Doctoral Students

Internationalisation has had a profound impact on organisations abilities to effectively manage their human resources'. Geographical dispersion, cultural and institutional differences compound the challenges of successfully managing people across the globe. Where enterprises have deployed multiple market entry modes corporate executives have had to learn to share with, and devolve to, property owners and franchisees HRM and HRD responsibilities.

As yet very little is known about these HRM interfaces between international companies, their managerial representatives and investors/business partners so proposals which explore these relationships would be welcomed. In addition the issues of dual allegiance of expatriates, who report to their international employers and local investors, remains a topic ripe for investigation.

Another real dilemma for international companies involves managing the support and costs of expatriates and frequent flyers against pressures to localise management positions and the deployment of inpatriates. Proposals in this area of IHRM would also be very much welcomed.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Judie Gannon ()

The UK has nearly 400 professional associations with over 1,000 members representing more than 6 million workers (PARN, 2010). These organisations range from those recently formed with limited membership criteria to those based upon extensive periods of scholarship and practice.

Professional associations are a growth area and have been argued to provide considerable opportunities for personal and also wider economic and social development (PARN, 2010). Within professions there is now ever more pressure to rise to leadership and managerial roles and accordingly development initiatives which focus not just on profession specific expertise but wider generic influencing and management skills and knowledge.

Proposals which explore the development issues facing professional associations are encouraged along with submissions that consider the role of social capital development alongside the human and intellectual capital aspects which are relatively explicit in specific professions. The value of specific interventions, such as mentoring, networking and social media in reinforcing professional associations' development of their members will also be welcomed.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Judie Gannon ()

Recent research on generational change in ethnic entrepreneurship studies in Europe, North America, and Asia suggests interesting differences between first and second-generation ethnic entrepreneurs in terms of start-up motives, embeddedness in intra- and/or inter-ethnic networks, and business organization. This is a promising new field of research.

However, further research is needed to substantiate these claims. For research into the situated experiences of ethnic entrepreneurs, it is proposed to work with a mixed embeddedness approach that includes the micro-level of the entrepreneurs, the meso-level of the local opportunity structures, and the macro-level institutional context.

This project invites applications from students who want to conduct qualitative research (in depth interviews, life-business histories) among first and second-generation ethnic entrepreneurs in Europe or Asia, among ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs or among other ethnic groups with a history of entrepreneurship.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Juliette Koning ()

Organisational Ethnography (OE) is rapidly gaining ground in management and organization research. It is best known as a research method, but is as much a way of writing and analysing. The aim of OE is to understand processes of meaning-giving and meaning-making in organisations through participating, observing and 'being-there'. OE reflects the complexities the 'world' under study and researchers obtain and communicate through their writings an insider's view. Such research lends itself perfectly for those who have access to organisations and are already 'close to the action'.

This project invites applications for doing an OE on all possible themes (organizational culture, organizational identity, employment relations, managerial practices); the project is developed in the context of the EGOS Standing Working Group on OE that will be launched in 2013.

Suggested Reading:

• Van Maanen, J. (2006), "Ethnography then and now". Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal. 1(1): 13-21.
• Watson, T.J. (2011) "Ethnography, reality and truth: the vital need for studies of 'how things work' in organisations and management", Journal of Management Studies, 48,1, 202-217.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Juliette Koning ()

Audit committees have become an established part of the corporate governance architecture in the UK over the last twenty years. They have also been adopted in the public and not-for-profit sectors but little is known about how they operate in these different accountability structures.

Possible areas for research on this topic could be: an exploration of the relationships between audit committees, internal and external auditors and trustees/governing bodies; an investigation of the public sector audit committee's role in risk management; an investigation of the role of independent non-executive directors on the boards of public sector and/or not-for-profit organisations.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Professor Laura Spira ()

In the current financial climate organisations are careful in using their training and development funds. Coaching contracts are crafted to maximise organisational benefits - an approach justified from the pragmatic perspective. Current literature on coaching in organisations has also a strong emphasis on coaches serving organisations.

