Role
Ani Raiden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Nottingham Business School. She is a Course Leader for the Masters in Management suite of courses, and teaches Principles of Management and International HRM. Ani also supervises PhD and Professional Doctorate students on international HRM, health and safety, social value, construction management and organisational change related topics. Ani is an active researcher and a member of the College Research Ethics Committee.
Ani is an experienced and innovative teacher with a strong interest in co-creation of learning. The International HRM module is a case study-based learning journey which culminates into a business meeting style assessment. Workshops on the Principles of Management module benefit from student-led seminars, which help students take ownership for their learning and develop leadership skills together with academic and context specific knowledge.
Ani's research interests focus on contemporary and strategic issues in the construction industry, for example, social value and quality of working life, and build on her earlier work on people resourcing (Raiden et al, 2009; Raiden and Sempik, 2012), work-life balance (Raiden and Räisänen, 2013) and gender (Raiden, 2016; Sandberg et al, 2018; Raiden and Räisänen, 2019). Ani is the lead author of Social Value in Construction, a first of its kind text in this space; and a co-investigator on a CITB and industry joint-funded programme of research on Innovation Driven Procurement (IDP) with colleagues from the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment (ADBE) within NTU.
Ani is a Carbon Literacy Project Certified Carbon Literacy Trainer and a facilitator on the global programme of Carbon Literacy training organised by Nottingham Business School (NBS)/ NTU.
Career overview
Prior to joining NBS in December 2007, Ani worked at the University of Glamorgan Business School (now University of South Wales) and the Department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University. Her PhD on 'The Development of a Strategic Employee Resources Framework (SERF) for Construction Organisations' bridged her academic interests and experience in industry. As a Human Resource Transformation Executive (Diversity) at Eircom, an Irish communications company, Ani specialised in equal opportunities and managing diversity before embarking on an academic career.
Ani has a range of international experience, having taught management and leadership in the UK, Germany, and Bahrain, and worked in industry in Finland, Ireland, and the UK. She has supervised PhD and Professional Doctorate candidates from Africa, Europe, North America, and the Middle East, and taught a diverse body of international students on the MSc Management suite.
Research areas
Ani's research interests currently focus on contemporary and strategic issues in the construction industry, for example, social value and quality of working life. This builds on her earlier work on people resourcing (Raiden et al, 2009; Raiden and Sempik, 2012), work-life balance (Raiden and Räisänen, 2013) and gender (Raiden, 2016; Sandberg et al, 2018; Raiden and Räisänen, 2019).
Ani is the lead author of Social Value in Construction (Raiden et al, 2019), a first of its kind text in this space; Social Value in Practice (Raiden and King, 2022); and a co-investigator on a CITB and industry joint-funded programme of research on Innovation Driven Procurement (IDP) with colleagues from the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment (ADBE) within NTU.
Ani supervises doctoral students within Nottingham Business School (NBS) and in Architecture, Design, and the Built Environment (ADBE) at NTU, and Construction Engineering Masters candidates at University of Cambridge. She has examined doctoral students both internally (within NBS and ADBE) and externally (for example at Leeds, Reading, and UCL in the UK; and at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark, University of Helsinki, Finland, and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden). She also examines Construction Engineering Masters dissertation students at the University of Cambridge.
Research opportunities
Co-creating social value
Co-creating social value involves multiple project partners in a network of operations working together to make a difference. Such networks may involve public sector bodies, private sector organisations, and third sector enterprises. Often the partners’ priorities and mission vary widely, and it may be challenging to maintain focus and momentum on creating and delivering social value, especially when other pressing business concerns (such as economic constraints) are brought to fore. Within this project, we are interested in how the project partners then negotiate and re-negotiate the terms so that the potential social impact is not compromised.
Understanding how social value is considered, created, and delivered in the public sector
Social value in public sector organisations – who owns it and who takes ownership for it? Within this project we want to ask questions about the fundamental ways of organising within public sector organisations that may help and/or hinder the creation of social value. Some local authorities tend to see social value as an issue specific to the procurement team only; something to consider as part of supply-chain management (akin to social procurement). Other local authorities take a more holistic view, bringing in multi-functional teams to consider how to best create social value. Ultimately, our aim is to critically review current practice and engage with practitioners in this area to develop an in-depth understanding of what works well in managing and delivering social value within the public sector and what are the key challenges, how these could be overcome, and what theoretical frameworks could be employed/ developed to enhance practice.
