The paper “Link between Business and Universities - Performance of Arts and Humanities Research Council” is a fascinating example of a management report. The mandate of AHRC as discussed by the paper can be summed up as supporting and promoting acquisition, dissemination, and application of knowledge from academia to the arts and humanities industries within the UK. As the paper establishes, this is aimed at elevating the status of these industries and their participants in the UK’s social, cultural, and economic contexts to world-class esteem. AHRC achieves this in two ways namely, funding research in the industries and enabling the industry players to access postgraduate studies that they can use to channel the acquired knowledge back to the industries.
The paper conducts a SWOT analysis of AHRC, concluded that the organization has many strengths and opportunities working for its execution of the mandate that the weaknesses and threats, and that AHRC has effectively worked around the threats and found ways to overcome the weaknesses. They have served their mandate exemplary well in the last five years and there are still many opportunities to increase the collaboration between universities and businesses still exist. The paper then proceeds to conduct an analysis using the Porter’s Five Forces model, concluding that AHRC is in a very promising position in the market today.
For instance, the paper details how most companies in the UK have shown increasing support for collaborations in research and this may reduce the scarcity of such grants. UK companies are increasingly realizing the need for continued research and are thus competing to explore ways and partnerships in the research building. These eventualities are working to the benefit of AHRC since the companies will welcome the research initiatives provided on a centralized system as AHRC’s. The paper arrives at a conclusion that AHRC’s highly placed esteem works to their benefit in executing its mandate effectively. The paper also constructs a balanced scorecard for AHRC catering for the four necessary perspectives of a BSC model.