke. Our working hypothesis is that some responses will be characteristic of ‘apocalyptic cosmologies’ that construe time as leading towards an ‘end of days’ in which collapse is a kind of fulfilment – an end in itself, or possibly a gateway to some other-worldly resurrection and salvation.

Developing previous work on climate change and apocalypse (Gosling & Case, 2011; Bendell, 2018) and our interests in premodern thought and practice (Case & Gosling, 2007), we seek to show by way of salient historical comparison how collective patterns of response emerge frequently enough to be seen as typical of European culture when facing existential threat and imminent collapse.

We conclude with a re-examination of contemporary responses to the so-called climate emergency, and some proposals for how we citizens can contribute in constructive ways informed by a more diverse cosmological repertoire. Our paper will contribute an analysis of what might happen to leadership, as well as how leadership might assist a ‘better collapse’. 


Tackling severe and multiple disadvantage through systems change

Richard Bolden, Professor of Leadership and Management, UWE Bristol

This paper presents insights from an eight-year longitudinal evaluation of a collaborative partnership project designed to transform the design and provision of services for people with severe and multiple disadvantage (SMD) in the city of Bristol in the UK. The research was informed by ‘realist evaluation’ principles, whereby we sought to understand the mechanisms through which interventions produce outcomes within particular contexts (Pawson and Tilley, 1997).  As appropriate for evaluating complex interventions (Skivington et al., 2021), we captured multiple perspectives, experiences and outcomes over time through a combination of methodologies underpinned by a theory of change.

Whilst a diverse range of findings, recommendations and conclusions have been reported, within this paper I will focus on insights around how the programme has facilitated systems change – ‘an intentional process designed to alter the status quo by shifting the function or structure of an identified system with purposeful interventions’ (Abercrombie et al., 2015). A review of evaluation insights, alongside learning from the team leading the initiative, has revealed seven key enablers of systems changeor SMD that might be used by people developing or running systems change activities


The post truth games of populist leaders: Insights from Franz Kafka

Leah TomkinsVisiting Professor, UWE Bristol

When we reflect on the conference theme of leadership and the future of humanity, we may find it hard to feel anything but despair. The world feels unstable, and many of its most prominent leaders seem to pander to their constituents’ grievances rather than exercising anything we might call ‘ethical leadership’ (Ciulla, 2020). In such a climate, truth often has less clout than ‘post-truth’, and this is often linked to a dismissal of experts (Foroughi et al., 2019). Amplified by social media spats, post-truth approaches suggest that everyone is entitled to their own preferred version of events. Most notorious in this narrative space is the ‘alternative facts’ discourse of former US President, Donald Trump; but other populist leaders have also relished the fact that their words do not have to be true – indeed, they can often be palpably false – to be effective.

This paper draws on the fiction of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) to explore the tactics of post-truth leadership. Kafka has extraordinary relevance for leadership, not least because “of all writers, Kafka is the greatest expert on power” (Canetti, 1982, p.62). Kafka has long been heralded for his unique perspective on many of the past century’s most pressing issues – bureaucracy, technology, violence, alienation, and the institutions of work, family, religion and the law. Kafka’s work interweaves, amplifies, undercuts and distorts these themes, revealing their often-terrible relation with power. Recent Kafka scholarship has challenged popular understandings of Kafka as under-dog or victim of the System, arguing instead that both Kafka and his protagonists are agents as much as victims of power (Corngold et al., 2009; Tomkins, 2024). Kafka’s world is one where ‘facts’ are often insignificant in comparison with ‘alternative facts’ in skilful hands, whether these hands belong to the overtly powerful or the apparently powerless.


Using visual methods to understand the translation of inclusive leadership across different language context

Doris Schedlitzki, Professor of Organisational Leadership, London Metropolitan University

Sylwia Ciuk, Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Oxford Brookes University

Gareth Edwards, Professor of Leadership and Community Studies, UWE Bristol

Harriet ShorttAssociate Professor in Organisation Studies, UWE Bristol

In this presentation, we will provide practical examples from our project to illustrate how we have used Participant-led Photography (Shortt and Warren, 2019) to research the social construction and translation of inclusive leadership narratives across three different languages within the work context of a multinational organisation. In particular, we will show how this innovative method, which has not been applied to translation and leadership studies before, has given participants a verbal and non-verbal way of expressing – and reflexively exploring – the intangible aspects of inclusive leadership practice. The inclusion of visual data in our analysis also helps to challenge the use of English as the only ‘valid’ language to carry and share leadership knowledge.

