“Too difficult to separate” was the outcome of the recent judging of this year’s Wilf Knight Award organised by the Security Institute. As a consequence two winners jointly celebrated receiving the Award in front of a packed house at the prestigious Security Excellence Awards at the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane on 19th October. Both Leonie Darbon (University of Leicester) and Matthew Mackmin (Cranfield University) received individual trophies and cheques for £500 presented by Patricia Knight and Institute Chairman Mike Bluestone.
The winning entries were submitted by the respective course tutors at each university. Leonie’s tackled the subject of ‘Researching compliance controls in the retail sector and the impact they have on internal theft’, whilst Matthew’s dissertation title was ‘The impact and implications of resilience enhancing behaviours for shareholder value in the wake of corporate crisis and catastrophe.’
In making the Award, which recognises written work making a valuable contribution to the field of security management or practice, Mike Bluestone said ‘ Leonie’s outstanding dissertation was both well written, and extremely well researched. The results of this study should be shared with relevant retailers as it would assist them in planning their own in-house fraud and theft prevention programmes’.
Mike also praised Matthew’s dissertation by saying ‘A thoroughly well researched piece of work. The findings will be useful to larger organisations who may consider the research and re-focus post crisis recovery strategies to mitigate loss in confidence and share value’.
Leonie Darbon, speaking on behalf of herself and Matt, said ‘We are both absolutely delighted to have won and Matt and I would like to especially thank our tutors who kept us focussed throughout.’ Leonie added ‘My family gave their never ending support, especially my Dad, who I sadly lost while undertaking my studies’. Leonie dedicated her award to her late father.
Both award winners were invited to the Awards dinner, hosted by Brian Sims Hon FSyI and editor of SMT online, along with their respective tutors Dr. Anna Maria Brudenell and Dr. Matt Hopkins.
Garry Evanson, Director of Sector Standards for the Security Institute, and co-ordinator of the Award, said ‘We have had the highest number of entries for this competition so far, and we could not split the two winners. Each brought a different outlook to Security Management. Leonie and Matthew are both winners in their own fields, and we offer them our warmest congratulations’.