Introduction

My current research looks at the management of professionals in privately owned firms, with a particular focus on legal firms.  It has two aims:  first to identify the different human resource management ‘bundles’ that exist in Australasian firms using configuration theory and second to identify the impact of different bundles on organisational performance.  In recent years law firms have to varying degrees embraced the HR practices of their corporate clients but there is little scholarly research around exploring its impact.  My work aims to fill this gap and thus guide future people management practice in the professional services sector. 

The management of professionals is particularly interesting to me partly because professionals are so notoriously tricky to manage but also because I relate to this workplace context as a prior management consultant.  I also think this is particularly important research in Australia given the importance of the services sector to our economy.

I am also very interested in interpersonal dynamics in organisations and have published in areas such as conflict resolution and negotiation and also on problems with team dynamics.  As a researcher I am very pragmatic and believe in the value of interdisciplinary research, and regard both qualitative and quantitative methods as equally valid in answering research questions in management.  My PhD uses a standard ‘mixed methods’ approach; in stage one I used a qualitative interviewing technique called convergent interviewing and in stage two I am using a questionnaire on HR and performance and will undertake statistical analysis of the data; stage three will be a series of case studies.

Research Bio

Like many academics my career is a mix of planning fate, luck and following opportunities through to their natural conclusion.  Like a lot of my ‘genX’ peers when I finished school in the mid 80’s I had only vague career goals.  I was interested in writing and politics and I therefore found myself enrolled in a BA at Macquarie University.  Politically the 80’s were a turbulent time and like a lot of my peers I became involved in a lot of ‘demos’ – a typical part of the undergraduate experience.  Macquarie was a far more ‘political’ university back then and as a politics student I was in the midst of it.  At the time student politics was dominated by the Arms Race, problems in the developing world and tertiary student fees.  I was most interested in international politics and I became particularly interested in looking for answers in the fields of conflict resolution and peace studies.  When I completed an honours year in 1991 my thesis looked at regional politics and environmental protection in the South Pacific.

After graduation I landed a job at The Centre for Conflict Resolution a think tank and teaching Centre at Macquarie Uni; my first academic job, as an associate lecturer.  For the next 5 years I worked at The Centre where I learned the fundamentals of tertiary teaching, including working quite early in my career with postgraduates and developed my knowledge of several different social science disciplines and research methods.  Conflict resolution is not a discipline per se rather, an interdisciplinary area which draws on politics, law, psychology and anthropology.  Conflict is a pervasive human phenomenon and has been studied by researchers from many different academic disciplines.  Teaching conflict resolution meant I inevitably took an interdisciplinary approach.  The academics at The Centre were all heavily influenced by the writing of John Burton who had pioneered conflict resolution.  His human needs approach was central to the academic field of conflict resolution and also in terms of its influence on practice.  At the core of this theory is the search for a theory of conflict resolution that is applicable to all spheres of human conflict and not limited by the context of the conflict.

While working at The Centre for Conflict Resolution, I enrolled in the Master of International Studies (MIntS) Program at Sydney University; in this program I studied international relations in the Asia-Pacific region and also took courses on government and business relations and economic history.  I graduated with first class honours from the program in 1997 my thesis focused on the role of APEC in resolving international trade disputes.

In the late 1990’s early 00’s I left academia and became a management consultant.  In doing so I discovered the field of organisational development and also realised that the expertise I had developed in negotiation and conflict resolution as a political scientist could be applied to problems in corporate organisations;  the field of management consulting beckoned.  After several years in the private sector I began drifting back to academia.  Initially I taught ‘Negotiation’ as an adjunct at MGSM and was then offered a Faculty position at MGSM.

In my research work, whether as a researcher collaborator or supervisor, my end goal is always the same.  I want to produce high quality, accessible and well written work which sheds light on contemporary management problems and which is meaningful for both an academic and practitioner audiences.

My current research is looking at human resource management in Australian law firms and the link between HR and organisational performance.