We will further provide examples from our analysis to date to show how this methodological approach enables us to take a rigorous approach to inductive theorising. Data analysis involves identification of themes in both narrative and visual data using a new visual methodological/ analytical approach – Grounded Visual Pattern Analysis (GVPA) (Shortt and Warren 2019). This methodology enables a multi-modal translation and interpretation of leadership, since GVPA provides researchers with the opportunity to systematically analyse the narrative and visual data whilst privileging the meanings the participants ascribe to their photographs. Building on such a comprehensive and detailed analysis of participants’ experiences and practices enables us to understand better how they translate (linguistically and through practice) inclusive forms of leadership.


Professor Peter Case talks at the 24th International Leadership Association Global Conference

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Professor Peter Case was invited to join an expert panel at the 24th International Leadership Association Global Conference in Washington DC to talk about his work on HIV/AIDS prevention and malaria healthcare service delivery in Zimbabwe.

Delivered on 16th October, the title of his talk was “Multi-sector partnerships for sustainable delivery of infectious disease healthcare in Southern Africa” and the presentation formed part of a wider discussion of “Leadership Skills for Multi-sector Partnerships for Sustainability”.

In his talk, Peter gave particular emphasis to the role that the UWE Bristol College of Business and Law postgraduate certificate in “Professional Practice in Change Leadership” has played in galvanizing efforts of partners and contributing to sustainability of malaria and HIV healthcare services in Zimbabwe.

Find out more about Professor Peter Case’s research.

HIV Programme Management and Service Delivery in Zimbabwe

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Image: Professor Peter Case distributing PPCL degree certificates to successful graduands in Nyanga District, Manicaland, Zimbabwe

CBL’s Professor Peter Case recently returned from a research field trip to Zimbabwe, where he helped run a series of workshops linked to a project funded by a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant and being delivered in collaboration with researchers at University of California, San Francisco. The project, which Peter co-leads, is entitled ‘Optimizing Stakeholder Operating Models for HIV Prevention in Zimbabwe’ (OPTIMISE, for short) and has been running since June 2020. It aims to assist the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC) to improve HIV prevention programme management and service delivery. The workshops took place between 19th September and 1st October, involving health professionals from Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Manicaland provinces.  The current project is due to conclude at the end of this calendar year, so the trip involved data gathering on project outcomes/impacts as well as consolidating the changes to service delivery that OPTIMISE has helped implement.

Using participative action research as the main approach to leading change, the intervention seeks to integrate HIV prevention services (which are typically funded by a variety of external donors) and move them forward in a more effective and sustainable way in relation to MOHCC strategy. District-level research groups highlighted key improvements to service delivery that had been achieved to date and discussed the results of a ‘user research’ presented by the UWE/UCSF team. The events were a great success, with strong endorsements for the OPTIMISE project coming from the MOHCC. One particularly moving example of the way the work has been expanded by teams beyond the immediate HIV priorities concerned significant improvements to maternal mortality rates in Hwange district which, prior to OPTIMISE interventions had suffered the highest level of maternal deaths in the country. Thanks to implementing OPTIMISE change methods, in the past year the rates have fallen from nine deaths per year to just one.

The national director the MOHCC HIV Programme, Dr Murunguni, and other senior ministry officials were present to hear and comment on the progress updates, as were Provincial Medical Directors and other senior administrators. Peter also attended a partnership meeting in Harare convened by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at which he and the OPTIMISE team discussed future projects and continuity of the work with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Population Services International and the MOHCC. One outcome of this discussion will be UWE’s direct involvement in an attempt to seek a national scale-up of the OPTIMISE work supported by funding from the UN Global Fund for AIDS, TB & Malaria.

Integral to the OPTIMISE project has been leadership capacity building for 19 healthcare professionals enrolled on CBL’s Post-Graduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership. All 19 students have now successfully completed the degree and a handful will be attending the CBL graduation ceremony in November. Whilst travelling to the various districts, Peter had the privilege of distributing degree certificates to many of the graduands. The module has been delivered in collaboration with a local HE provider, the Women’s University in Africa, and is contributing significantly to the strengthening of leadership and management capabilities of Zimbabwe’s HIV Programme staff. Peter would like to acknowledge the roles played by Katie Joyce (PPCL ML), Dr Priscilla Mutuare (WUA tutor and CBL AL) and Dr Greyling Vijoen (lead local PPCL tutor and BLCC visiting fellow) in contributing significantly to the success of this programme.

