Looking Ahead — Implications and Opportunities

Abstract

The original work on Benefits Management (Ward et al., 1996) was driven by practitioner needs and was carried out with significant practitioner involvement. The driver for this research was to contribute to management practice and the guiding philosophy was the participatory paradigm (Breu and Peppard, 2003). As Lyttinen (1999) comments a significant contribution to practice is typically beyond the scope of a PhD study: ‘My experience shows that it takes at least three to five years to do anything. Thus anything that really addresses relevant concerns is beyond the scope of a single Ph.D. study.’ The projects that support this book took place over an eight-year period and draw on strong foundations in earlier work by others. The ongoing research has a number of implications for managerial practice.

In the final chapter, I will set out the implications of the work for policy and practice and set out future research directions.