The P&Q Interview: How Liverpool Business School Is Building A Bigger Name By Staying Local

You could say Adam Shore’s path to leading a business school looks much like the kind of education he now wants Liverpool Business School to deliver. That is practical, hands-on, and rooted in the needs of the community around it.

After studying actuarial science at Swansea University, Shore started a PhD before opening an indoor climbing center. At 24, he raised about £500,000 to build the business, learning entrepreneurship by doing it.

He returned to the classroom as Associate Professor and Director of Learning and Teaching for the School of Management at Swansea University. When he was asked to design an entrepreneurship course, he skipped the traditional emphasis on business plans and theory. Students went through a boot camp, then worked in consulting teams with real businesses to better understand what it actually takes to run one. Many were short on resources and needed help with everything from marketing to finance. Students got real-world experience while the businesses got people who were studying business fundamentals.

“It was very much not a theoretical thing. It was getting your hands dirty, getting your sleeves rolled up, and really doing the activity,” Shore tells Poets&Quants, now director of Liverpool Business School since 2023.

Today, Shore embeds the same philosophy when steering Liverpool Business School, part of John Moores University in the port city in North West England.

“We’re kind of fiercely applied in what we do, particularly around collaboration with communities, community organizations, and social value.”

P&Q INTERVIEW WITH ADAM SHORE

Liverpool Business School traces its roots to the Liverpool School and College of Commerce, founded in 1898 to provide business and legal education in service of the city’s economic development. Working local still centers its mission more than century later.

Shore joined John Moores in 2018 when the business school was split into three separate units. Those merged into a single, unified Liverpool Business School, with Shore as director.

It now enrolls about 4,000 students in the UK and another 4,000 studying through international partnerships and distance programs around the world. It is pursuing AACSB accreditation, expanding short-form and lifelong-learning offerings, and continuing to build a transnational education network rather than relying heavily on international students coming to Liverpool.

Shore has carried the same practical, community-focused philosophy that shaped his own career into the way he runs the school. Through Liverpool’s Business Clinic, students consult for local companies and organizations, while faculty work with employers and public-sector partners — including the National Health Service — on leadership development, workforce planning, and other applied projects. He talks about the school’s purpose in terms of building talent and opportunity in Liverpool and the wider region.

The approach has not gone unnoticed. It was named Business School of the Year at both the 2025 Times Higher Education Awards and the Educate North Awards.

Poets&Quants spoke with Shore about Liverpool’s rise, the advantages of staying rooted in a regional economy, and why business schools may need to rethink not just what they teach, but the shape of the degree itself.

What about the opportunity to take on the directorship appealed to you? And what is the value proposition of Liverpool John Moores University? 

I think that’s a good two-part story. What I saw was this kind of sleeping giant, in some ways, and there’s a little bit of an underdog story there as well. 

The business school within LJMU, and I think perhaps a little bit externally, was not well recognized or understood. Certainly, when I arrived, we were very much languishing at the bottom of the league tables. 

But when I looked into what was happening, it had all of the elements. There was great teaching. There were great pockets of research. There was a really good, positive culture. There was a good vibe, a good energy and happiness within the faculty, and there was a real dedication to the student. 

I think that’s one of the things Liverpool John Moores has always focused on, very much around social mobility. The majority of the students who come to the university are from a local context, and 50% of those students are from the most deprived backgrounds in the UK. They’re often the first generation in their families to go to university. They don’t come with huge social capital, and we provide those opportunities for them. 

You see that sort of transformative education really working in supporting their life goals, but also supporting regional regeneration, which is one of the core purposes and the 200-year mission of what is now Liverpool John Moores University. 

The other key thing that it had, which is kind of unique in the UK, is that many of the ex-polytechnics, or post-92s, took on the city’s business school moniker. So we hold the trademark of Liverpool Business School. That’s a huge asset that has easy global recognition. Wherever you go, what are you? We’re Liverpool Business School. It is what it says on the tin. 

I was keen to live up to that and create something that lived up to that moniker. 

