I am a senior academic in the fields of Leadership, Ethical Leadership and Organisational Ethics within the School of Business and Creative Industries. In my role as Senior Lecturer, I am Postgraduate Research Coordinator for the Division Management, Organisation and People; I serve on the School Academic Integrity & Ethics Committee. I am a member of Social Impact Leadership and Management (SILM), and am also affilitated with the Transformative Enterprise (TERG), and the Social, Health and Environmental Inequalities Research (SHEIR) research groups. I completed the Advance HE Research Leadership Development Programme in 2023 and was approved for a School funded membership as Chartered Management Business Educator (CMBE). 

My research expertise and interests in Leadership encompass:

• Ethics and organisational leadership, ethical leadership i.e. anything related to philosophy or ethics in the context of leadership: e.g. virtue ethics (eudomonism), capacities ethics, feminist ethics, care ethics, ethic of care, Nussbaum's ethics, moral reasoning orientation, justice and care,
• Leadership, organisational leadership, self-leadership, i.e. anything related to leadership studies and leadership in societies, cultures, communities, organisations, businesses, groups, teams etc. various leadership theories i.e. servant leadership, authentic leadership, responsible leadership, self-leadership, critical leadership etc.
• Gender in leadership i.e. anything related to the gendering, gender performativity, gender role theory, gender congruity theory, women’s leadership, the agency myth in leadership etc.
• Critical/Feminist ethics/theory in leadership and organisational studies: i.e. feminist ethic of care, feminist research methods, feminist epistemology
• Followership: anything to do with follower-focused approaches to organisational studies and in relation to ‘leadership’, follower-influence, influence without power, intelligent disobedience
• Leadership development, leader learning, i.e. anything related to improving individuals' leadership: e.g. education, mentoring, coaching, development of leadership capacities, capabilities, competencies, skills, identities, voices, practice
• Ethical leadership/follower development: i.e. anything related to improving ethical competencies in individuals both leaders and followers in organisations, cultures, society and communities; e.g. construction of leader/follower ethical identity, dual system processing in ethics (emotions versus rationality), moral judgment, moral action, moral sensitivity etc.
• Ethics in organisations: as above, anything related to philosophy or ethics in the context of organisations, employee wellbeing, bullying and harassment, organisational care, emotions in organisations, moral capitalism, the common good, the good life, crisis in care
• Motivation to lead, motivation to serve (servant leadership), (Womens’) motivation to lead
• Discourse, dialogue, debate, communicative manifestations of leadership / followership, process philosophy, process psychology in leadership, communication ethics, leader/follower communication, Appreciative Inquiry, supportive communication
• Innovative, arts-based research: e.g. aesthetic engagement, content analysis of cultural artefacts, rhetoric, film, literature, poetry, epideictic rhetoric, interviews, image management
• Reflexivity, reflective practice in research
• Critical Leadership Studies / Critical Management Studies i.e. Marxism, ethical aspects of power, empowerment vs. gaslighting and manipulation, destructive leadership/followership,
• Quantitative and qualitative approaches to research: especially content analysis but also thematic analysis, theoretical review, systematic literature review, grounded theory, case study, survey, group differences, narrative inquiry, hermeneutics, factor analysis, development of survey instruments to measure new constructs and relationships. 

PhD Applicants

I am looking to supervise academically excellent PhD candidates from all areas of the world and various backgrounds (e.g. Master's degrees in psychology, philosophy, sociology, political science, education etc.) with interests in the following or closely related topics:

UN SDG3 Good Health and Well-Being; SDG16 Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions: Ethics and organisational leadership, ethical leadership i.e. anything related to philosophy or ethics in the context of leadership: e.g. virtue ethics (eudemonism), capacities ethics, feminist ethics, care ethics, ethic of care, Nussbaum's ethics, moral reasoning orientation, justice and care.

UN SDG8 Decent Work and Economic Growth: Leadership, organisational leadership, self-leadership, i.e. anything related to leadership studies and leadership in societies, cultures, communities, organisations, businesses, groups, teams etc. various leadership theories i.e. servant leadership, authentic leadership, responsible leadership, substitutes for leadership, critical leadership studies etc.