On the other hand, as critical theorists would warn, coaching may become a tool for shaping individuals according to organisational needs. The proposed PhD research could take a number of directions and methodologies to explore the balance between organisational and individual agendas in coaching by engaging with HR practitioners, administrations, coaches and/or individual clients sponsored by the organisations.

The focus of the study could be on the themes of coaching and their dynamics during the coaching engagement. Likewise, the implications of the potential tensions could be explored in relation to organisations, coaching practice and a wider social agenda.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Tatiana Bachkirova ()

Developmental coaching is becoming a genre of choice for many organisations and individuals. It offers interventions which are tailor made for the developmental needs of the client and is likely to be underpinned by a range of comprehensive theories.

However, most of these theories are grounded in the research of practices other than coaching. Many of them also rely on measurement instruments designed for research purposes rather than coaching practice.

PhD proposals are invited to critically examine the use of theories in developmental coaching taking various directions and applying different research methodologies. Candidates may choose to research the effectiveness of a particular theoretical tradition in relation to coaching practice. They could also compare and evaluate application of a wider range of theories with a view to arriving at a practical model of developmental coaching.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Tatiana Bachkirova ()

In recent years, the corporate world of the international hotel industry has witnessed a number of changes in terms of persons and structure at board, executive committee or ownership level. Although these changes appear to have had an impact on the companies' risk attitude and strategy development as well as in their operational performance, their influence has not been empirically proven. Previous academic research in the wider business sector has tended to remain focused on specific board characteristics in relation to company performance and there is good scope to shift the focus to the direction of investigating the relationship between corporate structure and composition or the nature and stability of institutional investors with a hotel group's risk attitude and strategy development and its overall operational performance.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Alexandros Paraskevas ()

There are numerous incidents (workplace violence, sabotages, terrorist attacks, corporate espionage) where a hospitality organisation's human, intellectual or physical assets have been exposed to catastrophic risk as a result of the actions of "malicious insiders", i.e., individuals who work for the organisation, yet, due to a range of motives, betray their obligations and allegiances to their employer and threaten the livelihood of the organisation and/or its constituents. The extant literature is limited to broad-based theoretical models designed mainly to predict the triggers that lead to violent action or focuses exclusively on detecting anomalous behaviour in hindsight. The proposed PhD study is based on the assumption that such individuals normally exhibit 'lone wolf' behaviours related with detectable psychometric characteristics and aims at the development of a psychometric model to assess the risk that potentially malicious insiders represent.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Alexandros Paraskevas ()

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) integrates ideas from Performance Management with Business Intelligence and Information Management. Central to EPM are 1) the collection and consolidation of data from a variety of sources and 2) analysis of this data to provide insight in business performance. Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT) are central to making EPM work. The proposed research focuses on the application of EPM in Third Sector organisations (TSOs), with a particular focus on the role of IT and IS. Issues that could be addressed are, for example: Fit of EPM with typical IT infrastructures and IT skill sets in TSOs; EPM technologies currently applied by TSOs; Optimal design of EPM technologies to be useful for TSOs; Implications of cloud computing for EPM in TSOs.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Diana Limburg ()

The service sector faces particular challenges in its marketing practice and understanding the changing behaviour of its consumers is a priority. This encompasses decision making, consumption behaviour, and post-consumption behaviour in all its guises. The proposed PhD research could take a number of directions e.g. How do individual or groups of consumers use their resources effectively in service situations? In what ways are today's service organisations putting the consumer to work and how are consumers responding?

