PhD Students
Dannie Talbot
The Open University, 2006–current
Dannie is interested in misfits. These are employees who perceive themselves not to be part of an in-group and possibly members of an out group. Crucially, misfits are people who are uncomfortable being misfits and would rather not be in this category. It is a state of anxiety, anger and even depression. Given its psychological impact, it's unfortunate that misfit has been so lightly studied. As a result, Dannie's PhD is taking first steps in the field and is developing our understanding of the condition. Having noticed that people have both feelings of fit and misfit in her masters' thesis, she is comparing how employees' perceptions of their fit and misfit differ.
Dannie is in the final year of her studies. She has conducted about forty in-depth interviews with people in a variety of organisations in and around Milton Keynes. During the interviews she used causal mapping to help people report the factors influencing their fit and misfit to her. During the interviews, she plotted the words 'fit' and 'misfit' on a large sheet of paper and asked people to write down all the factors influencing one or both of the factors. Once a factor was mentioned, Dannie asked people to explain what caused it. When a casual factor was mentioned, the interviewee was again asked what caused it. This continued until the causal string was exhausted. In this way, Dannie got to some of the main drivers influencing people's sense of fit and misfit. She is currently analysing her maps and will be reporting initial findings at the Academy of Management and British Academy of Management conferences later in the year.
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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.
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.