Professor Peter McKiernan to retire
Professor Peter McKiernan, Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy & Innovation, has announced his retirement, sharing the news with the audience at the Doctoral Colloquium of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) 2025 Conference in Florence on June 21.
It was an appropriate place for Peter to make the announcement as, in addition to his longstanding role at the University of Strathclyde Business School, Peter has served as President of both EURAM and the British Academy of Management (BAM). Peter also co-founded EURAM's house journal, the European Management Review. In 2021, he was elected as the inaugural Dean of the Fellows College of EURAM. He has served two periods as the Dean of the Fellows College of BAM. In 2016, BAM presented Peter with a Lifetime Achievement award. In 2022, he was honoured with the highest award from the BAM - the 'Cooper Medal' for outstanding contribution and leadership. In 2016, Peter co-founded the community for Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM).
Peter initially joined Strathclyde Business School as a Professor of Management in the Department of Strategy and Organisation. He has also held full-time Professorial positions at the Universities of Warwick, St Andrews, and the Sir Walter Murdoch Chair in Management and Governance at Murdoch University, Australia. Across these institutions, he has held the positions of Dean, Head of School, Head of Group, and Chair of Department. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics, a Masters's degree in Business Analysis, and a Doctorate in Corporate Strategy.
His main research focus is on how organisations learn about how their future might unfold and how they might prepare their current strategies to cope. Over the years, his research output has covered organisational turnaround, fast-growing SMEs, sector studies, and public policy. This research has appeared in top journals in the US and in Europe and has won several journal and conference prizes.
Peter has authored, co-authored, or edited 10 books, including the best seller on corporate turnaround - Sharpbenders; Strategies of Growth; Inside Fortress Europe; Inside the Omani Corporate Culture; Strategic Leadership: Governance and Renewal; Hidden Champions in Central and Eastern Europe, and Turkey; Productivity and Innovation in SMEs; and Scenario Thinking.
He has worked with a range of blue-chip organisations around the world in strategy and marketing such as IBM, BP, Philips, Jardine Matheson, Reed-Elsevier, Siemens-GPT, and Marks and Spencer and has held many Board positions in the private and public sectors.
During his time at the business school, Peter has been the Interim Head of the Department of Management, the Interim Head of the Department of Strategy and Organisation, Co-Chair of the EURAM Conference, Director of Post-Graduate Research Students in the Department of Strategy and Organisation, the Global Director of the MBA for the Business School, Director of the strategy and foresight consulting group and the Executive Academic Director of Strathclyde's Dubai campus.
Published: 25 June 2025
