Strategy, International Business and Society

Funder: Inamori Foundation

Start date: April 2018

End date: March 2022

Principal investigator: Charles Harvey

Funder: EPSRC

Start date: September 2019

End date: September 2022

Principal investigator: Jenny Davidson

Co-investigators: Nicola Patterson, Amy Stabler

Title: Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) Theme in AGENCY Project: "Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms"

Funder: EPSRC

Start date: 2022

End date: 2025

Joint project lead: Cristina Neesham

Funder: HaSS Research Impact Fund 2020

Industry partner: Museums Northumberland

Start date: 2020

End date:2023

Investigator: Cristina Neesham

Partners: Indian Institute of Management Udaipur, Dharohar Foundation (India)

Start date: 2020

End date: 2023

Investigator: Cristina Neesham

Dr Kristina Humonen has won the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Best Paper Award at the 16^th GEM&L Conference on Language and Management in Paris.

This was with her work "Linguistic habitus and social inequalities: The role of language in migrant workers' positioning in the workplace".

The GEM&L community specifically focuses on language-sensitive IB management research.

Summary

The settlement of many migrants and refugees often hinges on their ability to secure employment and learn the host language. In Europe, the hospitality industry often serves as the primary employment opportunity for migrants (OECD, 2020).

This paper aims to explore the ways in which language praxis shape the experiences of migrant employees within multilingual kitchen environments in Finland. Following a critical sociolinguistic perspective, the study examines how the elusive concepts of “correct” linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1986), together with spatial orders (Lefebvre, 1992), contribute to the positioning of migrant workers in the workplace, irrespective of their expertise or local language proficiency. Drawing on ethnographically-informed data, including field observations, semi-structured interviews, audio-recorded workplace talk and photographs, this study suggests that language is systematically employed as a mechanism of control to establish and perpetuate an unequal division of labour. 

Dr Jenny Davidson has been selected as one of four PGT Climate Change Academic Fellows in School X in the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty.

This will involve a 0.3FTE secondment to HaSS.

The fellowship role will be to develop and lead on programme and module development, engagement and delivery. This includes two new 10 and 20 credit interdisciplinary Climate Change pilot modules in ‘Facing up to Climate Change: tackling climate change through solution-focused multi-disciplinary collaboration’ and a new interdisciplinary MSc Leadership and Climate Change programme for launch in September 2024.

Dr Komal Kalra (Lecturer in International Management) and Dr Victoria Pagan (Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management), along with Dr Nosheen Khan, have been successful in their bid with for Newcastle University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Funds (EDIF).

This is for a project that emerged from the experiences of colleagues: ‘Enhancing the workplace integration of ethnic minority academic staff at Newcastle University: Understanding challenges to inclusion and belongingness’.

Robert Tibbo, a prominent human rights lawyer and the lawyer of Mr Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, joins Newcastle University Business School as a Visiting Professor.

As part of a visit in November 2022, Robert will deliver a lecture as part of the University's INSIGHTS lecture series and meet with staff and students.

Biography

Robert Tibbo is a Canadian national, born and raised in Montreal, Quebec Canada, and is known for his work as a lawyer in Human Rights. He was educated at McGill University. Montreal, Quebec, Canada receiving his undergraduate degree (B. Eng) in Chemical Engineering (1988) and subsequently worked as a chemical process engineer in Melbourne, Australia. Thereafter he then worked as a management consultant based in Hong Kong in the 1990s.   

He received his law degree (LL.B) in 2002 from the University of Auckland, New Zealand focusing on administrative and constitutional law having studied under the late Professor Mike Taggart, a towering figure in the academic world of administrative law. He also studied constitutional law under former professor and current justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal, Grant Huscroft. 

Mr Tibbo completed post-graduate work at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and was a visiting student at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. He was also a visiting student at the University of Hong Kong and focused on constitutional and criminal law in Hong Kong and mainland China and rendition/extradition. He has provided expert opinion on the criminal justice system in the People's Republic of China in particular, on double-criminality and extra-territorial jurisdiction of Chinese criminal laws, and sentencing.      

In 2005, Mr Tibbo qualified to practice law as a barrister in Hong Kong after obtaining his Post-Graduate Certificate in Laws (P.C.LL) from the University of Hong Kong. In 2009 he received advanced training in asylum and refugee law under Dr Manfred Nowak, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010.    

Mr Tibbo has appeared at all levels of the courts namely Magistrates Courts, District Court, High Court, Court of Appeal, and the Court of Final Appeal. He also has appeared frequently in administrative tribunals including the Torture Claim Appeal Board (TCAB) and Non-refoulement Claims Petitions Office (NCPO) acting for asylum seekers, Municipal Services Appeals Board, and the Inland Revenue’s Board of Review. Mr. Tibbo has also appeared at the UNHCR in Hong Kong in acting for refugee claimants and appellants.

He is known for his work in the areas of administrative and constitutional law focused on human rights and asylum and refugee law. He has successfully conducted appeals for the transgender community in the Municipal Services Appeal Board. He has also acted for over 60 (sixty) asylum and refugee clients under the Unified Screening System at first instance in the Removal Assessment Section of the Hong Kong Immigration Department and as well in the   TCAB and NCPO.

Mr Tibbo also handles significant cases in the areas of commercial, contract and employment law including bankruptcy, insolvency and injunctions, his most significant cases having acted for individuals litigating against major banks and insurance companies. Mr Tibbo has also appeared in Arbitration matters.