Alternatively, proposals may take an existing concept (e.g. trust) and its application in understanding consumer behaviour in the service marketing context. Proposals may either focus on specific service sectors (e.g. leisure and tourism, finance, professional services etc.) or be generic in their vision. Proposals are welcomed from a range of methodologies, including qualitative interpretive approaches and case study work.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Jackie Clarke ()

It is suggested that tourists increasingly strive for a sense of belonging through the individual or group consumption of place (environments, events, situations, people). Your research will explore and evaluate the overall process that leads tourists to such a sense of belonging. This research moves beyond satisfaction and loyalty toward a feeling that is perhaps of greater significance to tourism providers and marketers. The theoretical base is likely to revolve around relevant aspects of tourist behaviour and the concepts of belonging and place. Primary work will adopt an interpretive approach and might include depth interviews, focus groups, travel blogs or other relevant methods.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr David Bowen ()

Business format franchising has emerged as a powerful form of international market expansion, particularly within service industries. Recent research conducted by Franchise Direct (2009), identifies that 77% of the top 100 global franchises are within hospitality, maintenance, professional and retail services. In any franchise system, the importance of maintaining tightly controlled and integrated system that supports a defined brand name and image is well-recognised. However, in international franchise systems a trade off between centralisation and standardisation, and adaptation to respond to local market demands is also required. These potentially conflicting demands underpin the need for careful partner selection and effective relationship management between franchisors and franchisees. Furthermore, they also emphasise the relevance of effective knowledge management within a franchise network.

PhD proposals which examine any of the three critical areas of partner selection, relationship management or knowledge management within the context of international franchising are welcomed.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Maureen Brookes ()

The so-called Third World countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America are faced with huge development challenges both in the theoretical as well as practical-policy domains. Ecological constraints have further added to the complexities of these challenges which various paradigms of sustainable development are trying to grapple with. The current crisis in advanced capitalist economies accompanied by the rising economic powers of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations is leading to a spatial shift in the global economy. This spatial shift is leading to complex patterns of global movements and flows of capital, labour and commodities. The implications of this spatial shift are enormous both for the developed world as well as the developing economies. There are huge potentialities for innovative quantitative and qualitative research in interrogating the complexities of the development challenge in the Third World. Research proposals using the political economy and sustainability approaches to these development challenges are especially welcome. The research could be focussed either on an individual country or a specific sector (eg. agriculture, food, labour migration, FDIs, fair trade, poverty reduction etc).

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Pritam Singh ()

Federalism as a mode of governance for multi-ethnic societies is a constantly growing subject of research and policy. There are mature federal experiments in the developed world that have dealt reasonably successfully with the federal tensions. Many post-colonial countries are going through a painful experience of dealing with their multi-ethnic and multi-national tensions in their development endeavour. The conflicts that these tensions generate have led to human rights violations in many developing countries. Research proposals that interrogate the links between federalism, nationalism, development and human rights would be most welcome.

Another area of research in human rights that is growing is the dialectical links between economic interests and human rights. On one hand, nations and business organisations have been found to be indulging in violations of human rights to pursue their trade and business objectives but on the other, the rise in the global importance of human rights is forcing the nations and business organisations to change their economic strategies to accommodate human rights. Research proposals exploring this dialectical link between economic interests and human rights with a focus either on countries (or regions with in countries) or business organisations would be welcome.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Pritam Singh ()

Customer relationship management assumes that customers differ in their needs and in the value that they generate for the organisation. Bad customers, in particular, can be very costly for the firms – e.g., as a result of damage to property, fraudulent claims, unjustified complaints, stress for customer facing employees or the undermining of other customers' experiences.

Despite the recognised negative consequences of bad customer behaviour, this remains an under-researched topic in marketing. The research gap is particularly evident concerning how service firms actually deal with dysfunctional customers. In addition to the strategic, technical and organisation barriers that the implementation of differentiated marketing approaches usually encounter, the management of bad customers also needs to accommodate the dynamic and subjective nature of bad customer behaviour.