Case Studies at Developing Leadership Capacity Conference 2022

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(Image sourced from www.cre8rel8.com/we-believe)

The Bristol Leadership and Change Centre is hosting the 12th Developing Leadership Capacity Conference (DLCC) on the 12 and 13 July 2022 with some fascinating contributions based around the theme:

‘Leading to Care – Foregrounding Health and Well-being in Leadership Development and Education’.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some of the abstracts from the contributors to give you an idea of the depth and variety of sessions that are available to attend online over the two-day conference. Register for the free DLCC conference HERE

Case Studies presented from 10:30 – 12:00 on Tuesday 12 July 2022

Leadership Learning and Development for Global Health: A Case Study of Capacity Building in Southern Africa

Authors: Peter Case1, Rudo Chikodzore2, Precious Chitapi1, Amanda Marr Chung3, Jonathan Gosling1, Roly Gosling3,4, Katie Joyce1, Priscilla Mataure5, Greyling Viljoen1

Affiliations: (1) Bristol Leadership & Change Centre, University of the West of England, UK; (2) Ministry of Health and Child Care, Zimbabwe; (3) Institute for Global Health Sciences, University of California San Francisco, USA; (4) Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK (5) Women’s University in Africa, Harare, Zimbabwe

For the past eight years, Bristol Leadership & Change Centre (BLCC), UWE, has been collaborating closely with the Malaria Elimination Initiative (MEI) to improve the management and leadership of healthcare programmes in Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Eswatini and Namibia. Most recently, UWE has been working with MEI (a research centre based at the University of San Francisco, California) and the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) on a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project aimed at providing better integrated and more sustainable HIV prevention services in Zimbabwe. An integral part of our work in malaria and HIV prevention spaces, has been training programme staff in the use of participatory action research and learning methods, typically with a focus on identifying and addressing operational challenges.  The challenges that inhibit health service delivery can often be addressed by improving communication and coordination, clarifying lines of resourcing and accountability, maintaining motivation, providing adequate training and supervision, and removing bureaucratic silos. The training programmes, which sit alongside our health system change interventions are accredited via a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership (PPCL) awarded by the University of the West of England. The PPCL module has been delivered successfully in Zimbabwe (2017-18) and Namibia (2019-20) for cohorts of malaria control programme health professionals and, since 2020, UWE has been collaborating with the Women’s University of Africa on a third run of the module for twenty professionals working for the MoHCC in Zimbabwe.

CathArtic spaces: Bringing lived experience into leadership development

Elinor Rebeiro & Chris Hayes, Co-founders of Create Relate Ltd.

“Art is an expression of the human condition. It is a reflection of our memories and experiences, which are more often than not rooted in the world around us.”

(Vijayan et al 2022, p1)

Holding onto pain, grief, trauma is known to have a negative impact on our well-being, both mentally and physically (CIPD 2022, Vijayan et al, 2022). In our ‘private lives’ we are encouraged to open up, to talk to someone, to share how we feel (NHS 2021, Mind). This release of emotions can be known as catharsis (Vogel and Flint, 2021) But how does this play out when we are at work? Our work place is a place where we are meant to bring the best of ourselves, to maintain a control over our emotions continuously. Yet we often spend longer at work than we do at home and the work that we carry out can be emotionally charged with pressure, meeting overload, navigating complex relationships and the pressures to succeed – assuming that you buy into the duality and separation of ones home and work ‘self’. The pressures placed upon people during and following the pandemic have also brought about traumatic experiences.

The exploration of catharsis as a way to access deeply felt experiences is one we have been immersed in for some time. Using cathartic images as a way for people to be able to safely explore how they feel about the lived experience of their work lives is at the heart of this exploration. Understanding the shadows and challenges in our everyday lives offers up the opportunity to make sense of ourselves and each other. Cathartic spaces also allow us to recognise that we are not alone and enable the opportunity to make deeper more relational connections with other people. But, what happens when this learning is used for organisational and leadership development understanding? What happens if Leaders are not provided with the opportunity to also connect deeply to the challenges and shadows of their own experience? When we work within, what Herron calls a “non-cathartic society” (Herron, 1998) we cannot tolerate in others what we cannot tolerate within ourselves. This disconnect between repressed felt experience and the observing of and feeling of others experience can make it too hard to explore, too hard to accept or embrace and can lead to the rejection of this felt experience either in the form of denial of its ‘truth’ or through a recognition of the experiences, followed by a refusal to share back the learning for fear that the content is too sensitive, too raw to be made sense of, or be embraced as learning that could support how leadership happens.

