Research at Aston Business School focuses on providing excellent, evidence-based and engaged insight for businesses, organisations, professional services, and their role in society.

Research is organised via six academic departments:

• Accounting
• Economics, Finance and Entrepreneurship
• Law
• Marketing and Strategy
• Operations and Information Management
• Work and Organisation

Aston’s core research strengths lie in engaging business and industry with excellent and relevant research. The School has significant expertise in the area of SMEs, social enterprise and entrepreneurship in general, as well as in advanced services for industry, and other businesses.

Research Centres

Our five research centres provide key insights to researchers, students, and the private and third sector, as well as policy-makers:

Advanced Services Group

The Advanced Services Group is a centre of excellence specialising in servitization—the organisational transformation of manufacturing companies to compete through advanced services. Many manufacturers have recognised that just making and selling products on a transactional basis isn’t enough to sustain reliable revenue streams and guarantee future growth.

Successful adopters of servitization have recognised that competing through services combined with the product to deliver outcomes for customers—or helping them ‘get the job done’—rather than just selling them the product to do the job, can lead to better, longer-term relationships with customers and much more reliable revenue streams.

Aston Centre for Growth

Aston Centre for Growth offers leading growth programmes and other opportunities for entrepreneurs and SMEs looking to grow their business. The centre has experience working with hundreds of SMEs to support their business growth through high-profile programmes such as the Aston Programme for Small Business Growth and Productivity Through People, alongside investment ready pitching competitions and enterprise skills development. The Enterprise Research Centre operates within the Centre for Growth.

Enterprise Research Centre

The national Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) is operated jointly by Aston Business School and Warwick Business School. It was established to answer one central question: ‘What drives SME Growth and Productivity?’ It has become the UK’s leading independent centre for research, knowledge and expertise on SME growth and entrepreneurship with a reputation for research that is both rigorous and policy-relevant.

Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CRÈME)

The Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Research (CRÈME) has transformed the ‘perceptions’ of ethnic minority entrepreneurs by working with business policy makers and influential organisations to engage collaboratively with overlooked or disregarded business communities. 

Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Business Prosperity

The Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Business Prosperity (LBP) is a network of researchers and experts across national and international networks with core strengths in the areas of productivity, trade, international economics and business, skills, regional economic growth, and practice-oriented enhancement of for-profit and social enterprise performance.

Research Expertise

Research at Aston Business School stretches beyond the five focused research centres and addresses a wide variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary themes.

• Accounting Education and Pedagogy
• Aston Research Centre for Healthy Ageing (ARCHA)
• Behavioural Insights
• Business Analytics
• Contract and Property Rights
• Corporate Law
• Cybersecurity Capabilities
• Decision Making and Strategy Process
• Economics of Industrial Organisation
• Emerging Economies
• Entrepreneurial Team Coaching
• Finance
• Global ICT Management
• International Business
• Law and Technology
• Legal Education
• NGOs and Sustainable Development
• Organisational History, Heritage and Craft Production
• Productivity Analysis
• Responsible Business
• Retailing
• Servitization and Industrial Service Innovation
• Strategy as Practice
• Systems Modelling and Simulation
• The Economics of Innovation