Research
Our research is rooted on the distinctive competencies of the Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management Department and our expertise aligns with four strategic priorities:
Organising for resilience and sustainability
Perhaps the most striking feature characterising the workplace in the recent years is how quickly working patterns and practices have had to shift and change, and the scale of this adaptation across all sectors and types of organisations. There is also consensus that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of digitalisation, compounding some of its effects. Current evidence clearly suggests that digitalisation can be both an opportunity and a threat. Employees and managers alike have had to adapt to technology-mediated working practices, coping with the challenges of remote communication, teamwork and leadership while striving to ensure organisational resilience and sustainability.
Topics include:
- knowledge management and appropriation (including big data and knowledge management in ‘peripheral’ contexts)
- organisational adaptation (such as impact of technological change/information society on the workplace and managerial practices)
- leadership (including top management teams, crisis management and healthcare leadership)
- inter- and intra-organisational collaboration (such as public-private in healthcare, open innovation and co-production in services)
- sustainability and alternative organisations (including cooperatives, new unions, collective organisation of workers)
- work in the digital era (for example flexible working practices, E-HRM, precarity at work, digital technologies and employees’ control)
Work and employment in a changing social and economic landscape
There is consensus in academic and policy circles that the changing social and economic landscape impacts the quality of work and employment in organisations across all sectors and in all regions of the world. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives transfer across institutional and cultural contexts in which international organisations operate. There has been inadequate attention as to how cultural diversity intersects with other forms of diversity to influence EDI policies and practices. The area of work contributes to the divergence-convergence debate of diversity management conceptualizations across nations and seeks to speak truth to power and address systemic inequalities.
Topics include:
- tackling discrimination and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion at work (including inequality of gender, age, social class, ethnicity, intersectionality and geography)
- work patterns (including part-time, unemployment, self-employment, underemployment and precarious work)
- migrant work (including migrant workers and employment relations, migrant workers and labour and community organising, migrants' practices of citizenship)
- careers changes and transitions (such as careers in science and engineering, careers in higher education sector, women's career transitions from employment to self-employment)
- professions (such as marketing professionals, academics, healthcare professionals, and scientists)
- service work (for example, interactive service work, customer-worker relations, consumption within service interactions and healthcare services)
Organising for health, safety and wellbeing
New forms of work and employment have intensified trends towards different kinds of dependency and precarious jobs as well as insecurity, leading to increased challenges relating to the health, safety, and well-being of the workforce. At same time, these changes also offer new opportunities to reduce psychosocial risks or better manage them, fostering improvements in job quality and promoting a positive psychosocial work environment.
Taking action for the health, safety and well-being of their workforce is particularly important for organisations today. The frequency of occupational risks and hazards is predicted to increase in the future. Studies highlight the increasing prevalence of psychosocial risks and the importance of promoting well-being and sustainable work to ensure that organisations are ready to maximise the opportunities and mitigate the challenges presented by the future of work.
Topics include:
- wellbeing (including psychosocial factors at work/ work organisation and job design, burnout and organisational performance, working from home, and employee engagement)
- work-life balance (including burnout and organisational outcomes, work family conflict/balance, social support in organisations)
- occupational health and safety (the translation of occupational health and safety knowledge into policy and practice, risk analysis and safety governance of artificial intelligence in complex sociotechnical systems like healthcare, the role of voluntary standards, social dialogue and corporate social responsibility in managing working conditions)
Organising across borders and space
Technological development, climate change, the global pandemics, demographic shifts and globalisation are transforming the world of work.
These forces are impacting who works, where and when, and how work is organised and managed. Given the increasing pace of these changes and the challenges and opportunities they present, it is critical that efforts are taken to develop better understanding of organising across borders and space.
Topics include:
- cross-cultural management (including HRM in China, Africa-China, Emerging economies, Eastern European economies, national culture and HRM practices, expatriate work experiences in China’s financial services sector, the use of cross border and cross cultural social networks and social capital in business and management)
- the impact of digitalisation on the workplace (including E-HRM practices, remote work: practices and outcomes, health informatics, big data, scientometrics)
Case studies
