Management and Strategy Research Unit (MASRU)

Overview

The Management and Strategy Research Unit (MASRU) incorporates a range of research areas.

Apply to join the Management and Strategy Research Unit (MASRU) and be part of the largest and most diverse research unit in the University of Hertfordshire Business School.  

Under director Dr Yassaman (Yasmin) Imani, the unit benefits from a range of research expertise and interests including:

• Complexity and Management Group (CMG) and the Doctor of Management Programme (DMan)
• Strategic Management Research Group
• Human Resource Management

Complexity and Management Group (CMG) and Doctor of Management Programme (DMan)

Established in 1995 originally as the Complexity and Management Centre, the current CMG’s main activities have included the publication of two series of books, and the running of a PhD group and, since 2000, a professional doctorate program, the DMan, which is still thriving and attracting practicing managers, leaders and consultants from all over the world.  

The activities of the CMG have so far produced 46 doctorates and 11 research masters degrees.

Members of the group have a particular perspective of understanding organisations as population-wide patterns that emerge in complex responsive processes of daily local interaction between people.  

This perspective draws on analogies from the complexity sciences understood in human terms in the discourses of:

• sociology
• psychology
• group analysis
• organisational theory  

Focusing on understanding group and social processes, our method is to encourage doctoral students to use qualitative narratives, and to develop reflective and reflexive inquiries and arguments.

This allows us to examine and call into question commonly believed assumptions underlying currently dominant approaches to management.

Research themes

The unit’s research themes include:

• leadership
• power
• ethics
• organisational change
• conversation in organisations
• the effect of anxiety in organisations
• the role of management consultants  

Aims

The Complexity and Management Group aims to encourage students to:

• reflect upon and make sense of personal experience of change and continuity in organisations.
• locate current ways of making sense of organisational life in wider intellectual traditions of theorising about organisations.
• gain knowledge of recent developments in nonlinear dynamics, chaos, and complexity theory as analogies for organisational processes.
• develop understanding of group dynamics, power relations and their underpinning ideologies, and role formation in organisations.
• develop understanding of conversation as the politics of organisational continuity and change.
• develop insight into the nature and cause of anxiety in organisations and the nature of relationships that might help people to live with it.
• explore the consequences of uncertainty and not knowing in organisations.
• reflect on the hostility and idealisation that managers, consultants and change agents encounter.
• develop an understanding of appropriate research methods for researching what people are actually doing in organisations.

Indicative publications

• Download a reading list of indicative publications for the Complexity Research Group.
• Follow some of the recent discussions involving members of the group.

Strategic Management (including CMG PhD group)

Research topics from both the contemporary and complexity sciences’ perspectives on strategy are the focus of the Strategic Management group.  

The CMC PhD Research Group, led by Dr Dorothea Noble, provides expert knowledge perspective on:

• strategy
• strategic alliances
• international business and business history
• public and third sector management
• corporate social responsibility and business ethics
• SME management

Industrial expertise within the unit includes the palm oil, media, and construction industries.

Human Resource Management

A diverse selection of topics are covered under Human Resource Management including performance management and the role of technology in HR.

Indicative Publications

• Download a reading list of indicative publications from Strategic Management and HR Management.