The Emergent Manager

In my work here in Nottingham I teach, write about and do research on organisations, managerial work, strategy-making, entrepreneurship, HRM and industrial sociology. The books I have written include The Personnel Managers (1977), Management, Organisation and Employment Strategy (1986), In Search of Management (1994/ 2001), The Emergent Manager (1999), Organising and Managing Work (2002) and Sociology, Work and Industry (5th edition 2008). A theme running through my work is the relationship between the emergent life strategies and identities of organisational members (especially entrepreneurs and strategy-makers) and emergent enterprises. Although I use a variety of different research methods, I make particular use of ethnographic techniques. I am especially enthusiastic about narrative (including film-based) forms of research reporting as means of teaching and providing insights to a range of audiences about the complexities, contradictions, pains and delights of organisational and business life.