In Tibbo’s criminal trial and appellate work, he has successfully defended clients in criminal trials and succeeded in criminal appeals at all levels of the courts from the Magistrates court up to and including the Court of Final Appeal.  He has handled many criminal cases in the area of trafficking in dangerous drugs, in particular successfully defending an innocent mentally disabled victim of unscrupulous human traffickers. He has also challenged the sentencing regime in the courts.

Mr Tibbo has acted for clients in high-profile extradition and deportation cases. Such cases include American Whistleblower “Edward Snowden” (now in Moscow), the refugees who sheltered Snowden (in Hong Kong), and Xiao Hui (now in Australia), in Australia’s largest ever case of insider trading. Mr Tibbo successfully secured Mr Snowden’s safety and security through the UNHCR in Hong Kong, facilitating his going underground in Hong Kong to avoid extraordinary rendition by the United States government and safe passage for Snowden out of Hong Kong on 23 June 2013. Since 2012 Mr Tibbo has been acting for the refugees who sheltered Mr Snowden, litigating their respective asylum claims in Hong Kong. Since late 2016, he has also been responsible for engaging and working with a group of Montreal-based lawyers in refugee applications to Canada seeking international protection for these courageous individuals.

Mr Tibbo, in leading a group of Montreal-based lawyers, secured refugee status for Vanessa Rodel and her daughter Keana, who sheltered Snowden in Hong Kong, who landed in Canada on 25 March 2019, and who now resides in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and a second family of four refugees who also sheltered Snowden, arrived in Montreal, Quebec on 28 September 2021. Mr Tibbo continues to represent the last remaining refugee in Hong Kong who sheltered Snowden in 2013, Mr Ajith Pushpa Kumara, in his asylum appeals. Mr Tibbo also acts for Ajith in his refugee claims in Canada. Since 2020, Mr Tibbo has held Special Authorization to practice law in Quebec, granted by the Quebec Bar in 2020, to act for Ajith. He is the only lawyer representing Ajith before Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Mr Tibbo has been active in wider social advocacy having previously served as a director of Vision First (2013-2017), an NGO that provides human rights advocacy and humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers in Hong Kong.

He also previously acted as a legal advisor to the Hong Kong Helpers Campaign (2013-2014) and publicly commented on and brought to the wider public’s attention the globally reported horrifying ill-treatment and torture of Indonesian foreign domestic helper Erwiana Sulistyaningsih.

On 30 November 2017, after facing systematic efforts by the Hong Kong authorities, including the police, interfering with his law practice and his ability to practice law, clients, and unlawful efforts by the Hong Kong Police threatening his safety and security, Mr Tibbo was compelled to leave Hong Kong and went into exile. He had received advice and assistance to leave the jurisdiction from “Lawyers Without Borders Canada” and consular officers from the Canadian Consulate in Hong Kong.

Mr Tibbo has appeared in a number of documentary films, including the Oscar-winning “Citizen Four” in 2015, and he was also portrayed in the Hollywood film “Snowden” directed by Oliver Stone, for his role in representing Edward Snowden in Hong Kong during the World’s largest manhunt. “Snowden” was released in 2016.

Presently Mr Tibbo is a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University Business School (2021-2024).

Professor Charles Harvey, Professor of Business History and Management and Director of the Centre for Research on Entrepreneurship, Wealth and Philanthropy (REWP), is the recipient of John F. Mee Award at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.

John F. Mee Award for Paper with the Best Management History Division Contribution was awarded to Charles and his co-authors, Professor Mairi Maclean (University of Bath, UK) and Professor Roy R. Suddaby (University of Victoria, Canada). The Award is for the paper “Multi-Temporality and the Ghostly: Capturing the Spirit of Time Past and Yet to Come”.

The paper is one of a series of publications stemming from a Newcastle University Business School (NUBS) project on “History and Strategic Change at P&G”, initially conducted by Charles Harvey, Mairi Maclean (formerly Newcastle University) and John Sillince (now retired, formerly Newcastle University). The research is based on the archives of P&G held at its HQ in Cincinnati. The research team is the only independent team of researchers to be granted access to the P&G archive. Roy Suddaby (formerly Newcastle University) is a recent addition to the team.

To date, publications have resulted in four journals: Organization, Human Relations, Organization Studies, and Strategic Organization.

The project is one of several NUBS projects conducted using the methodology of Historical Organization Studies (HOS). HOS combines historical methods with organization theory. NUBS has been one of the business schools pioneering HOS, beginning with the publication of the landmark article “Conceptualizing Historical Organization Studies” by Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey and Stewart Clegg in the Academy of Management Review (2016).

Another recent landmark event (2021) was the publication of the book Historical Organization Studies: Theory and Applications edited by Mairi Maclean, Stewart Clegg, Roy Suddaby and Charles Harvey. This team came together when all four authors were employed at NUBS.

NUBS retains a distinctive capability in HOS in the shape of Professors McKinlay, McGovern and Harvey.

Paper abstract

Despite growing scholarly interest in time, history, and memory, we lack an understanding of the multi-temporal reality of organizations – how past, present, and future intersect to inform the lived experience of organizing. The lexicon of the ghostly can help in this regard. We offer a framework that focuses on core moments of organizational life: foundation, strategic change, and longevity commemoration, and illustrate this using a historical case study of consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble (1930-2010). We extend explorations of the ghostly into the domain of long-lived multinationals. Departed leaders highlight the capacity for temporal interplay, representing a ‘shorthand’ for members to understand the organization’s past, present, and future. It is their persistence and mutability that makes them ghostly, reaffirming the past yet remaining open to re-interpretation. Studying organizations through the lens of the ghostly turns the spotlight on the spiritual, highlighting the need for re-enchanting our theorizing of organizing.