ABOUT ME

I am Senior Professor of Leadership and Management at the University of Wollongong. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the British Academy of Management. I have served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management Education, chair of the Management Education and Development (MED) division of the Academy of Management, and I was the Inaugural Chair of the Organisational Psychology Special Interest Group of the British Academy of Management.

My research interests are in the fields of organisational fit and misfit, socially-constructed approaches to leadership, the teaching of leadership, innovative teaching techniques, and the cinematic portrayal of work and working life for both teaching and research purposes. Recently, I became interested in the notion of threshold concepts and the possibility that they might transform the way we teach management and related subjects.

My research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Managment Learning & Education, Journal of Business Ethics, British Journal of Management, Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, European Jopurnal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Management Education, Journal of Business and Psychology, Journal of Management Psychology, New Technology, Work and Employment, Journal of Management and Organization, International Journal of Educational Management, Organization Management Journal, International Journal of Management Education, and Journal of Leadership Education.

I co-edited (with Julie Charlesworth and Pauline Leonard), Moving Images: Effective Teaching with Film and TV in Management for Information Age Publishing. This book collects best practice and helpful advice for instructors thinking about using film and television in their classrooms. I published a co-edited (with Amy Kristof-Brown) book looking at avenues for future research in organisational fit entitled, Organizational Fit: Key Issues and New Directions, for Wiley.

I have 25 years’ experience teaching management, leadership, organisational behaviour, and HR courses. The first 16 years were spent at The Open University where I designed and ran two of the largest courses in the university and in the whole of Europe. At the Deakin Graduate School of Business, I redesigned and ran the organisational behaviour residential school and won the Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Excellence in Teaching just six months after joining the university. In 2012, I was awarded an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and spent a month there teaching and exploring new approaches to teaching. In 2013, I won the Pearson-sponsored ANZAM Management Educator of the Year award.

Before turning to academia I worked for eight years in managerial roles in the music, banking, and executive search industries. My employers included Heavy Metal Records, EMI, Phongram, Citibank, Morgan Grenfell, and Scott Collins.

I am married to Vèronique Ambrosini (left), who is a Professor of Strategic Management and Head of Department at Monash University. We emigrated to Australia in 2011 and live in Warrandyte, Victoria and Corrimal, New South Wales.