What is distinct about Liverpool Business School? What is your identity? 

We’re kind of fiercely applied in what we do, particularly around collaboration with communities, community organizations, and social value.  

We work really closely in partnership. We’re really responsive to the needs of partners, which was recognized in our 2023 EFMD Excellence in Practice Award  where we were up against the likes of IMD and Lego coming together. Again, it’s sort of that little guy really achieving above its expected parameters. 

To achieve that award and break through in peer recognition as well is, I think, recognition of how we work with industry, how we collaborate, and how we provide an immersive, engaged curriculum for our students that is responsive and adaptive and tries to really understand the implications of the real world. 

We’ve been playing with AI while people were going, “Don’t use it. It’s bad for plagiarism.” We’ve been playing with gaming and simulation forever. We’ve been kind of leading on that global business clinic approach to education. 

All of our students now go through this business clinic approach, where they’re working with businesses, understanding business and organizational needs, and getting that practice really early on. 

I think that’s where we hold that uniqueness : the ability to adapt. I think that’s why we perform well with clients, because we don’t take an off-the-shelf management development program. We will sit with them. We will discuss it. There’s that co-productivity that happens in defining what we do, which I think is a bit different. 

Do you think these kinds of recognitions are a culmination of what you have been doing, or was there a strategy behind it? Were you actively working to get the school out there a little bit more? 

A little bit of both. There was definitely a goal to at least apply for and get shortlisted for these awards, but not before we were ready. 

I think even before the merge, I was working on ensuring that processes, product, ethos, and expectations were really in place to get to a standing of quality that I think was the minimum expectation we needed before then moving to excellence and esteem. 

We’ll talk about expectations for collaborations and international growth or development later, and that’s similar. Early on, it was very much around spread, getting the name out, putting ourselves on the map, becoming known, but ensuring that the quality of the provision was there to then deliver and excel. 

Once I was comfortable that we were getting to a stage where there was consistency, that the key metric indicators of student satisfaction and student outcomes, the research citations expectations, were up there, and the integration of programs was working, then we could move forward. 

When I arrived in 2018, we had two business majors working separately from one another. We had a business management program and a business studies program that had two distinct teams of individuals. Strategy was being taught one way here, strategy was being taught a different way there. Marketing was over here, and nobody ever spoke to each other. So I had to really change the culture in those early years. 

LBS was crowned Business School of the Year by both the Times Higher Education Awards and the Educate North Awards 2025. What does mean for you, and what in particular were they honoring? 

I think the reputational esteem of THE is extremely high. It’s known internationally, and I think the quality of the competition is always really high as well. 

We’re going up against Russell Group universities. We’ve got really high-quality institutions that are putting in these applications year on year. So even to get shortlisted is a massive achievement, and to be there with my peers was significant.  

What’s also really important is that not only did we get Liverpool Business School of the Year, but we also won the Outreach Initiative of the Year for the Roma Education Aspiration Project which aims to raise educational goals for the local Roma community. So it’s almost like a double recognition of the type of work that we do. 

I think the clarity of that vision, which we’ve distilled into three clear areas, is important. The vision is “Shaping a Better Future.” That “shaping” part goes back to our roots, where, I think in 1898, the Liverpool School and College of Commerce was created. That was the first of its kind in England, and it was created to deliver business and legal education to the people of Liverpool in combination with the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council at the time, for the purpose of economic regional development. 

That kind of core purpose remains today. We’re there shaping what the city does, shaping business organizations in how they work and how they engage. 

We had an assessment of our work that looked at us providing more than 50,000 hours of hands-on project work. On its own, calculating that at a rudimentary price per hour, it worked out at £1.7 million in consultancy value for that year. 

We’ve since had further estimation of the social value of that work as well. Those initiatives work with underrepresented groups and open pathways to education and employment. 

But we also have very strong partnerships with NHS leadership development. We’re providing leadership development to National Health Service and private health practitioners across the UK. It’s a model that also works across local government and policing. So we’re shaping the way our community services and public services are organizing themselves, workforce planning, etc. 

