Research Spotlight: Leadership, Work and Organisation - July 2025

The Leadership, Work and Organisation (LWO) subject group at Newcastle University Business School is dedicated to excellence in research and education across all areas of work, organisation, management and international business. We’re showcasing a successful few months for our LWO research colleagues, as well as highlighting the ongoing and impactful work taking place within the group.

Awards

Professor Charles Harvey and Professor Mairi Maclean

Professor Charles Harvey, Professor of Business History and Management, and Professor Mairi Maclean, Visiting Professor and Professor of International Business in the School of Management at the University of Bath, are to be awarded with the inaugural Daniel Wren Award from the Academy of Management at its July conference in Copenhagen. The Award was established to honour individuals whose scholarship has made a profound and enduring impact on the field of management history. In both its conception and intent, the award reflects a desire to recognise exemplary work that not only advances historical understanding in the discipline, but also models methodological rigor, intellectual courage and sustained scholarly commitment.

Publications

Dr Wee Chan Au

Dr Wee Chan Au, Lecturer in Management Practice, and co-authors published the article titled 'Career Success and Minority Status: A Review and Conceptual Framework' in the Journal of Management. Their study systematically reviewed research on career success among historically underrepresented groups – including women, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community – revealing that disparities in career outcomes are closely tied to minority status. The authors introduce a comprehensive framework that identifies both the barriers and resources affecting career advancement for these groups, highlighting the unique role of identity-based dynamics like hypervisibility and invisibility. The study also broadens the definition of career success to reflect the diverse experiences of marginalised individuals, offering valuable insights for organisations aiming to close equity gaps in the workplace.

Professor Stephen Chen

Professor Stephen Chen, Professor of International Management, and co-authors had a recent publication in Management International Review examining the question, “What is the effect of internationalisation on the CSR performance of firms in service sectors compared to non-service sectors?” The findings help explain many inconsistencies in previous studies.

Professor Charles Harvey

Professor Charles Harvey, Professor of Business History and Management, had an entry on his work around the power elite published in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies.

Dr Yin Liang

Dr Yin Liang, Lecturer in Management and Organisations, and co-authors published a paper titled 'Content Creation within the Algorithmic Environment: A Systematic Review' in Work, Employment and Society. The article analyses how algorithmic power shapes visibility and control in content creation work.

Dr Liang also had an entry on digital nomadism published in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies.

Dr Angela Mazzetti

Dr Angela Mazzetti, Senior Lecturer in Management Practice, and co-authors achieved acceptance of their book chapter titled 'How Organisational Change Impacts Burnout for First-Responders and Emergency Healthcare Workers: Firefighters as a Case Study' for publication in K. Hendrickson & K. Francis (Eds.), Strategies and Solutions for Public Sector Burnout. Emergency healthcare workers and first responders face some of the highest burnout rates of any profession, largely due to rising job demands and decreasing rewards. This book explores how organisational factors – not just the work itself –  play a major role in driving stress and burnout. Using a UK firefighter case study, it shows that workplace changes imposed by organisations can significantly worsen stress and contribute to staffing shortages worldwide.

Professor Iain Munro

Professor Iain Munro, Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change, had an entry on whistleblowing published in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies.

Dr Amy Nguyen 

Congratulations to Dr Amy Nguyen, Lecturer in International Management, for her recent book chapter titled 'Beyond the Horizon: Exploring the Unknowns of Trademarks in Emerging Markets' from the Progress in International Business Research book series: 'Vol 19: The Changing Global Power Balance: Challenges for European Firms'.

Dr Dean Pierides

Dr Dean Pierides, Senior Lecturer in Management and Organisations, successfully published his co-authored entries on Bureaucracy and Pragmatism in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies.

Isma Sadaf

Isma Sadaf, Associate Lecturer for Leadership, Work, and Organisations, and co-authors published their article 'Exploring Energy Consumption Trends: Insights from Developed and Developing Nations'” in the Journal of Global Environmental Change Advances. The study analysed data from 81 countries over 33 years and found that rising energy prices reduce energy consumption worldwide – but human capital plays a key role in shaping this effect. The research reveals that in countries with higher levels of education and skills, energy prices have an even stronger impact on cutting energy use. This suggests that investing in human capital, particularly higher education, can boost energy efficiency. The study is the first of its kind to examine how education influences the relationship between energy costs and consumption in both developed and developing nations.

Dr Emily Yarrow

Dr Emily Yarrow, Senior Lecturer in Management and Organisations, published a book chapter titled: ‘Exploring Bias in Artificial Intelligence in Digital Transformation and the Datafied Future of Work’. This chapter examines algorithmic management in HR and argues that the way algorithms are coded plays a central role in perpetuating bias and intersectional inequality in the workplace. The chapter also introduces a conceptual model for building inclusive, sustainable AI and offers practical recommendations to guide ethical digital transformation in the future of work.

Collaboration and events

Emily Yarrow delivers keynote speech at EDI International Conference

Dr Emily Yarrow, Senior Lecturer in Management and Organisations, was selected to be the Keynote speaker at the 18th Equality, Diversity and Inclusion International Conference. The conference took place in July in Athens, Greece. Dr Yarrow hosted a talk titled: ‘Human After All? Inclusion in the Contemporary Human–AI Augmented Workplace’.

Emily was invited to give the keynote address at the prestigious conference to speak about her current research exploring how biased coding practices and AI-powered hiring tool development contribute to discriminatory hiring outcomes and reinforce existing inequalities in the human-AI augmented workplace. 
She was also invited as an Externally Affiliated Research Associate for The University of Birmingham Business School Work Inclusivity Research Centre (WIRC) in recognition of her EDI research which was identified as speaking strongly to the Centre's academic and practitioner communities.

WIRC is a dynamic community of researchers and partners who are committed to the critically engaged study of issues of equality, diversity and inclusion in employment, and who are guided by principles of social justice. WIRC is based within Birmingham Business School but includes colleagues from disciplines such as sociology, economics, industrial relations and psychology. and practitioners from across the globe.

Yin Liang awarded funding for UK/China symposium

Dr Yin Liang, Lecturer in Management and Organisations, was awarded Confucius Institute funding to run an event called “Bridging Seas and Centuries: The Beiyang Sailors Legacy Symposium”. The event was hosted hosted by Newcastle University Business School in July, and in collaboration with the Confucius Institute at Newcastle University.  It brings together academics, policymakers, and cultural professionals from the UK and China to explore maritime heritage and foster collaboration in cultural organisation management.

Ana Lopes' works with parents and carers networks

Dr Ana Lopes, Senior Lecturer in Work and Employment, has recently been working on a project titled ‘How can parents and carers organise in the workplace? A critical community engaged scholarship investigation.’ This project is having significant influence and success externally. Dr Lopes and her co-author:

• were elected co-chairs of the new National Network of Parents and Carers Networks, UK-PACT (UK Parents and Carers Together)
• have been delivering a monthly series of webinars that bring parents and carers network activists together to share resources and ideas
• developed a network website. This launched on 3 July via a webinar where they shared their research findings
• presented the research findings at the BUIRA (British Universities Industrial Relations Association) conference in June 2025
• were invited as research seminar speakers at Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, earlier this year

Dr Lopes has also been appointed as a member of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Caucus (EDICA) Stakeholders group. Funded by UKRI and the British Academy until the end of 2025, EDICA aims to strengthen the evidence base for inclusive careers across the UK’s research and innovation systems.