Newcastle University

Overview 

Dr Tyrone S. Pitsis was born in Sydney, Australia and received his honours in Psychology from the University of New South Wales, Australia and a PhD (Management) from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2007.

Tyrone joined the Business School on September 1, 2011 as Deputy-Director of Strategy, Organisation and Society.  His primary research is on the governance of inter-organizational collaboration of strategically important projects.  He is particularly interested in exploring the co-creation of managerial and organisational innovation through collaboration. He has held several large Australian Research Council grants in which he explores issues of strategy, governance and managerial innovation on mega-project alliances. 

Tyrone has been recipient of a number of awards including the Emerald Science Citation of Excellence in 2010 with Kjersti Bjorkeng and Stewart Clegg; Best Paper Award at the British Academy of Management, and has co-authored some of the most highly cited papers in a range of journals including Organization Science (4*), Organization Studies (4), Management Learning (3), International Journal of Project Management amongst others.  He is also contributing author to the recent OECD Report on Innovation Strategy. His latest publication is  The Handbook of Managerial and Organizational Innovation. Edward-Elgar: due out in mid 2012; and his latest book is Sage’s best selling textbook Management and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice, Sage: London, written with Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger. In 2011 Tyrone was elected Chair of the Academy of Management's Practice Theme Committee (PTC), a strategic leadership committee of the Academy of Management. 

Tyrone has coached teams on strategy; his teams have won the Boston Consulting Group Strategy Competition, and most recently won the "innovative idea" award at the 2012 MBA Sustainability Challenge run by Tesco, Proctor & Gamble and Santander, beating teams from the UK's leading business schools. 

Roles and Responsibilities

Chair: Academy of Management's Practice Theme Committee (Learn more by clicking here)

Deputy-Director of Strategy, Organisation and Society 

Qualifications

BSocSc - Hons [Psychology], University of New South Wales, (UNSW) Sydney Australia.

Ph.D, [Management], University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

Ph.D, candidate Cambridge University, [Design thinking in Education] 

Visiting Appointments

EDHEC, France

Copenhagen Business School, Denmark 

Sydney University, Sydney, Australia 

Memberships

Member of the Academy of Management

Member of the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management

Member of the International Centre for Complex Project Management

Founding member: Alliancing Association of Australasia 

Some of My Projects 

- Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Strategic Thinking

- KONNE: Leadership for innovation

- New South Wales Department of Education: Strategic Planning 

- Olympics Projects  

- Royal Australian Air Force Improvement Program 

- Reserve Bank of Australia - Positive Leadership  

- TNT: Leadership for change

- Third Sector Leadership Development Programme 

Languages

English (Native Speaker)

Australian (Proper English) 

Greek (Proficient)

German (Learning)

 Indonesian (Learning) 

Other Interests

If music be the food of love, play on.  

Music

Food

Music

Walking

and did I mention music!

What I am listening to at the moment

Alexi Murdoch - (go to sleep with this music, I mean that in a good way!)

M.I.A - (esp. Paper planes - about 10 versions of the same song and I still don't know which one I love most!)

Coldplay -  (Mylo Xyloto - what a brilliant album - their best)

Foo Fighters - (One of these days - brilliant on all counts)

Noah and the Whale - (L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N! who needs motivation speakers?) 

Eminem - (the Man's a poet - don't believe me, then just ask Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney) 

Ingrid Michaelson - (Turn to Stone, what a beautifully sad song) 

King Charles (make sure you listen to Bam Bam!!!  I dance to this with my kids)

Newton Faulkner - (what a talent!)

Who I am always listening to

- David Byrne, Crack the Sky, Yes, Baba Mal, Propellor Heads, Zappa and all the songs of my teen years  - the 1980s!!!! and how can I not love Dylan?????????

A question of strategy?

If you were to think about all the projects your organisation pursues, how many are central to your strategic intentions? How central are your projects in innovating what you do and how you do it? Of those that are strategically imperative, how well do they help you achieve those imperatives? How are projects governed to enable the tensions between control, prediction and planning with the need for improvisation, adaptation and transformations?  Importantly, how well does your organisation understand the power and social relations inherent and endemic in project based organising?  These are just some of the questions I seek to investigate, interogate and explore through my research. 

Do you want to do a PhD/DBA with me?