The researcher will investigate the characteristics of bad customer behaviour and the issues around the identification and management of undesirable customers. The project may consider one aspect of customer behaviour – e.g. unjustified complaints - and examine it across a variety of industries. Alternatively, the project can focus on industry – e.g. financial services – and consider all instances of undesirable customer behaviour.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Ana Domingos Canhoto ()

The digitalised marketing environment creates opportunities and challenges for organisations, brands and consumers. How organizations both large and small deal with these challenges, to what extent brands are impacted by digitalisation and how consumers respond to these changes in marketing communications may be of interest to a PhD researcher. Proposals could encompass complex branded products such as luxury goods or the wine industry or alternatively focus on specific digital media, for example m-commerce or social networks.

A range of methodologies could be implemented within this research theme, but those of a qualitative nature and particularly those taking a netnographic approach are welcomed.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Sarah Quinton ()

Brands are complex, multifaceted constructs which can be explored from multiple perspectives. For consumers, brands are central to the consumption process in post-modern societies. For hospitality organisations, effective brand management is critical to achieving organisational goals - especially in the online environment.

Many of the world's most well-known hotel brands have a long history and today some companies use their brand history as a strategic marketing tool. A proposal which seeks to extend the boundaries of branding theory within the context of hotel brand history and contemporary marketing practice would be welcome.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: David Bowie ()

Employment contracts are invariably imprecise because of the difficulties involved in specifying the quality and quantity of work that is to be done by staff under them. Against this backcloth of imprecision, a vast literature has developed within the fields of occupational psychology and organisational behaviour centred on identifying the factors that can serve to enhance employee performance, as the theories around motivation and work commitment amply demonstrate. Within this literature, an important line of analysis has concerned how employees can be encouraged to move beyond a narrow calculative form of engagement based on striking a balance between effort and reward. The notion of altruism would seem to potentially offer the basis of such a broader form of engagement. To date, however, the theory surrounding what is referred to as altruistic behaviour at work (ABW) remains under-developed, and the ABW-performance relationship requires further clarification. New study aims to address existing theoretical and empirical weaknesses and in this way shed important new light on how such behaviour can be engendered in the workplace. Proposals which explore ABW and relevant issues are encouraged.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Kirk Chang ()

Arguably the most significant ways in which firms and industries are restructured, Mergers, Acquisitions (M&A), Corporate Recovery, represent massive commitments of money and effort and have profound ramifications for businesses, management, employees, industries and even economies. It is not surprising then that Corporate Restructuring has attracted a great deal of academic attention and certain aspects of the phenomena have been investigated in great depth. However the inability of researchers to explain satisfactorily restructuring outcomes and the existence of many paradoxes indicate we are still a long way from fully understanding the phenomenon. Recently the scope of empirical enquiry has expanded significantly to embrace a wide set of methodologies and theories from different disciplines and drawing upon novel data from around the world. These have yielded fresh insights but there are still many avenues to explore. Applications to study for a PhD focusing upon corporate restructuring are welcome which focus upon topics such as international restructuring, sequential deals, the interplay between acquisition and disposal, communications at multiple levels throughout the restructuring process, a micro focus upon the day to day activities involved in restructuring; the practices, practitioners and communities involved the restructuring process.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Professor Duncan Angwin ()

There is a growing interest amongst researchers into the particular role and actions of those involved in the process of strategy making and implementation. This Strategy-as-Practice approach to strategy research changes earlier focus upon organizational level of analysis, strategy as something an organization has, towards an individual level of analysis, of strategy as something executives do. It dives into their day-to-day activities to uncover what they spend their time doing, rather than inferring their actions and roles from the overall strategic efforts of the organization. In the Strategy-as-Practice view, strategy is accomplished socially through the actions and interactions of multiple levels of executives. Applications to carry out a PhD investigating the practices of strategy actors (their day to day activities, communications efforts, social engagements), the interactions between communities of actors (inside and outside of organizations) and between and across different organizational contexts – to include regulators, consultants, other influencers of strategy, and different commercial and national arenas, are welcome.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Professor Duncan Angwin ()

In recent years, the debate around the achievement of more sustainable forms of development has moved on significantly. No longer the preserve of environmentalists and the NGO community alone, the pursuit of sustainable development has become a core element of strategies and communications from mainstream businesses to individual communities.