Using organisational examples and drawing on our work creating cathartic spaces within organisations we seek to explore the opportunities, often unappreciated, that this type of space and the learning and understanding that comes from it can bring. We will also highlight common and possibly damaging shadows that come from not taking this learning seriously. As a final point we will explore how cathartic spaces can catalyse a rethink into leadership development in its wider context.

HIV Programme Management and Service Delivery in Zimbabwe

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Bristol Leadership and Change Centre‘s Professor Peter Case recently returned from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where he helped run a series of workshops linked to a project funded by a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant and being delivered in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco. The project, which Peter co-leads, is entitled ‘Optimizing Stakeholder Operating Models for HIV Prevention in Zimbabwe’ (OPTIMISE, for short) and has been running since June 2020. It aims to assist the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC) to improve HIV prevention programme management and service delivery. The workshops took place between 4-8th April and marked a mid-stream opportunity to review progress to date and plan activities for the remainder of the project. Using participative action research as the main approach to leading change, the intervention seeks to integrate HIV prevention services (which are typically funded by a variety of external donors) and move them forward in a more effective and sustainable way in relation to MOHCC strategy.

The workshops involved reviewing progress with HIV health professionals representing five pilot districts in Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North and Manicaland provinces. The national director the MOHCC HIV Programme, Dr Murunguni, and his deputy were present to hear and comment on the progress updates, as were Provincial Medical Directors and other senior administrators. There was also workshop representation from key INGO partners, such as, the Clinton Health Access Initiative and Population Services International, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and prospective future donors, including the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). District-level research groups highlighted key improvements to service delivery that had been achieved to date and discussed the results of ‘user research’ presented by the UCSF/UWE team. The events were a great success, with strong endorsements for the OPTIMISE project coming from the MOHCC and the prospect of future funding to expand the work stemming from the review exercise.

On the final day of events, 18 healthcare professionals associated with the OPTIMISE project and enrolled on FBL/UWE’s Post-Graduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership (PPCL) had to opportunity to present and report on independent project work that they had completed as part of their degree. The module is being delivered in collaboration with a local HE provider, the Women’s University in Africa, and, as evidenced by the project presentations, is contributing significantly to the strengthening of leadership and management capabilities of Zimbabwe’s HIV Programme staff. Thanks go to the UWE/WUA local tutors, Dr Greyling Viljoen and Dr Priscilla Mataure, for their help in delivering the PPCL presentation workshop. The team is also grateful to Katie Joyce, UWE PPCL module leader, for her support. As with the workshop outcomes, the presentations were very well received by senior MOHCC colleagues and the project donor.

HIV healthcare staff in Zimbabwe begin PG Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership

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Dr Greyling Viljoen and Dr Prisciplla Matuare (Women’s University in Africa), supported remotely by Professor Peter Case, recently delivered a two-day face-to-face training workshop (18-19 August 2021) for nineteen Zimbabwe healthcare professionals enrolled on the FBL Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership (PPCL). The students are also working as part of a Bill & Melinda Gates funded project co-led by Peter to restructure and improve HIV/AIDS prevention in Zimbabwe. The PPCL module is designed to enable students to combine their studies with experiential workplace learning.  

The PPCL programme forms an integral part of a project entitled ‘Optimizing Stakeholder Operating Models for HIV Prevention in Zimbabwe’ – OPTIMISE, for short. The project, which has been running since June 2020 and is due to conclude in May 2022, addresses health HIV service delivery in Manicaland, Matabeleland North and Matabelend South provinces. The aim is to support and capacitate the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) in working with stakeholders to develop and implement sustainability plans. This involves reviewing progress on the MoHCC strategy and facilitating the process of establishing goals, priorities and action plans. It also strives to create the necessary leadership coalition to drive change in the health service.

There is a diverse cohort of students on the PPCL module representing different levels with the system: from senior MoHCC directors through to front line staff working in health facilities. Students undertake theoretical studies supported by materials on Blackboard and are trained in the application of the project’s LEAD methodology. There is also a significant ‘supervised practice’ element of the course whereby students are supported in applying their learning.  

