Guidance

Productivity challenge 2: Management and leadership in supply chains and networked organisations

This challenge focuses on enhancing management and leadership capability in UK firms in the manufacturing, construction and legal sectors, by supporting "prime" organisations to work with their supply chains to develop skills and embed effective management practices.

Documents

UK Futures Programme: management and leadership competition brief

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

The ‘UK Futures Programme: management and leadership competition brief’ is the original competition brief to which these projects responded.

Projects

These projects have concluded. Links to evaluation reports on the projects are below.

Jaguar Land Rover

Using a self-assessment tool, companies benchmarked their current performance, which will was followed with short bursts of learning supported by coaching and mentoring, all tailored to individual company needs.

Created a flexible and affordable modular practice management training resource leading to a recognised accreditation, which fit around business demands for both private and not-for-profit organisations.

Action Sustainability

Created an online supply chain management programme and leadership network, featuring videos and e-learning resources.

University of Chester

Took current thinking and research into leadership approaches and trialled them on live projects to see their effectiveness in different organisations.

Black Country Consortium

Delivered a Manufacturing Supply Chain Management programme consisting of bite-sized modules for supply chain SMEs, offered individual modules addressing specific business needs, and trialled a skills passport to record achievement and participation.

Robert Woodhead

Developed a construction industry-specific Business Leadership and Management Support programme, held workshops to understand the most effective management and leadership practices, underpinned by work-based qualifications mapped to industry quality standards.

Civil Engineering Contractors Association

Conducted research into what good management and leadership looks like, involving collaborative discussions with leading organisations and a series of regional seminars to include supply chain members’ input, culminating in a national Infrastructure Leaders event to present the research outcomes.

You can read about the successful projects in our Management and leadership press release.

What works

The outputs and results of the projects are available in the brochure Strengthening the links in the chain: Management and leadership in supply chains and networked organisations. This also looks at how the sector can take forward the developments to date.

The independent evaluation report draws out findings and lessons from this Productivity Challenge, including how other sectors should respond to skills deficiencies.

The Robert Woodhead case study takes an in depth look at one project and provides further illustration of the overall lessons and findings.

The Action Sustainability case study takes an in depth look at one project and provides further illustration of the overall lessons and findings.

The Jaguar Land Rover case study takes an in depth look at one project and provides further illustration of the overall lessons and findings.

Our thematic report on collaboration brings together lessons from this Productivity Challenge and others. This includes identifying factors which enable employers to work together effectively.

Our thematic report on supply chains brings together lessons from this Productivity Challenge and others. It looks at a particular type of collaboration, that which occurs through supply chains and networked organisations to promote workforce development.

Other Productivity Challenges

Our introduction page provides information on the other Productivity Challenges.

Updates to this page

Published 16 June 2014
Last updated 17 August 2016 + show all updates
  1. Added case study for Jaguar Land Rover

  2. Updated page content, including details of ongoing projects.

  3. First published.

Sign up for emails or print this page