In tourism, the study of sustainability has divided and focuses around: the activities of major international businesses that seek to demonstrate their sustainable credentials through responsible business policies, the development of niche products that seek to attract specific types of tourism, initiatives seeking to define who sustainable tourists are or research that examines the virtues of specific sustainable tourism certification initiatives. Each of these issues has significant value and considerable research potential in their own right and we would be interested in talking to students with PhD proposals under any of these themes.

There are also a number of opportunities to research the policy context for sustainable tourism, especially in the light of recent strategy papers by organisations from the OECD to United Nations focussing on the potential of the green economy as a mechanism for stimulating a new development paradigm. The role of tourism in delivering commitments to this 'green economy' is largely under-researched offers considerable potential for one or more PhD topics.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Rebecca Hawkins ()

As customer management practices gets increasingly sophisticated, there are both great benefits but at the same time, also disadvantages that firms must consider. The aim of this research project is to investigate factors that increase or descrease the strengths of buyer-seller relationships and customer management practices. The current focus will be two-fold: (1) to direct our understanding towards consumer perceptions of unfairness as a result of favouritism and exploitation of customers, and; (2), to investigate the concept of likeability perceptions, and understand what firms (and brands) can do in order to be perceived as likeable. This can potentially include reference to social media, asking whether firms are able to put on a virtual personality, 'face' and 'voice'. Topics related to explore the future of marketing and sophisticated customer management practices may also be part of the study. Broadly speaking, key words include: CRM, customisation/personalisation, marketing tactics, targeted and non-targeted customers, unfairness, likeability and branding.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr. Bang Nguyen ()

Motivational research has established a plethora of goal characteristics which moderate how happy people will be when they achieve their personal goals. Some of these goal characteristics are whether goals are of avoidance or approaching nature, the actual content of goals (e.g. material wealth vs. personal development) or the degree of alignment between one's goals and one's inner deeper needs.

But there is also an argument that the analysis of goals should not be limited to the analysis of goals per se but must additionally include the reasons behind peoples' goals. Why do people pursue the goals they pursue? Such a focus of analysis offers a variety of PhD topics. All of which revolve around the questions whether established goal characteristics, such as approaching/avoidance orientation of goals, can also be used to analyse the reasons underpinning peoples' goals. Not least to determine how much of peoples' happiness can actually be explained by the analysis of goal striving reasons instead of the goals themselves.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr. Christian Ehrlich ()

The last 50 years have witnessed lively debates about theories of learning. Cognitivist assumptions about the pre-eminence of the individual mind 'acquiring' knowledge have been challenged by sociological and anthropological conceptions of learning as being embedded in social practice. Research on apprenticeship processes, for example, has reinforced the social nature of learning, and the central importance of identity-development as newcomers navigate between different roles and responsibilities as well as their changing sense of selves.

This theme invites applications from students wanting to conduct qualitative research (such as in depth interviews and observation) on apprenticeships and related aspects of learning, identity and practice.

Suggested reading:

* Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Karen Handley ()

What does it mean to have a career, or to plan one? The assumed norm of the 'traditional career' - a career for life involving steady progression within a single organisation - has been challenged in recent decades. Scholars have proposed alternative models such as the boundaryless career and protean career, and have suggested that individuals (particularly from Generations X and Y) have different orientations to career from those of their parents. These changes in career orientations influence expectations and choices about employment, work-life balance, networking, career self-management and so on.

This theme invites applications from students wanting to conduct qualitative research (such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and/or narrative approaches) or mixed methods research (combining some qualitative techniques with survey research) on changing expectations and experiences of career. Suitable contexts include the experiences of early-career graduates, or the experience of people in the 50s and 60s as they negotiate changing expectations of work at a time when they still have much to contribute.

Suggested reading:

* King, Z. (2003) 'New or traditional careers? A study of UK graduates' preferences', Human Resource Management Journal, 13, 1, 5-26.

