People and Organisations

The Department of People and Organisations is a diverse group of academics who research many aspects of people and organisations, including: governance, identity, gender, emotion, critical perspectives on leadership and organisation, experiences of volunteers in the digital age, the ethics of care, cross cultural aspects of management, operations management, legitimacy, mobile and digital technologies, serious gaming and professionals becoming managers.

Leadership and Innovation in Health Services

The Business School has a strong record in researching the realities of leadership and service innovation in the NHS. A current significant NIHR-funded study is examining the nature of clinical leadership in and around CCGs and its implications for service innovation. Further engaged research has also recently begun into the nature of leadership development that is effective and viable within the NHS. This will provide the basis for developing an agenda for further research into leadership development approaches and their impact, as well as exploring partners and funding sources for pursuing this.

Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures

We seek to explore and shape the future direction of empowerment, work and society with dedicated research into this area. In partnership with The People Space, this research cluster will draw on the Department for People and Organisations scholarly expertise on themes of identity, leadership, power, human relations and learning to empower policy makers, organisational leaders, social practitioners and people from across contexts to work together to co-create innovative solutions for meeting these coming opportunities and challenges.

Research focus

There is a wide range of interests and expertise across the department. Areas covered include:

Organisational studies and human resource management

• Strategic and international human resource management
• Cross-national comparative management
• Innovation across supply chains and networks
• Governance and incentives
• Surveillance in organisations and society
• Organisational and individual identity

Organisational psychology and professional development

• Personal and professional development
• Creativity in organisations
• Change management
• Positive organisational development, applied positive psychology
• Use of coaching and action learning in management education
• Management and leadership development
• Critical approaches to leadership

Management learning and organisational change

• Practice and work-based learning
• Action-centred approaches to change
• Cross-national management learning
• The development of MBA education
• Legitimacy
• Operations management

Academic Publications

Full details of our research publications can be found on Open Research Online and via our staff pages.

Teaching

Members of the Department teach across undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education modules in areas such as organisational behaviour, management of learning and change, professional development, human resource management, creativity, leadership, innovation, organisational culture and organisational development. We also run the CIPD accredited MSc in Human Resource Management.