ILR and Warwick Hold Seminar in U.K.
Faculty from Cornell’s ILR School and the University of Warwick’s Business School (WBS) met on June 19 in Warwick, United Kingdom, for the first ILR-Warwick Seminar. The event was made possible in part by ILR alumnus Michael Borkan, BS ’79. Michael recently established the Abraham and Henrietta Brettschneider Warwick Exchange Fund, in memory of his grandparents. The Fund helps support an ILR-Warwick exchange agreement to assist research travel by faculty, students, and scholars interested in the study of workplace issues. WBS’s Industrial Relations Research Unit is a major center for the study of industrial relations in Europe.
Participating from Cornell were ILR professors Rose Batt, Rebecca Givan, and Sarosh Kuruvilla. WBS Dean Howard Thomas and Professor Paul Marginson were joined by Warwick colleagues Paul Edwards, Anne-Marie Greene, Sonia Liff, and Glenn Morgan. The seminar included a presentation by Rose Batt on international service management and employment systems, a global research project that involves an international comparison of the development of the call center industry. Seminar discussions also focused on how to further develop ILR-Warwick collaboration around research and Ph.D., undergraduate, and faculty exchanges.
Following the seminar, Kuruvilla noted, “This was a productive and very useful seminar for two universities with remarkably similar research and teaching interests.”
Marginson added, " We were delighted to welcome our three Cornell colleagues to Warwick and enjoyed purposeful discussions on developing and strengthening links in both teaching and research. The first Cornell-Warwick seminar gave faculty and doctoral researchers at Warwick here early insight into the rich cross-country comparative findings emerging from Rosemary Batt's international survey of work and employment in call centres. We look forward to more opportunities of this kind. "
ILR too looks forward to working with colleagues and students at Warwick as our international partnership advances, and we thank Michael Borkan for his continued support of this important initiative.