Magnus George
MBA (Lancaster University - distinction) 2000
BSc (Edinburgh University) 1989 Ecological Science - Wildlife & Fisheries Management (2.i)
Business Programmes Manager
http://corriemoss.wordpress.com/Blog
http://corriemoss.wordpress.com/
Department
Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Office Hours
Catch me when you can - students please get in touch and I can see you when it suits you
Professional Role
Director of the GOLD Programme
LUMS representative on the Business Enterprise Board
Current Teaching
I regularly tutor on undergraduate business planning modules, and supervise dissertation work across undergraduate and postgraduate degree schemes. My work with small business owners comes under the banner of executive education. This coming autumn I will be contributing to Entrepreneurship 101: concepts, myths and realities.
Research Interests
I am studying for my PhD, supervised by Professor Carole Howarth (IEED) and Professor Susan Cartwright (School of Health and Medicine). My area of interest is the experience of stress, coping mechanisms and well-being issues relevant to small business owner managers.
Other areas of interest, mainly from an action learning perspective, are small business leadership development and governance; and the role of the outdoors in well-being and personal development.
I spent much of the 1990s working in the South Atlantic deep-sea fishing industry, which generated a number of scientific papers (see below). As a former squid biologist I find it useful to have a background working with slimy, ink-spouting invertebrates now that I am in academia ;)
Current Research
As a discipline-crossing person myself I have a strong interest in the general management ethos, and in the broad enterprise and entrepreneurship education agenda. My role in bringing our first Entrepreneur in Residence (ESRC Business Placement Fellowship, RES-186-27-0003) to LUMS is an example of how that interest has become manifest. I have two main areas of research interest.
Workplace stress and well-being in SMEs
Despite numerous studies on organisational workplace stress and well-being, the SME domain remains under-examined (George and Hamilton, 2011*). A LUMS pump priming award has prompted development of study of this area, which now forms the subject of a PhD project. Focusing on entrepreneurial business leaders, this project seeks to better understand the interplay between workplace stressors, work-life effects, coping mechanisms, entrepreneurial learning and the role of positive psychology, and their impacts upon company survival, growth and performance.
I propose to conduct a large scale survey of UK-based entrepreneurs in order to better understand the differences that exist between their experiences of the stress and well-being phenomena and those of managers in larger organisations. Alongside this activity, I am developing a series of action research style interventions, such as a recent well-being workshop which I organised (see my blog for more on this).
The potential role of non-executive directors in SMEs
Non-executive directors are a mandatory aspect of corporate governance and there are tantalising indications of their value for smaller businesses. Moreover, the day-to-day requirements of small business can make owner managers lose sight of the long-term goals and personal vision which launched their business, leading to strategic drift. Studies of entrepreneurial networks reveal their importance, emphasizing that what occurs within networks is critical. Non-executive directors (NEDs) are a specific type of potentially important network support for SME owners. The 1992 Cadbury report emphasised the benefits for all companies to utilise a NED. However, despite government encouragement for NEDs, smaller firms remain less likely to have NEDs. Interestingly, small businesses with an NED have been found to grow faster and to extract a premium upon business sale.
This project will investigate how interactions within entrepreneurial networks affect innovation by studying a small business support programme (GOLD) that simulates both having and being a non-executive director. In GOLD, SME owner managers work in a simulated board structure, with cohort members operating as non-executive directors to each other in self-managed groups (George, Gordon and Hamilton, 2010). Using qualitative methods, our research seeks to explore the impact on SME networks of simulating having, and being, a non-executive director (NED), and the effects of this on the entrepreneurs, the resilience and growth of their businesses, and innovation and growth. This project is core funded by SME contributions, and is supported by an ESRC Follow-on Fund award (Non-executive directors in UK SMEs: having one and being one, RES-189-25-0245).
Looking ahead, I would like to become involved in investigating student lifestyle and well-being issues, and I am inspired in that by recent evidence coming out of the US that college students gain in BMI during their time of study – a period in which lifelong habits are formed. I wonder how we can re-energise the common-sense in the old dictum of mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a helathy body)?
*George, M. J. A. & Hamilton, E. (2011), Entrepreneurial Satisfaction: Job Stressors, Coping and Well-being Among Small Business Owner Managers. In Cooper, C. L. & Burke, R. J. (Eds.) Human Resource Management in Small Businesses: Achieving Peak Performance. London, Gower.
Research Grants
Include:
ESRC Business Placement Fellowships, under which we have hosted an Entrepreneur in Residence (RES-186-27-0003, award £32,902) and an Innovator in Residence (RES-186-27-0016, award £24,761.37).
ESRC Follow-on-Fund award - Non-executive directors in UK SMEs: having one and being one (RES-189-25-0245, award £70,768).
A LUMS pump-priming award to investigate stress among small business owner managers (award £1,450).