And we do that for the better. We’re very much focused on the planet, focused on the Principles for Responsible Management Education, and we embed them throughout our research, our applied research, and throughout our teaching. 

We do that for the future. We’re really not afraid of trying new things. As I said, we were very quick to embed and play with generative AI, and we have been and continue to use new and innovative ways to teach, whether that’s through VR, XR, AR, all of the Rs. 

We do that on a global stage as well. When I started in 2018, we had approximately 200 students on programs internationally. We’ve now got around 4,000 students studying programs across the globe, as well as the 4,000 students that we have here in the UK. 

That’s a blend of distance-learning programs, but also franchise programs that are delivered by partners we work really closely with, whether that be in Doha, Qatar; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; or Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

We’ve got a big reach, and that allows that shaping factor to also come back into our work with our students here. Some of our students have lived in Liverpool their whole lives, haven’t moved from their postcode, and find going to Manchester, which is a 40-minute drive, like going to the other side of the world. 

We’re able to give them opportunities for exchange visits to Malaysia, Singapore, Qatar, and China.  

What does your student mix look like? 

We’re largely national, I suppose. In our home student profile, over 50% of our students are from the Greater Merseyside area. 

About 10% to 15% of our student body is international. Most of those students are focused on our International Business Management master’s program, and then we’ve got a bit of a mix across the undergraduate programs as well. 

Do you have goals of creating more of an international draw for other programs and growing?  

In terms of growth at the moment, we’ve grown quite significantly. There were around 2,500 students in 2018, and we’ve got 4,000 students now. 

The political environment for recruiting international students in the UK has been fierce, but our internationalization strategy is very much focused on transnational education partnerships, as opposed to trying to really compete and bring in students internationally. Partly, that’s because we knew where we were at — that we weren’t in a place where we would be attractive to students in terms of the global ranking space. 

That is now starting to change, but our financial model doesn’t need to draw in international students. 

I think it’s important to stay true to your roots and to your mission. We have this kind of skill set of supporting students who wouldn’t otherwise get into university, in some cases, and supporting them to graduate with great outcomes and great opportunities for furthering their careers. 

What we’ve built is a skill set within the school that can support students who are first-generation university students, who may have caring responsibilities, who are possibly holding down full-time jobs, and who may have a lack of social capital to get into careers elsewhere. 

What we’re also doing is supporting the businesses and the infrastructure across the Northwest to build capacity and capability to employ students at a well-paid level. So we’re supporting the ecosystem in that respect. 

Can you share an example of how you are supporting that local economic infrastructure? 

I think we have a couple of industries where there is success. We have manufacturing industries, service industries, and finance industries. 

If I take our accounting and finance program as an example, we recruit a relatively large number of students. A first-year intake onto that will be in the region of 200 students. The employability record is in the high 90%. 

That program is regularly in the top 10 in the Guardian league tables. It struggles a little bit with its research activity, but that’s because most of the faculty we have teaching there are practitioners. They’re either current or former accountants, and we have very strong links to the local accountancy firms within the city. 

So we’re providing a much-needed talent pipeline into the service areas within the city for financial advice, accounting, tax, etc. It’s a growing area within the city region, and that’s supporting those businesses to grow with the talent pool that’s coming from the local vicinity. It’s quite a nice, circular environment of support. 

There are similar areas, like Jaguar Land Rover, for example, which has a big plant nearby. We’re providing leadership and management talent that is going into that space and really helping to support the growth and success of that business in the Merseyside area. 

We’ve been reporting a lot on how quickly the landscape for management education is changing. What are some of the opportunities and challenges for a school like yours in that environment?  

One of the things that we’ve really tried to move toward is ensuring quality and purpose behind our partnerships. I think a lot of places fall down because they don’t give the attention that is necessary for these partnerships to really reach the quality standards that we want them to have.  

We’ve always been really keen to ensure that the quality of the education that happens in Malaysia is the same quality as the education that happens here, and we support the teams in doing so. We’ve really focused on moving from a transactional nature to ensuring quality and purpose behind the engagements that we have. 