Thanks go to Katie Joyce (module leader) and UWE’s Faculty of Business and Law Professional Development Team for their excellent support in delivering the PPCL module.   The main collaborating partners for this work are the Malaria Elimination Initiative (University of California, San Francisco) Population Services International and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Multidisciplinary Research Teams and Transdisciplinary Impacts

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In September Peter Case, Professor of Organization Studies at UWE Bristol delivered a webinar for staff and doctoral students at the College of Business, Law & Governance – James Cook University in Australia. Here is a summary of his presentation, talking about multidisciplinary research teams and transdisciplinary impacts.

Researchers increasingly find themselves inhabiting a world in which sponsors demand that their work generate outcomes and impacts beyond the walls of academia. There is an expectation that applied research will yield beneficial changes to one or more of the following areas of life: economy, society, culture, public policy, the environment, health and wellbeing. Moreover, many of the problems that researchers face are extremely complex, if not ‘wicked’ (Rittel & Webber, 1973) in nature.

The challenges of tackling problems caused by climate change or trying to achieve sustainable development, for example, typically involve multiple stakeholder interests and are mediated by an array of interrelated socio-material factors.  Accommodating such high levels of complexity is an endeavour that, arguably, falls beyond the scope and capacity of any single disciplinary frame.

One response to challenges posed by complexity is to employ multidsiciplinary research teams. These teams typically comprise a diverse set of experts who bring particular specialist perspectives, theories and methodologies to bear on a given problem. Multidisciplinary teams thus afford a more holistic approach to the issue at hand and, moreover, hold the prospect of producing ‘joined up’ solutions to any given problem.

Peter Case recently gave a talk on this, sharing some of his experiences of working with mutlidisciplinary research teams in the context of complex problems and large scale projects. He spoke about drawing on his work in international development and global healthcare spaces to explore what is involved in forming teams, managing group dynamics and harnessing collective efforts to meet overall project aims and objectives.

Peter concluded by arguing that enhancing research impact entails moving beyong a strictly multidisciplinary approach to a transdisciplinary mode of stakeholder engagement; one in which academic researchers facilitate and contribute to wider dialogue with partner institutions and intended beneficiaries.

Fighting Malaria in Namibia: A New Cohort of Students Enroll in FBL’s Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership

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Professor Peter Case’s research on malaria healthcare service provision expanded to Namibia this year. Peter’s research teams – including three recent Zimbabwean graduates from the FBL Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership – are currently working with Namibia’s Vector-borne Diseases Control Programme to combat malaria by improving frontline prevention and treatment of the disease in Kavango Province.

In order to help make the overall Organization Development for Malaria Elimination work sustainable in the region, FBL is supporting a fresh cohort of twelve students (pictured) to complete a postgraduate certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership. The module was launched this week with a two-day course delivered in Rundu by Dr Greyling Viljoen. By all accounts, the taught programme was very well received and students gave extremely positive feedback on their experience. The efforts of FBL’s Professor Carol Jarvis and Felicity Cargill should also be acknowledged as they have assisted greatly with setting up the course and enrolling the new cohort.

Most of the students enrolled on the module are also members of project task force which is developing and implementing detailed action plans for malaria healthcare improvements in Kavango. Following the PPCL course, they will be working with Dr Viljoen and one of the Zimbabwean graduates from last year, Munashe Madinga of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, to review and further refine service improvement plans.

The overall project in Namibia is a collaboration between UWE and the Malaria Elimination Initiative, University of California San Francisco. The work is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

[Image: Back row: 1. Ms A Augustu, 2. Ms Loise Ambata, 3. Dr K Mapanga, 4. Ms A Ashivudhi, 5. Ms Julie Neidel, 6. Dr H David 7. Mr M Madinga

Front row: 1. Mr S Shashipapa, 2. Ms I Mendai,  3. Dr G Viljoen, 4. Ms E Eises 5. Ms S Haingura,  6. Mr S Nairenge ]

Ethical moments in International Development research with Professor Peter Case

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Professor Peter Case gave a seminar paper last week entitled, ‘Ethical moments in International Development research: Aporia, undecidability and the unintended consequences of ethnocentric ethics’, as part of the Ethics Seminar Series run by the University of Technology Sydney’s Business School. This was the last Business Ethics Research seminar for the year at UTS.

Professor Peter Case works between James Cook University and UWE Bristol.

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