Wojciech Kwiatkowski

I am a Lecturer in Business and Management and the School of Business and Creative Industries. I hold an Associate Fellowship of Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy). I was previously employed as an Adjunct Academic (2019) and Graduate Teaching Assistant (2016-2019) at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.

I obtained my PhD in Business and Management from the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, in 2020. My doctoral thesis explored how issues of competence, knowledge, power, identity, technology and the material world at large shaped the service delivery process of a specialist IT consultancy. It drew on socio-constructivist approaches to the study of organisational knowledge and learning, including knowledge-ceation theory and pratice-based theorising of organisational knowledge and learning.

In my current work, I draw on practice theorising to explore organisational knowledge and learning, technology design, effects of new technologies on work and organising, and the power relations inherent in all of them. I also have an interest in scrutinising the harmony and dissonance between scholarly accounts of knowing and the knowing involved in research practice.

Reflective of my research, my teaching interests lie primarily in the areas of organisational knowledge and learning. However, I also have extensive teaching experience in the areas of strategy, organisational design, contemporary organisational issues (i.e. economic, social, political and technological issues affecting organisations), business ethics, leadership and qualitative research methodology.

My primary areas of expertise include:

• The social aspects of organisational knowledge and learning - how knowledge and learning 'happen' among people within and across organisations, the extent to which this can be managed, the power relations inherent in it.
• The material aspects of organisational knowledge and learning - how the material world (i.e. physical modies, physical layouts, technologies, artefacts) affects organisational knowledge and learning.

Because of my teaching and research experience, I also have expertise pertaining to the following areas:

• Strategy - how organisational strategies are devised and enacted in practice;
• Organisatonal design - how organisational structures are devised and how they support organisations' strategic agendas;
• Contemporary business issues - how economics, politics, technology and the society at large affect organisations and their members.
• Knowledge intensive business services - how consultancies deliver business services to their clients, and the dynamic between provider and client organisations.
• Organisational change associated with the introduction of new technologies;
• The social and material aspects of the design of new technologies.

I have recently written a chapter on practice-based theorising for an upcoming encyclopaedia of critical management studies. Currently, I am  preparing papers based on my doctoral thesis for publication in peer-review journals.

My main research interests lie in organisational knowledge and learning. I am particularly interested in how the material environment (i.e. physical layouts, online platforms, novel technologies, human bodies) shape the everyday organisational practices through which knowledge and learning transpire and competences are enacated. The practice-based perspective I adopt allows me to reveal activities and understandings that elude canonical and official accounts of work despite being instrumental to organisational success.

I look forward to collaborating with private and public organisations which:

• Are looking to understand how organisational knowledge and learning 'happen' within them and how it could be enhanced;
• Are looking to understand how the activities of their members at all levels of their organisation contribute to overall performance;
• Are undergoing change whether its internally- or externally-driven, and whether it is associated with deployment of new technologies or more social forms of change (e.g. consumer-driven, policy-driven, competition-driven) ;
• Are at the forefront of technological innovation in their respective industries and sectors;
• Are looking to adapt to a post-COVID-19 reality;
• Are or strive to become disabilty-friendly employers or support people with disabilities.