Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management and Information Systems

Programme Description

Students admitted to the University to study for a Doctorate are normally registered at PhD level. At the end of Year 1, subject to the satisfactory completion of the annual review, a student's PhD status will be confirmed. If progress is unsatisfactory, students may be downgraded to MPhil status. Completion of all doctoral research training modules is a necessary pre-requisite for confirming PhD status.

The annual review requires students to submit a draft Literature Chapter (8,000 words) and make a short presentation about their research to a Review Panel of Assessors, which will include a clear summary of what they have achieved over the previous year and a timeline for the completion of their PhD.

Students will also undergo a similar annual review at the end of year 2, which requires students to submit a revised Literature Chapter and a sample Chapter, which is likely to be a Methods or Empirical Chapter. Students may also be required to undergo a year 3 annual review, based on progress.

As a research student at Nottingham University Business School, you will have access to our specialist in-house Postgraduate Careers Service to help you develop your career management skills and explore your career options.

Offering access to individual careers consultations, skill development events, guest lectures, and an online careers resource area, the Postgraduate Careers Service can support you in planning a career within academia or industry. The University's Graduate School also offers career management sessions for research students.

Many of our research degree graduates have pursued academic careers (approximately 80%), nationally and internationally. However, others have moved into a variety of sectors including consultancy, risk management, the public sector, and self employment.

Priority Research Areas

* Human resource management and employment relations
* Organisational practices, culture and change
* The transformation of organisation and management in emerging societies
* Management and organisations in a globalised context
* Organisational knowledge
* Sensemaking in organisations
* Evidence-based management
* Electronic government, including critical perspectives, the digital divide, methodologies, evaluation methods, performance management, evidence-based policy making
* Alignment of IS/IT and business strategy, contextual models and firm performance
* On-line communities, including domestic applications of ICT, anti-social behaviour on the internet (cyber-bullying), communities of practice and the open source movement
* Inter-organizational networks: multi-agency collaboration and the new public management, theoretical perspectives (coordination and complexity theories)
* Interface design of complex human-machine systems, including decision-support and the effects of stress, workload on system performance.

Specific Projects

* Human resource management in small and medium-sized enterprises
* The impact of equal opportunities legislation, policy and practice
* Managerial careers, work life balance and identity
* Managerial and entrepreneurial behaviour in its social, cultural and organisational context
* Culture and economy in a Chinese organisational context
* Legitimacy in management
* Industrial relations and partnership agreements
* Vocational education and training initiatives in the UK
* Multi-national companies: international joint ventures and alliances; cross-cultural management/international human resource management
* Local communities and networks and the socio-economic consequences of foreign direct investment
* Top management teams and organisational change
* Contextual models of IS/business alignment and firm performance
* Nanoweb - orchestrating supply chains using nano-scale processes
* Developing 'Business Model' theory from a process & value perspective
* 'Griefing' in virtual worlds - uses, casualties and coping strategies
* Professional decision-making in health and social care: reconciling conflicting imperatives in the New Public Management (NPM)
* Managing as designing: developing tools for the entrepreneurial public manager