FAIL-SAFE WAYS OF WORKING
EMPOWERING RURAL
COMMUNITIES COUNTRY: Italy SCHOOL: Luiss Business School
COUNTRY: Spain SCHOOL: IE Business School
A two-year partnership aimed at empowering rural communities in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, has reached its conclusion, with the hope that it will give rise to new collaborations in the years ahead. Supported by local partner, Bahria University, Luiss Business School trained 94 students and 15 teachers from five universities in Pakistan to become effective leaders, communicators and agents of change for their communities, as part of the Youth Communicators for Development (YCD) project. The overriding aim being to empower communities to plan, create and manage their own programmes. Luiss Business School’s Roberto Dandi, who led the YCD project along with adjunct faculty member, Duilio Carusi, explained that the project’s approach meant that instead of local communities being ‘passive beneficiaries of services and funds’ the aim was to enable them to ‘become protagonists of their self-development’. The proje ct brought Luiss Business School, the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) Islamabad together within the framework of the wider Programme for Poverty Reduction (PPR). ‘PPR aims to bring sustainability to the social and economic development of Pakistan. It creates a bridge between community and youth to bring change with engagement and sustainable solutions,’ said Shakira Allahbaksh, a Youth Communicator for Development. Students involved in the project gathered data in the field and are now completing reports on topics that include sustainable tourism, women’s education, rural development, child labour, health and nutrition, and drug addiction. ‘The YCD Project is very much in line with the mission of Luiss Business School, the place where students translate academic knowledge into concrete actions, to face global challenges related to the evolution of our economy and society,’ said Raffaele Oriani, Head of Custom Programmes and Consulting at Luiss Business School, adding: ‘This is a perfect example of a project that potentially has an impact not only on the economic side, but also on social side and, in particular, to challenge politicians worldwide.’ / Tim Banerjee Dhoul (TBD)
The current business narrative applauds those that take risks, as long as they take the opportunity to learn when things don’t go right. Rhetoric around MBA learning has emphasised the importance of creating safe spaces for students to fail – but what happens when there is no ‘safe’ space for failure? Co-authored by IE Business School’s (IE) Emmanouil Avgerinos, research entitled ‘The Effect of Failure on Performance over Time: The Case of Cardiac Surgery Operations’ details how organisations can learn from responses to failure in the context of life and death. In an examination of more than 4,000 cases from cardiac surgery operations, the research found that when a surgeon ‘failed’ and their patient died, the surgeon’s work increased in quality in the long term, as they were able to learn and gain expertise from the incident. However, in the short term, their performance suffered due to needing time to recover psychologically from the death of a patient. However, the research also found that this negative impact could be significantly reduced if a surgeon felt psychologically safe – those working in teams with colleagues they had previously worked with, for example, did not see such a significant slump in their short-term output. An additional simulation analysis, meanwhile, indicated that the impact of collaborating with colleagues with whom surgeons are already familiar could even reduce the average length of stay in hospital for patients by as much as three days. While this has clear implications for the healthcare sector, especially during the pandemic, the approach could be transferred to any industry. ‘Working with familiar colleagues can provide the necessary relief since it offers a safe environment for employees leading to a smoother post-failure transition period,’ explained Emmanouil Avgerinos, an Associate Professor of Decision Sciences in the Operations and Technology area at IE. / Ellen Buchan (EB)
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