Research projects

Workplace identity

The words work and life unbalanced on a seesaw

Women’s careers: Beyond organizational boundaries

This British Academy/Leverhumle funded research project, led by Penny Dick and conducted in collaboration with Women to Work, a local business with social aims, challenges conventional assumptions about how women's career paths differ to those of men.

Leaders for business-as-unusual: exploring and sharing the experiences of business leaders who work uncompromisingly for ecological sustainability

The recording and production of interviews with Progressive Green Business Leaders and delivery of two events helped to develop understanding for academics and business people about the possibilities for leading, organising and researching in times of ecological emergency. The project is co-led by Stephen Allen and Charles Barthold at Open University, UK.

New Roles, New Challenges: Understanding boundary work to support the implementation of new roles in mental health Trusts

This project will help us understand how mental health services can best implement new roles, to maximise benefits for staff, service users and organisations.

Alternative organising

An arrow shape pointing left made up of small arrows pointing right.

Learning to live the paradox in democratic organising: considering the competing tensions experienced when researchers embed themselves in alternative forms of organising

Martyn Griffin and colleagues explore the experience of paradoxes specifically within democratic organizations and offer what they call a deliberative model of paradox mindsets. They do this through exploring their own efforts to set up and run a democratic organization over a five-year period and the conflicting feelings they felt in trying to do so.

A team serving food and drink to vulnerable people.

Nonprofits as schools for democracy: challenging the traditionally hierarchical approaches found within the internal organisation of nonprofits, and suggesting alternative democratic methods of organisation

Drawing on the workplace democracy literature, Martyn Griffin and colleagues explore three main justifications for workplace democracy: consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics. Rather than viewing workplace democracy as an extrinsic good – based solely on consequences external to the organization – they argue that it should be considered an intrinsic good, valuable in and of itself.

Leadership in alternative organisations: exploring Quaker organising

This project, which is led by Stephen Allen, explores leadership and power dynamics in alternative organisations which are not capitalist, managerialist or hierarchical.

Relations of domination

Decolonizing Management Knowledge and Education: Emerging themes in public debate and developing understanding of reflexive discomfort

This project by reviewing literature, interviewing activists and mapping decolonising initiatives is exploring meanings and actions for decolonising management knowledge and education. The project is led by Stephen Allen and Emanuela Girei.

Power and exploitation within the cosmetics industry

This project, led by David Hollis, focuses on two main areas: The corporealizing and subjectivizing effects of 'making up' the face; and how 'authentically feminine leadership' discourses materially exploit lower-paid women workers.

Reducing academic flying

Stephen Allen's research involves exploring: academic identities and flying; universities internationalisation and academics’ flying; and, personal and university benefits of academics flying less.

Moral injury in critical care during the pandemic: Exploring the betrayal of the nursing profession by those in positions of power during the global pandemic resulting in cumulative instances of emotional wounds and suffering in the workplace

Martyn Griffin and colleagues conducted research on moral injury of critical care nurses during the pandemic.

A hard copy of Stephen Allen's new book.

Entangled Being and Organizing

Stephen Allen has published a book which is about prompting imaginings of possibilities for responsible being and collective flourishing that can be hopeful for us all.

Critical methodologies

The CCO Data Collective

The Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO) Data Collective is an ongoing project that brings together international scholars to jointly analyze data from CCO, relationality, and performativity perspectives in face-to-face and online forums.

A Woman in White and Red Floral Dress Holding Red Apple Fruit.

Organizational readiness, culturally mediated learning through Disney animation: using a visual analysis of film to consider how repeated portrayals of work and management might come to shape a viewers attitude towards organisation

The research, led by Martin Griffin, involved watching and analysing 54 of the “classic” Disney animations and attempting to explore what they are suggesting to a young audience watching about work, management and other aspects of organizational life.

Challenging Gendered Media Mis(s)Representations of Women Professionals and Leaders

The ESRC seminar series grant facilitated an investigation into how women professionals and leaders are misrepresented across all forms of media; from broadsheet newspapers to television programmes and social media.

A group of people sat round a table working together. On the table is stationery and papers.

Autoethnography and democratic organizing: employing self reflexive critical methodologies to capture the researchers' experiences within a 3 year project in to democratic organizing

The aim of this project, led by Martyn Griffin, is to develop a critical method of intervention in democratic practice and show that the academic discipline of Critical Management Studies can successfully intervene and contribute to the development of democratic working.

Organisation Studies Research Cluster

Organisation Studies Research Cluster

Research projects

Workplace identity

Women’s careers: Beyond organizational boundaries

Leaders for business-as-unusual: exploring and sharing the experiences of business leaders who work uncompromisingly for ecological sustainability

New Roles, New Challenges: Understanding boundary work to support the implementation of new roles in mental health Trusts

Alternative organising

Learning to live the paradox in democratic organising: considering the competing tensions experienced when researchers embed themselves in alternative forms of organising

Nonprofits as schools for democracy: challenging the traditionally hierarchical approaches found within the internal organisation of nonprofits, and suggesting alternative democratic methods of organisation

Leadership in alternative organisations: exploring Quaker organising

Relations of domination

Decolonizing Management Knowledge and Education: Emerging themes in public debate and developing understanding of reflexive discomfort

Power and exploitation within the cosmetics industry

Reducing academic flying

Moral injury in critical care during the pandemic: Exploring the betrayal of the nursing profession by those in positions of power during the global pandemic resulting in cumulative instances of emotional wounds and suffering in the workplace

Entangled Being and Organizing

Critical methodologies

The CCO Data Collective

Organizational readiness, culturally mediated learning through Disney animation: using a visual analysis of film to consider how repeated portrayals of work and management might come to shape a viewers attitude towards organisation

Challenging Gendered Media Mis(s)Representations of Women Professionals and Leaders

Autoethnography and democratic organizing: employing self reflexive critical methodologies to capture the researchers' experiences within a 3 year project in to democratic organizing