We’re working with a grande école at the moment in the south of France that’s really highly regarded, and we’re developing joint programs with them because they recognize that the way in which we do things is more agile and a little bit different in the way in which we provide student support. So there’s learning that can be had on both sides. 

One of the things that we do is offer immersive opportunities. We have quite a large cohort of online MBA students, and around three times a year we’ll invite graduated cohorts to come to Liverpool to spend a week with us as an immersion event. They’ll work with companies and industries. They’ll have discussions with the academics here in the school. They’ll meet their fellow alumni face to face. So we’re building that strong alumni network in that sense as well. 

But, as with anything in the world, we’re seeing other people moving into that space now and looking at transnational education as a way of boosting their financial position. 

What we’re also seeing, and I think the biggest challenge that we’ve got, if I think about those accounting and finance students as an example, is that there used to be clear space between us and the University of Liverpool, as the local Russell Group, in terms of the expectations for school grades for entry. 

What we’re seeing now is that the Russell Groups are lowering those entry grades to meet the financial pressures of the student numbers they need to get in. So they’re starting to encroach on our space. 

We haven’t needed to drop our grades too much. Interestingly, we’re finding students really seeing the value of our student-focused approach, the engaged business school approach to business management education, and, ultimately, the graduate outcomes data that’s going to benefit them. But they’re also seeing, I think, a difference in the education style that they find is more fitting to what they would like. 

I think that’s the challenge of the future, isn’t it? Any university, any business school at the moment is facing an existential kind of threat. There are lots of questions around the value of a university education, and particularly in the UK, there are measurements around the pay premium and how that’s narrowing for people with or without a graduate degree. 

We’re also seeing yet another new prime minister in the UK, and he’s very much focused on technical education. He is very much focused on different ways in which people can get into work without needing to go to university. With the cost of living, a university degree is becoming more and more expensive, and so there’s a lot more pressure on that to provide value for money in what it delivers. 

We have to look at how we’re providing value for money and whether the current approach of a standard three-year degree, or four years when students go out for placement, is the best way. 

We moved into the apprenticeships space, and that was working really well for us in our partnerships at a master’s level. But the UK government has defunded apprenticeships in the management space. Anything management or business, they’ve defunded, which is a contradiction as well, isn’t it, in terms of technical education? 

So the UK government isn’t necessarily valuing business education or business and management education for the traditional working-class population, if you like, which is precisely where we’re placed as a school. 

Whilst I think these things take a little bit of time to bed in, there are always cries of, “Oh, we’re going to die because we’re bringing in MOOCs.” If you remember the massive open online courses, it was going to be the death of universities, and we outlived it. 

But history is not a way in which we should predict the future. I think there really is a prevailing change, and I see it in the students as well. 

We have a program called Applied Entrepreneurship that doesn’t have any modules and doesn’t have any exams. Students decide what they need to learn and when they need to learn it to develop the idea or business activity that they’re doing. 

You see them say, “Okay, I needed to do this marketing plan,” and I interviewed them and asked, “How did you know what you needed to do?” 

“Well, I just know because I watch it on YouTube.” 

So you didn’t feel that you needed any of these fundamentals of marketing, or the three Ps, five Ps, seven Ps of marketing, or anything else? 

“No, it’s just what everyone else does on Instagram or TikTok.” 

There’s a very different way in which young students and young people — or any people — are learning. My 70-year-old mum was telling me how to use AI the other day. “It’s got to learn to know you. You’ve got to be very clear on the instructions that you’re giving to it.” 

I’m like, “Okay, cheers, Mum.” 

Well, that is humbling! Let’s talk a bit about where you’re going now. What initiatives are you working on that have you excited?  

We’ve got a couple of sort of transactional things that we’re working on, such as establishing that credibility and global recognition for accreditation. We’re on the AACSB journey, so we’re expecting that in the next couple of years we’ll have a peer review assessment in that space. 

