Monthly Archives: January 2015
PhD Project: Leadership as Practice
Research on leadership has traditionally focused on individual traits or characteristics of leaders, the dyadic relationship between leaders and followers and the effectiveness of different styles of leadership. However, how leadership is achieved in changing situations and contexts is less well understood.
The leadership as practice approach moves beyond an individualistic perspective on leadership and considers how leadership is practised in situated interactions. Drawing on ethnographic methods this research project aims to document, analyse and categorise leadership practices. By shadowing leaders in their organizational settings, it is anticipated that new insights into how leadership is ‘done’ can generated which will be useful for the theory and practice of management.
Supervisors: Professor Elisabeth Kelan and Professor David Denyer
Application Details: The PhD should hold a minimum 2.1 class undergraduate degree in business and management, sociology, psychology, social psychology, anthropology or related discipline and have passed, or expect to have passed by autumn 2015, a Master’s degree or equivalent research experience in a work setting. In this project ethnographic research methods will be particularly important. See Admission Requirements for English language requirements.
Funding Details: Funding may be available on a competitive basis through the Cranfield School of Management studentship scheme.
Deadline: Expressions of interest alongside a CV are invited via email to: elisabeth.kelan@cranfield.ac.uk and david.denyer@cranfield.ac.uk by mid-April 2015 for bursary applications or end of July 2015 for self-funded applications.
Thurs 19th March: Cranfield School of Management Doctoral Open Day
2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,300 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Leading culture change
Mark Leeds from Royal Bank of Scotland explains how RBS is working on changing the culture of the organisation through a central team focusing on Customer Experience in order to align the organisation and its products and services with the requirements of the customer. Pictoral representations by way of a Customer Wheel and CTQ (Critical-To-Quality) Trees are displayed throughout the organisation in order to keep the customer and their needs top-of-mind.
Growing a customer-centric culture
Rachel Curtis-Bowen, Head of Marketing & Customer Experience explains how the Cambridge & Counties Bank was set up to help create a solution for SMEs to obtain finance. Being in a position to design the products and services from scratch, without the limitations of an existing back-end has enabled the company to involve customers throughout the planning and design process in order to create simple and efficient processes and functions which support the required products and services. Two years on, they are now in another phase of review with their customers to evaluate the journey so far and plan the route ahead.
SoM Research Insights 