The new Department of Strategy and Organisation within Strathclyde Business School was launched recently to replace the former Department of Management. The new Department aims to strengthen the School's practical orientation towards strategy by making explicit the intellectual connections between strategising and organising. This restructuring is intended to re-invigorate the School's long-standing reputation as a leader in both teaching and researching within the broad topic area of strategy.
The combination of strategy and organisation studies offers a rare opportunity to develop different perspectives on perennial business problems. In particular, the overarching theme that runs through all of the Department's current activities is an interest in the dynamic practices and social processes by means of which strategy and organisation emerge across organisational contexts as diverse as public/private/voluntary sectors, and everything from past to future, and from micro to multinational enterprises. Research interests in the Department range from practical interventions to support top management teams in their decision making, to new ways of understanding organisational routines and the creativity of lived practices, historical analyses of the development of industry sectors, and the micro-processes of contemporary management. These activities are supported by strong international links to research networks within which Departmental members play prominent leadership roles. They are also threaded throughout the Department's teaching, especially in the MBA and executive education, but also undergraduate and specialist Masters degrees, and in a burgeoning community of postgraduate researchers.
The formation of the new Department has been led by Professor David Hillier as acting Head, ably supported by an administrative team led by Hazel Lamont. Since its launch, the department has appointed three new professors (Mehmet Demirbag, George Wright, and Harry Sminia), one reader (Luciana D'Adderio), promoted Pratima Sambajee and Ying Zhang to lecturer positions and retained a number of significant staff in the face of intense interest from competitor institutions. All of the new appointments will be in place by the end of 2014. The Department will also see a new Head in November when Professor Mehmet Demirbag takes on the role.
A commitment to excellence is evidenced by a number of recent external awards that recognise the quality of work produced by Departmental members. In particular, Dr Andrew Perchard has been awarded the Betty Sams Christian Fellowship in Business History, further supplemented by a grant from the Institut pour l'histoire de l'aluminium, which will allow him to access the archives of the Reynolds Metals Company in Richmond, Virginia.
Dr Ying Zhang and her co-author Dr Marina Biniari (Hunter Centre) have received a Best Paper award from the Academy of Management Annual Conference for their paper entitled "The Emergence of Collective Corporate Entrepreneurial Identity", and Professor Barbara Simpson has also received an Academy of Management Best Paper award for her paper with Professor John Sillince (Newcastle University) entitled "The multiple temporalities of changeful organizational practice". Also, Kathryn Thory's paper, "To Reveal or conceal? Managers' disclosures of private information during emotional intelligence training", was shortlisted for the Alan Moon Memorial Prize at the Academy of Human Resource Development Annual International Conference.
All in all, the Department of Strategy and Organisation is now well positioned to exploit the opportunities of a promising future and cement itself as a centre of excellence in the field.