Understanding social value orientation
Social value orientation is a construct rooted in social psychology that tells us how much weight a person attaches to the welfare and needs of others in relation to their own. Research shows that social value orientation is predictive of important behavioural characteristics such as cooperative behaviour in social dilemmas, helping behaviour, donation behaviour, pro-environmental behaviour, and negotiation behaviour. It follows that cooperative social value orientation may also be predictive of interest in and commitment to creating social value, and thereafter the success of organisational initiatives. Determining the social value categories (i.e. cooperative/ prosocial, individualistic, or competitive social value orientation) and social value orientation angle (within a social value orientation slider scale) of two groups of respondents vis-à vis their contributions to social value and social impact is one of the objectives of this research project. We will compare and contrast the responses from active practitioners in this area (i.e. those engaged with social value) and people yet to be convinced of the concept.
Measuring Social Value
Measuring social value and assessing social impact remains one of the most controversial and challenging topics in this space. Thus, it is an imperative that we continually and critically examine and reflect on how numbers are produced and used (or misused) by policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. Management thinking is often dominated by quantitative metrics and rankings, yet social value outcomes are often visible only in the long-term, they are complex, and nuanced –What are the key challenges in moving away from a focus on numbers? Does the problem with ‘fake news’ and mistrust in experts (and the stats they produce) allow us to open up discussion and debate about qualitative ways of considering impact?
External activity
- Co-Editor of the Social Value in the Built Environment Book Series, Abingdon: Routledge (Taylor and Francis group), with Professor Martin Loosemore, UTS, Sydney, Australia
- Construction Leadership Council (CLC) Skills Plan 2021-2025 Task Group Lead (2021-2022) on Challenge 2.3 Routes into Industry – HE: HE providers to embed FIR in recruitment criteria
- Vice-Chair (2013-2015), Chair (2015-2017) and then Immediate Past Chair (2017-2019), Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM)
- Chartered member, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
- Fellow, Higher Education Academy (HEA)
Publications
Sherratt, F. and Raiden A. (2023) Taking a new view for researching occupational safety in construction: site safety practice, Construction Management and Economics, https://doi.org/10.1080/01446193.2023.2172195
Raiden, A.B. and King, A. (2022) Social Value in Practice, Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, ISBN: 9780367457150
Raiden, A.B., King, A., Peace, J., de Sousa, S., Alvarez, L., and Osbon, K. (2021) Co-creating social value in placemaking: the grand balancing act, ICE Engineering Sustainability, DOI:10.1680/jensu.21.00046
Raiden, A.B. and King, A. (2021) Social Value, Organisational Learning, and the Sustainable Development Goals in the Built Environment, Resources, Conservation & Recycling (Virtual Special Issue on The Sustainable Development Goals, Organizational Learning and Efficient Resource Management in Construction), DOI:/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105663
Raiden, A. and Räisänen, C. (2019) Combining Gendered Strategies, Coaching and a Narrative Approach to Examine the Effect of Behavioural Ambidexterity on Individual Well-being and High Performance Work, In Wheatley, D. (ed.) Handbook of Research Methods on the Quality of Working Lives, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, DOI 10.4337/9781788118774, ISBN: 978 1 78811 876 7
Raiden, A.B., Loosemore, M., King, A. and Gorse, C. (2019) Social Value in Construction, Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, ISBN: 9781138295094
Sandberg, R., Raisanen, C., Löwstedt, M. and Raiden, A. (2018) Liberating the Semantics: Embodied Work(Man)ship in Construction, In Sage, D. and Vitry, C. (eds.) Societies under Construction: Geographies, Sociologies and Histories of Building, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-3-319-73996-0
Raiden, A. (2016) Horseplay, care and hands on hard work: gendered strategies of a project manager on a construction site, Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 34, Issue 7-8, pp. 508-521
Raiden, A. and Räisänen, C. (2013) Striving to achieve it all: men and work-family-life balance in Sweden and the UK, Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 31, Issue 8, pp. 899-913
Raiden, A.B. and Sempik, A. (2012) Illusions of equity, procedural justice and consistency: A critique of people resourcing ‘best practice’ in construction organisations, In Dainty, A. and Loosemore, M. (eds) Human resource management in construction: a critical approach, Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, pp. 226-251, ISBN: 978-0-415-59307-6
Raidén, A.B., Dainty, A.R.J. and Neale, R.H. (2009) Employee resourcing in the construction industry, Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, ISBN: 978-0-415-37163-6
UN Sustainable Development Goals
Ani's work relates to many United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They offer the means for shaping a constructive, collective response to the pressing challenges (wicked problems) of our present times, for example, the climate emergency and increasing inequality in society and in the workplace.