UN SDG5 Gender Equality: Gender in leadership i.e. anything related to the gendering, gender performativity, gender role theory, gender congruity theory, women’s leadership, the agency myth in leadership etc.

I conduct research projects on leadership and ethics both in niche and interdisciplinary areas applying post-positivist, pragmatic, interpretivist, feminist and critical perspectives. I am interested primarily in innovative approaches to research using arts-based inquiry and content analysis, including rhetorical and discourse analysis, but also expanding into further approaches such as critical realism, process psychology/philosophy, the analysis and interpretations of communication and cultural artefacts as they embody and perpetuate meaning.

My current projects explore: Leadership, Ethics, Ethical Leadership, Followership, Ethical Followership

• Self-leadership in personal growth
• Spiritual Leadership and its impact on employee outcomes e.g. resilience, well-being, coping
• Global trends in gender equality research in the field of HRM
• Ethical decision making of migrants
• Decarbonization strategies and energy economics
• Green HRM
• Employee recognition and leader-member-exchange
• Workplace incivility and leadership
• Emotional organisational culture, leadership influence, and pro-environmental behaviours
• Research leadership on the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 - Gender Equality: Mapping the research landscape of the Global North and the Global South
• Moral reasoning and heroism
• The reflexive construction of leader ethical identity through the medium of poetry
• Followers' influence on unethical leadership
• Communicative and socially embedded construction of gendered leader identity (discourse analysis of business leaders' public interviews)
• Arts-based inquiry of relational and socially embedded aspects of ethical and unethical leadership and followership
• Content analysis of women and men's constructions of leadership and moral reasoning in epideictic rhetoric.
• Women’s leadership in non-profit organisations
• Women’s motivation to lead
• Motivation to serve, measuring moral reasoning orientation in servant leadership
• gender leadership gap in new Scottish industries and Scottish national sports

Current PhD Supervision

• Leadership and eudemonism - the Stoics contribution to self-leadership and relational leadership processes
• Exploring the impact of organisational culture, employee engagement, and organisational performance
• BME entrepreneurial leadership in the UK: A critical race exploration

Past PGR supervision

• Role Conflict in Middle Managers in the Banking Industry - Evidence from a Developing Country, Josephine Appiah-Agyekum

• Cultural dimensions of gender egalitarianism and power distance impact on gender diversity and performance. Mandy Jollie Bako

I have supervised, advised, and examined PGR theses on gender and leadership, servant leadership, work ethics, moral reasoning, justice, ethic of care, OCB, and leader-employee relations in various occupational (higher education, HRM, retail, finance, hospitality) and cultural settings (Caribbean, West Africa, Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia, East Asia, UK). 

I have supervised postgraduate research students with projects focused on, for example:

• Developing and validating new measures of leadership constructs of moral reasoning orientation in servant leadership
• Cultural dimensions of gender egalitarianism and power distance and extra-role behaviour
• Work-life balance policies, practices, and impacts in industry specific culture
• Gender discrimination and inequality regimes in Scottish call-centres

PhD completions:

• Safia Khalid (2024), Exploring Gender Inequality Regimes in the Call Centre Industry: A Study of Women in Management in Scottish Call Centres
• Ijeoma Ukeni (2021), Servant leadership and moral reasoning orientation: A quantitative examination of the antecedent and dimensions of servant leadership in contemporary organisations
• Tamer Koburtay (2017), The congruity in female-leader role stereotypes in the Jordanian hotel sector
• Abdulrazaq K. Nuri (2017), The influence of performance and appraisal fairness on employee attitudes and behavior in Iraqi Kurdistan
• Fatma Hussein M. Kolatshi (2017), Factors affecting the acceptance and impact of human resource information systems (HRIS): Evidence from HR professionals in Libyan companies

Before entering the academy, I had leadership responsibility for small- and large-scale Internet-based projects in business consultancy, online marketing, corporate identity and brand management, and manaing internal and external online communication for international corporations in Berlin in the automotive (VW/gedas), telecommunications and Web Business consulting (T-Systems, Gauss Interprise, Activ-Consult), academic publishing (Holzbrinck, Quintessenz [dentistry and oral medicine]), and public sector (German Libraries Institute, Humboldt University [language learning, translation and interpretation]).