If you want to do a PhD specifically in my area (see below), I would love to have a chat with you.  Please be aware I will not supervise anyone outside my specific area of interest.  Feel free to email me at tyrone.pitsis@ncl.ac.uk  or call me on 0191 208 1710

Research Interests

- strategy and foresight 

- managerial and organizational innovation and creativity 

- design thinking in wicked problem solving 

- mega-projects and project governance (especially public/private collaboration)

- creating project legacy

 Theoretical influences and underpinning

- Pragmatic philosophy

- Phenomenology (Schutzian)

- Practice Theory 

Global Strategy and Design

IdeaWork 

Organisational Behaviour

Research Methods

Change and Organisational Transformation

• Clegg SR, Josserand E, Mehra AJ, Pitsis TS. The transformative and innovative power of network dynamics. Organization Studies 2014. In Preparation.
• Ivory S, Pitsis TS, Alderman N. Innovation, Policy, and Environment. Construction Management and Economics 2013. In Preparation.
• Pitsis TS, Sankaran S, Gudergan S, Clegg SR. Transforming Governance in Complex Project Environments. International Journal of Project Management 2013. In Press.
• Nikolova N, Fox S, Clegg S, Bjorkeng K, Pitsis TS. Coaching as Practice: Strategies for Coaching Under Uncertainty. International Studies in Management and Organization 2012. In Press.
• Clegg SR, Kornberger M, Pitsis TS. Managing and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2012.
• Clegg SR, Pitsis TS. Phronesis, Projects and Power Relations. In: Flyvbjerg, B., Landman, T., Schram, S, ed. Real Social Science Applied Phronesis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. In Press.
• Pitsis TS, Schweitzer J, Clegg SR. Strategy discourse as collaborative design practice: Can design thinking benefit strategy development?. In: 28th EGOS Colloquium. 2012, Helsinki, Finland. In Press.
• Pitsis TS, Dehlin E, Simpson A, ed. The Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Innovation. Gloucester: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012. In Press.
• Carlsen A, Pitsis T. Experiencing hope in organizational lives. In: Academy of Management. 2011, San Antonio, Texas.
• Clegg SR, Bjorkeng C, Pitsis TS. Innovating the practice of normative control in project management contractual relations. In: Morris, P.W.G., Pinto, J.K. Söderlund, J, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Project Management. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.410-437.
• Pitsis TS, Gudergan S. Know How? Challenges in knowledge and innovation management in alliances. International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies 2010, 4(2), 109-123.
• Lundberg M, Pitsis TS. Leading Ideas: Design Thinking as Aesthetic Process Innovation. In: Design Thinking Research Symposium Conference Proceedings. 2010, Sydney: DAB Documents.
• Chelliah J, Pitsis TS. Power Sharing in Progressive Discipline: New Rules of Engagement Arising from an Australian Perspective. Contemporary Management Research 2010, 6(2), 91-110.
• Green R, Liyanage S, Pitsis T, Scott-Kemis D, Agarwal R. The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow. Paris, France: OECD Publishing, 2010.
• Bjorkeng K, Clegg SR, Pitsis TS. Becoming (a) Practice. Management Learning 2009, 40(2), 145-159.
• Carlsen A, Pitsis TS. Experiencing hope in organizational lives. In: Robert, L.M., Dutton, J, ed. Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation. New York: Psychology Press, 2009, pp.77-98.
• Håkonsen G, Carlsen A, Clegg S, Antonacopoulou E, Pitsis T. Idea work. Towards a practice-based theory of creating and becoming in organizations. In: European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS). 2009, Barcelona, Spain.
• van-Marrewijk A, Clegg SR, Pitsis TS, Veenswijk M. Managing public-private megaprojects: Paradoxes, complexity, and project design. International Journal of Project Management 2008, 26(6), 591-600.
• Carlsen A, Pitsis TS. Projects for life. Building narrative capital for positive organizational change. In: Clegg, S.R., Cooper, C.L, ed. The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Behavior. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2008, pp.456-477.
• Anandakumar A, Pitsis TS, Clegg SR. Everybody hurts sometimes: The language of emotionality and the dysfunctional organization. In: Langan-Fox, J., Cooper, C.L., Klimoski, R.J, ed. Research Companion To The Dysfunctional Workplace Management Challenges and Symptoms. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2007, pp.187-215.
• Pitsis TS, Clegg SR. We live in a political world: The paradox of managerial wisdom. In: Kessler, E.H., Bailey, J.R, ed. Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Wisdom. Thousand Oaks, California, USA: Sage Publications, 2007, pp.399-421.
• Clegg SR, Pitsis TS. The Art of Alliancing: From Imperative Control to Collaborative Coordination. In: Ville, S.P., Boyce, G., MacIntyre, S, ed. How Organisations Connect: Investing in Communication. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 2006, pp.32-53.
• Pitsis TS, Kornberger M, Clegg SR. The Art of Managing Relationships in Interorganizational Collaboration. M@n@gement 2004, 7(3), 47-67.
• Pitsis TS, Clegg SR, Marosszeky M, Rura-Polley T. Constructing the Olympic Dream: A Future Perfect Strategy of Project Management. Organization Science 2003, 14(5), 574-590.
• Clegg SR, Pitsis TS, Rura-Polley T, Marroszeky M. Governmentality Matters: Designing an Alliance Culture of Inter-Organizational Collaboration for Managing Projects. Organization Studies 2002, 23(3), 317-337.