Newcastle University

News

Congratulations to my PhD student, Ace Simpson, who ahieved straight '1s' in the examination of his PhD thesis on 15th March, 2013.  Arise 'Dr' Simpson.

What I am doing and have been doing recently 

I returned from Mumbai, India after doing a Strategic Design Thinking workshop with senior executives of the Reserve Bank of India

Just returned from France with my Global Strategic Design MBA students working with Auchan and Biomediqa on Design Thinking Strategies. 

"That's my opinion, if you dont like it, I have others" (Groucho Marx)

Anyone who really thinks America is in decline needs their head checked.  Seriously. (Just look at IT and Biomedical innovation alone).

Who am I?  I am more than a bio, but for people who care about these things...read on

I was born in Sydney, Australia and received an honours degree in Social Science majoring in Psychology from the University of New South Wales in 1998, and a PhD (Management) from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2007.

I joined the Business School on September 1, 2011 and became the Director of Strategy, Organisation and Society in 2013. I am interested in strategic design and strategy making in inter-organizational collaboration, My main focus is on emergent strategy of important projects and the co-creation of managerial and organisational innovation through collaboration. 

 My philosophy to research and teaching is ‘love’ uncertainty, don't ‘fear’ it.  I have had several large Australian Research Council grants in which I explore issues of strategy, governance and managerial innovation on mega-project alliances.

I do research which has had impact. My work on future perfect strategy is recommended by Business UK as a strategic design tool for change.  I have 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 with my friend and colleague Stewart Clegg, have co-authored some highly cited papers in a range of journals including Organization Science (FT top 45; 4*), Organization Studies (FT top 45; 4), Journal of Business Ethics (FT top 45; 3); Management Learning (3), International Journal of Project Management amongst others.

I write books as well and was also a contributing author and researcher for the OECD Report on Innovation Strategy. My latest publication is The Handbook of Managerial and Organizational Innovation. Edward-Elgar: (published in Jan, 2013); and Sage’s bestselling textbook Management and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice, Sage: London, written with Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger.

In 2011 I was made Chair of the Academy of Management's Practice Theme Committee (PTC), a strategic leadership committee of the Academy of Management, the largest management association in the world with over 22,000 members globally. Most recently I joined the board of the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (www.iaccm.com) as Academic Advisor and ex-Officio Board Member.

I love working on complex strategic problems, and have coached teams on strategy using design thinking; my 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

Director of Strategy, Organisation and Society Group, Newcastle University.

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

Academic Advisor and ex officio-Board member: International Association of Contract and Commercial Management .

Qualifications

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

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

Join a global movement - SINGULARITY!

What are the implications to humanity of ground beaking projects in artificial intelligence? An amazing, volatile and uncertain future aleady exists that will have unanticipated existential conseqenes, both good and bad.  Be part of a global movement at http://singularity.org/about/   

Current Visiting Appointments

2012-Current:  EDHEC Business School, France. (Subject Taught: Strategic Change Management)

2012-Current: Sydney University, Australia. (Subject Taught: Strategic Implementation of Change)

2014-2017: Lancaster University, UK. (External Examiner: MSc. programmes) 

Memberships

Member of the Academy of Management

Strategic Management Society 

Some of My Projects 

- AusAID - Training Program for Indonesian Local Government Officials: Introduction to Australian local government and strategic planning (Managing Strategic Projects delivered on behalf of the UTS Law School)

- Resilient Cities Project 

- Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Strategic Thinking

- Penrith City Council - Process Innovation

- Canterbury City Council - Process Innovation 

- 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) 

Toddler (I understand mummy, dadda, but not most other words - I am learning and getting better at it)

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

Richard Bona (what a voice, what music - how do I put it in words? Let me try, imagine if you were transported from right where you are at this moment, into an amazing part of Brazil, in a vibrant community of African descendents, and they invited you into their house and fed you amazing food and played amazing music - that's how I feel when I listen to Richard Bona - especially the songs Samaouma, and Tiki).

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

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

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

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

Beastie Boys...(R.I.P Adam!!!!)

Sly and Robbie (rappers who used to hang with Zappa)

Propellerheads (is there nothing these guys cant do? See them live you wont regret it!) 

Nitin Sawhny

Anoushka Shankar  

Who I am always listening to

- David Byrne, Crack the Sky, Yes, Baba Mal, Zappa and all the songs of my teen years  - the 1980s (New Order, Gang of Four etc.)!!!! Bob Dylanm Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan, Take it away Bob.....

Who I am reading (constantly and never cease to find inspiration and insights)

Hubert Dreyfus' What Computers still cant do.

Richard Sennett's The Craftsman

Alfred Schutz's The Phenomenology of the Social World and also Collection of letters   

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. 

My research focuses on two loosely connected but interelated areas: 1) emergent strategy in mega-projects and how these projects lead to oganisational and social innovation; and 2) the governance mechanisms organisations put into place to foster hope achievement (or, what I call future perfect strategy).  All my work in these areas is informed by social theory.

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 (Alfred Schutz and Hubert Dreyfus)

Global Strategy and Design

IdeaWork 

Organisational Behaviour

Research Methods

Change and Organisational Transformation

• Pitsis TS, Dehlin E, Simpson A, ed. The Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Innovation. Gloucester: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012.
• Simpson AV, Pitsis TS, Clegg SR. The dynamics of compassion: A framework for compassionate decision making. Journal of Business Ethics 2013, (accepted for publication). In Press.
• Clegg SR, Josserand E, Mehra AJ, Pitsis TS. The transformative and innovative power of network dynamics. Organization Studies 2014. In Preparation.
• Pitsis TS, Sankaran S, Gudergan S, Clegg SR. Transforming Governance in Complex Project Environments. International Journal of Project Management 2014. In Press.
• Ivory S, Pitsis TS, Alderman N. Innovation, Policy, and Environment. Construction Management and Economics 2013. In Preparation.
• Nikolova N, Fox S, Clegg S, Bjorkeng K, Pitsis TS. Coaching as Practice: Strategies for Coaching Under Uncertainty. International Studies in Management and Organization 2013. In Press.
• Pitsis TS. Designing the future as a collaborative contract: design (process) thinking. 2012. Webinar.
• Clegg SR, Kornberger M, Pitsis TS. Managing and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2012.
• Bjorkeng K, Clegg SR, Pitsis TS. Becoming (a) Practice. Management Learning 2009, 40(2), 145-159.
• Clegg SR, Pitsis TS. Phronesis, projects and power research. In: Flyvbjerg, B., Landman, T., Schram, S, ed. Real Social Science Applied Phronesis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp.66-94.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.