We’re already working very dynamically to create short courses, looking at more of a lifelong-learning approach for people to reskill quickly, pick up qualifications, and work with our alumni to say, “Okay, you’ve got your degree, but have you thought about this little six- or 12-week course that we’ve got on AI integration for people and governance?”  

But it’s really interesting. The Indian market and the Sub-Saharan African market are still really keen on a classic MBA. So whilst that market exists, we’re still playing in that market, but being aware that we will have to adapt.  

I think that’s the same with our undergraduate programs. There are some spaces where, if I take accounting and finance as an example, we have a very strongly accredited program.  

But they’re laggards in their evolution of going, “Okay, we’ve got to move with the times and bring in AI and different ways of assessing or different ways of being,” because if you look at the jobs that are expected to become extinct through AI evolution, those types of roles are prime for being removed. 

So what is important are the key skills of knowing what is true, being able to synthesize information and assess information for clarity, understanding and reliability, and being able to articulate what that means to a client and interpret it. 

We’re really working on moving from knowledge to those critical analysis skills and critical interpretation skills. That’s very much what our business clinic has been about: those practical skills, really getting out and understanding the needs of organizations in the workplace. 

The space of business development and entrepreneurship, certainly in the Liverpool city region, is hugely made up of SMEs and microbusinesses. They don’t have the infrastructure or understanding of workplace norms, or of bringing in business support in a way that will accelerate them for scale-up, growth and development. 

What we’re trying to do is also create a talent pool of students that can really support those small and growing businesses to become growth businesses, to have that capacity and knowledge base to really take advantage of artificial intelligence. 

But how we do that, I think, might not be that three-year undergraduate product or four-year undergraduate product. That is still structurally ingrained from school, so I think it’ll take a few years to work through. 

But I think we really do need to be thinking about when Elon Musk finally lands his rocket on Mars and starts to populate it. Our students need to be ready for that. It sounds like sci-fi, and probably his estimation of 2030 has extended a couple of years, but 2035 is only eight years away, and a lot can change in eight years. 

In your opinion, do you think AI will be a net positive or a net negative for business education in particular, but especially for a school like yours?  

I think, generally, on the balance of everything, it’s a net positive. We have a huge amount to learn, and we can’t learn quickly enough. That’s as researchers, as practitioners, and as systems in understanding what works there. 

We’re also working with huge organizations like the National Health Service that employ masses of people. The impact that we’re having there on innovation in process and workforce development is huge because it impacts so many people. Everybody in the UK uses the NHS, and there are so many complex and complicated ways in which that system works and operates. 

I think the application of AI tools to support that development is, overall, going to improve productivity and the speed at which new innovations can come to fruition. 

But I think what we’re also doing is working at a community level to try to take support off the NHS by providing opportunities for people into education and work who might otherwise have gone into the social support system. That’s a massive ecosystem in its own right that you can spend days and worlds thinking about. 

We’re playing with things that have potentially huge impact for everyday people, and I think that’s one of our key focuses. We’re shaping a better future in everything that we do. 

Anything else you’d like to add? 

I think ultimately what I’m trying to do is create a place that has meaning, that serves the community for what it was set to do, and that has impact in doing that activity. 

We are consistently and continuously looking at the way in which we do things, questioning if there’s a different way of doing it and whether this is still the best way to be doing what we should be doing. Not just doing it because it seems like there’s a continuing upward trend, but really questioning it. 

Again, I come back to accounting and finance as an example. Those students coming in are still growing in numbers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should continue to take them because, in four years’ time, they might not have a career or a job to be going into. 

So it’s our responsibility, and it’s my responsibility, to say, “Well, can we critically look at this and make sure that the program of study they’re on is really going to give them the agility to move into a transitioning world that might have a different type of career in four years’ time?” 

We’re also looking at ethics and AI and really trying to instill that sense of responsibility. Ultimately, that’s a thing that always rings in the back of my head: Am I creating responsible individuals, and are they going to go out into the world and change the world for the better? 

That’s what the mission is. 

 

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