PhD Students
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Patrick Nelson
The Open University, 2007-current
Patrick is looking at one of the biggest questions in organisational fit. He is looking at the impact of homogeneity on organisational performance. Perhaps the greatest problem to overcome in this study is separating out the impact of a psychological construct on the performance on an organisation. Given the huge number of potential influences on an organisation’s performance, it appears impossible to isolate the impact of fit. However, Patrick has made progress by returning to Schneider’s original work and plans to use resistance to change, or something similar, as a surrogate for organisational performance.
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Patrick is about halfway through his doctoral studies. He has honed his research question and is thinking about how to gather relevant data. He should be gathering data later this year. Later in the year, Patrick will be presenting theoretical ideas at the Academy of Management and British Academy of Management conferences later in the year.
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Suki Manak
Coventry University, 2009-current
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Suki's research question focuses on an enduring issue in the fit literature: Does organisational fit increase or decrease creativity? On one side of the debate are those who think that fit equates to cloning and that people will be similar and will, therefore, tend to think similarly. lAs a result, they predict that this homogeneity will result in less creativity. Some suggest dire consequences for organisations and use phrases such as 'organisational dry rot' to capture the predicament that homogeneous organisations find themselves in. However, other people believe that fit creates the conditions in which creativity thrives. Their idea is that greater homogeneity results in people feeling comfortable and safe and in such situations they are likely to take more risks and to experiment. At present these two diametrically opposing theories have not been tested empirically. Suki plans to study this question with an experimental design to explore the relationship between the two constructs.
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Suki Manak .
Brenda Hollyoak
Coventry University, 2009-current
Brenda is interested in misfits. In particular, she wants to find out what a misfit is. Is it someone who doesn't fit? Is it someone who values something different to the organisation? Is it something completely different to fit altogether? This study is a natural follow-on from the work that Dannie has been doing. She looked at whether fit and misfit are two ends of a continuum and concluded that although there are many similarities, there is something different about being a misfit. It isn't just not fitting that well or the opposite of fit. Brenda hopes to define the construct of misfit and tease out its various components by using storytelling telling techniques. This is a particularly demanding task for many reasons, not the least of which is tracking down the elusive misfits.
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.Steve Godrich
Coventry University, 2009-current
Steve comes at the concept of organisational fit from the perspective of someone working in an organisation with a large head office and many smaller regional offices. How does this structure influence fit? Does region in which the office is set influence fit? So this will be a study of the nested nature of organisational fit and, in particular, will look at how organisational fit is influenced by regional differences. Set in one organisation, the goal is to control for organisational fit so that the influence of regionality can be captured.
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Gary Connor
Coventry University, 2010-current
Gary's main interest is absence. In particular, he is interested in explaining why people choose not to turn up for work. In his PhD, he is suggesting that fit or, more specifically, 'full-blown' misfit, is a driver of particular types of absence. And, as a subsidiary hypothesis, that 'emerging' or 'early-onset' misfit is signalled by increasing levels of absence. This is a particularly interesting set of hypotheses because organisational fit (and misfit) is predicting a measurable behaviour rather than a psychological construct such as job satisfaction or organisational commitment which are the staple DVs of so many fit studies.
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