* Adamson, S., Doherty, N. and Viney, C. (1998) 'The meanings of career revisited: implications for theory and practice', British Journal of Management, 9, 251-259.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Karen Handley ()

Arts based approaches to organizational studies have been growing over recent years drawing on a range of experiential activities related to a broad spectrum of the arts. These approaches facilitate a focus on the so-called non-rational elements of organizational life in order to explore what has traditionally been hidden in mainstream organization and management studies. This project encourages a creative engagement with research methods drawing from a range of inquiry methodologies which inform this approach in order to surface multiple meanings brought to organisational change and leadership practices. Extended epistemologies and multiple ways of knowing include:

• Critical forms of reading and writing practice (Speedy, 2008) including biography and collective biography (Davies and Gannon, 2006), autoethnography (Bochner and Ellis, 2002, Ellis 2004, Richardson, 1997).
• Critical action inquiry (Reason and Bradbury, 2001, Marshall, 1999).
• Psychoanalytically informed approaches such as social dreaming (Lawrence, 1998, 2010), socio photo matrix (Sievers, 2009) working with fantasy, memory and desire (Cixous, 1976).

Applicants are invited who are interested in contributing to the growing field of interdisciplinary study using arts based approaches to explore organisational issues such as emotions, identity, culture, change, transition and leadership academic study.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Louise Grisoni ()

The UK has been traditionally an attractive destination for labour migration. Enlargement of the European Union in 2004 gave access to employment in the UK for nationals from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, resulting in large numbers of migrant workers from those countries entering and settling on the UK employment market, and contributing to the largest ever in-migration to the country on record (Salt and Millar, 2006).

Research to date on the implications of this influx of migrant labour for employment relations within organizations remains under-developed. Applications are consequently invited to carry out doctoral research centred on investigating the nature of potential conflicts and strategies for their resolution, as well as the practices of organisations (e.g. employers, professional bodies, trade unions or community groups) and individuals aimed at the integration of migrant workforce. Successful candidates will be working with Professor Phil James and Dr Joanna Karmowska.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Joanna Karmowska ()

There is a bulk of work which focuses on the diffusion of management knowledge and which looks at management fashions, different dissemination channels and nature of popular management ideas. However, the process of translation of management knowledge has received considerably less attention. In particular, empirical, longitudinal studies of adoption, co-consumption and subversion of popular management concepts are still largely missing. Applicants are therefore invited to submit a proposal which seeks to explore the processes of translating popular management concepts and practices into organisational realities. The proposed research can also set out to explore how subsidiaries of MNCs attempt to localise the global practices of their parent companies.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Sylwia Ciuk ()

Expatriation has attracted considerable attention from scholars. However, the available literature on the topic is predominantly expatriate-centric and written from the mainstream, functionalist perspective. In this strand of research the local organisation members are rarely the focus of analysis. Rather, they are depicted as obstacles to the expatriate's success, or, beneficiaries of the expatriate's knowledge. Applications are therefore invited that approach the topic of expatriation from the postcolonial perspective and which aim to redress the balance in the existing literature by putting the local organisation members and their experiences of being managed by expatriate managers at the centre of investigative attention.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Dr Sylwia Ciuk ()

This research area is concerned principally with socio-cultural issues associated with the management of strategic alliances and establishing international partnerships and has contributed to the understanding of identifying and selecting strategic partners in different country markets. Informed by the social exchange, transaction cost and power dependency theories. this research area aims to understand the multidimensional phenomena of strategic partnerships.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Professor Levent Altinay ()

This research area is concerned with the interaction between culture and small business growth. It aims to investigate the relationship between the cultural backgrounds of the business owners and their business growth. In particular, this research area captures the interface between the entrepreneur's socio-cultural background, strategic orientations (entrepreneurial, market, learning orienations) and growth.

Contact for informal enquiries and further information about the project: Professor Levent Altinay ()