Malcolm was a full time member of the School from 1980 until his retirement in 2010. During that time he established the Management Science and Information Systems Group and was its leader for 15 years. He was the director of undergraduate programmes in the school for 20 years and effectively director of the School’s teaching and learning for his last 15 years. For 18 years he was part of the School’s senior management team and from 1995 to 2008 he was either deputy director or acting director of the school, being acting director on two occasions. Based on these experiences and the expertise gained, Malcolm continues to provide support for School’s accreditation processes by collecting, processing and analysing large amounts of critical data.
In the later 1990s Malcolm managed the HEFCE funded FDTL project examining and promoting Student Feedback Systems nationally and from the 1990s to the mid 2000s was part of the national Subject Benchmarking Groups for Business and Management standards in their original and subsequently revised forms.
Malcolm’s teaching interests were in promoting a methodology for mathematical modelling whilst teaching core business mathematics, OR and statistics. Latterly he concentrated his teaching on aspects of business simulation, encouraging the use of various computer packages. Since retiring he has continued to give some lectures and take tutorials on several modules as well as supervise IT lab sessions for Business Forecasting.
Malcolm has written papers in a variety of areas ranging from group theory and quantum mechanics through the teaching of mathematical modelling to recurrent competitive bidding. However, his main area of interest shifted to the impact of IT in small businesses, the interaction between organisational issues and technical factors in information systems development including the problems of failures of systems projects and most recently the development of appropriate systems for emergency management. Malcolm is still contributing to this area by supporting younger researchers and PhD students in emergency management systems.
Research interests
- Mathematical modelling of recurrent competitive bidding
- Impact of IT in small businesses
- Interaction between organisational issues and technical factors in information systems development
- Problems of failures of systems projects
- Application of expert systems in management