Also a host of awards related to our work in knowledge exchange and business support, impact generation and related activities. These include several large European Regional Development Fund awards (typically seven figures); a major contribution to the award of £5m for the Northern Leadership Academy; the roll-out of LEAD across the NW of England (£10m) and into Wales (£5m).
Profile
The mainstay of my work at LUMS has been the leadership of delivery of a programme of business support initiatives, as well as the generation of models for commercialisation and roll-out of those activities. Mainly targeted at small and medium enterprises in the NW, these projects combine contact with a diversity of organisations, ranging from the regional development agency to onwer-managed businesses, with project management and contract fulfilment.
A marine biologist and ecologist by training, my first job was on a salmon farm in the Scottish Highlands. Fulfilling a long-held ambition, I travelled to the Falkland Islands in 1990, to begin a ten-year sojourn in the South Atlantic. My work centred on the deep-sea fishing industry, and included stints in ships' agency; cold storage and stevedoring; and ship chandlery. Though it is a while ago now, these notes generate several marine, fisheries, and Southern Ocean related contacts every year, which I welcome!
I spent three years working for the Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department, serving as a sea-going scientist, and then ashore running the scientific observer programme. My research interests in that period focussed on squid ecology (principally of the onychoteuthid Moroteuthis ingens), Southern Ocean marine trophic systems, and deep-sea fishes, leading to a number of publications in marine biology journals. I spent two austral winters as Marine Officer on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, working alongside the military garrison there in a role that encompassed customs, harbour control, immigration and fishery officer elements. This was followed by three years running a Falklands-based plc involved in joint venture fishing operations with Japanese, Korean and Spanish partners. Target species were Illex and Loligo squid, hake species, and Patagonian toothfish. Additional activities included serving on the boards of Falklands Conservation, the Falkland Islands Development Corporation, and the Falklands' oil:environmental group. I returned to the UK in 1999, and took my MBA, after which I worked for a period in commercial market research consultancy before taking up a role in LUMS.
My two young sons deserve and receive most of my free time. I look forward to sharing my passions with them as they grow. A keen angler all my life, my other interests involve spending time out of doors, whether camping, mountaineering, caving, skiing, running, competing in triathlons (currently on hold, planning Ironman when I am 45), or sea kayaking. A health and fitness enthusiast, I practice Olympic and power weightlifting, kettlebell training, qigong, and I have adopted a mix of the primal and Crossfit approaches to developing physical fitness.
Marine biology publications:
Jackson, G.D., Buxton, N.G., George, M.J.A., 2000, 'The diet of the southern Opah Lampris immaculatus on the Patagonian Shelf: the significance of the squid Moroteuthis ingens and anthropogenic plastic', Marine Ecology Progress., Ser. 206 pgs. 261-271
Jackson G.D., George M.J.A. and N.G. Buxton 1998. Distribution and abundance of the squid Moroteuthis ingens (Cephalopoda: Onychoteuthidae) in the Falkland Islands region of the South Atlantic. Polar Biology. 20 (3) : pp.161-169
George, M.J.A., Jackson, G.D., Green, C.P. and Robertson, S.G. 1998. Preliminary estimates of the age and growth of immature smooth oreo Pseudocyttus maculatus Gilchrist 1906 (Oreosomatidae) in the Falkland Islands region of the South Atlantic. Polar Biology. 19, 330-335
Jackson G.D., Buxton N.G. and M.J.A. George 1997. Beak length analysis of Moroteuthis ingens (Cephalopoda: Onychoteuthidae) from the Falkland Islands region of the Patagonian shelf. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, New York. 77 (4) : pp.1235-1238
Coggan, R.A., C.P. Nolan and M.J.A. George, 1996. Exploratory deep-sea fishing in the Falkland Islands, south-western Atlantic.. J. Fish Biol. 49 (Suppl. A):298-310
Yau, C., George, M.J.A., R.A. Coggan and J.A. Criado-Delgado, 1996. A preliminary study of two species of flatfish (family: Bothidae) from the south-west Atlantic.. J. Fish Biol. 49 (Suppl. A):330-336
George, M.J.A. and Hatfield, E.M.C., 1995. First records of mated female Loligo gahi (Cephalopoda: Loliginidae) in the Falkland Islands. J. Marine Biological Association of the U.K., 75:743-745
George, M.J.A. 1995. The G Greater Hooked Squid, Morotheuthis ingens. Warrah. 5:6-10
Publications
- Hamilton Ellie, Rose M B, George Magnus, Smith Susan and Stead V, 2012, 'Examining the link between research, teaching and engagment; a case study.'
View details - George Magnus, Gordon Ian and Hamilton Ellie, 2010, 'What is (the point of) an entrepreneur in residence? A description of the Lancaster University experience, plus some worldwide comparisons.', Industry and Higher Education, vol 24, no. 6
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