Jon Billsberry - My Homepage
Welcome to my website.
This website tells you about my teaching and research interests, acts as an online CV, and gives you information on how to contact me.
Research
In the research section you will find out about my various research studies. My main field, and the one my PhD focused on, is person–organisation fit. This subject focuses on the relationships between employees and employers and how this influences employees' behaviour. My particular interests are on employees' perceptions of their fit and the way this influences their actions. My current studies are looking at (1) the precise nature of employees' perceptions of fit, (2) ways to use the concept of fit as a way of monitoring the psychological health of organisations, (3) how organisations can recruit and select people based on their anticipated fit, and (4) the antecedents and consequences of misfit. My PhD students are looking at (1) the role of misfit in voluntary turnover decisions (Dannie Talbot), (2) links between person–organisation fit and organisational performance (Patrick Nelson), and (3) the influence of person–organisation fit in the effectiveness of expatriate assignments (Ross Davidson). I hope to take on more students in the near future looking at differences between perceived and actual fit and person–organisation fit and the homeworker.
My other organisational psychology research interests are in the fields of recruitment and selection and leadership. I have ongoing studies in each area. In both domains, my main focus is on employees' experience. For example, I am looking at how applicants and recruiters experience the process of recruitment and selection and the impact this has on outcomes. In leadership, I take a socially-constructed approach and look at how people perceive the leaders they follow.
In recent years, I have developed an interest in the penalty shoot-out, especially those taken in international football tournaments. In particular, I have been interested in the failure of the English football team in these tiebreakers. My research has sought an answer in the cultural dimension of individualism and my initial studies have shown that this one dimension can explain as much as one third of the factors influencing the outcomes of penalty shoot-outs. Individualistic countries are severely disadvantaged and England are one of the most individualistic countries playing in international football tournaments.
Teaching
In the teaching section, you will find information on the various teaching-related projects I am currently involved in. I have three ongoing projects. The first of these is using film and television to teach management and related subjects. I recently published a paper explaining how the recent film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory could be used to teach recruitment and selection. In addition, I am currently putting a book together with my co-editors Julie Charlesworth and Pauline Leonard called Moving Images in which many of the most prominent management educators in the world who advocate the use of film in the classroom explain how this can be done effectively. I am also in the middle of a massive data gathering exercise involving the analysis of more than 500 films. The purpose of this data gathering is to provide the material for a new book looking at different aspects of the cinematic portrayal of recruitment and selection.
The second project is examining the use of projective techniques in management education. Projective techniques can be anything to provoke reflection or discussion. I'm currently using images of the sky with doctoral students to help them get the most out of their studies. They use the images at the start of their studies to envisage the way ahead and to imagine the ideal outcomes. They use the images at the end of the course to path reflect on their journey and to consolidate the lessons.
The third management education project takes a more strategic view. It is looking at how management education would differ if it were modelled on the way we teach doctors. This intrigues me because medicine is such a practical subject and students emerge from university able to practice. Management might be considered equally practical, but students leave university with only the barest practical skills. By looking at the ways doctors are trained, I not only hope to throw some light on the training of business studies, but I also want to examine what we know about the knowledge and skills required for effective management.
CV
In the CV section of the website, you'll find a list of my publications and other achievements. I try to update this section whenever there is something new to record.
Contact Me
As you would expect, the contact me section of the website contains data of how to get in touch with me.
Latest News
November 2008: Everything is gearing up for the 2nd Global e-Conference on Fit, which we have the pleasure of hosting again. It is a virtual conference that runs between the 19th and 21st November 2008 and is free to everyone. This year we are officially opening Fit Island, the world's first academic spa resort. To find out more about the conference and Fit Island, please check out the conference website: www.fitconference.com
I've just received a copy of my new book, Discovering Leadership, hot from the presses. This book is available in December from all good booksellers (and hopefully a few dodgy ones as well) and is published by Palgrave. The book has been designed to support a first course in leadership and comprises 24 articles covering eight key leadership topics: Defining Leadership, Effective Leadership, Leadership: Image or Substance?, Exploring Followership, Leadership Gestation, Inspiring Others, Gender Issues and Ethical Issues. I was very fortunate that I had a completely free hand to choose whatever papers I wanted regardless of permissions costs. Hence, the book contains seminal articles by Keith Grint, John Kotter, James Kouzes and Barry Posner, Daniel Goleman, David Boje, Barbara Kellerman, Henry Mintzberg, Gareth Morgan, Joanne Ciulla and many other eminent people as well. One noteworthy quality of the book is that it takes a broadly social constructionist approach to leadership and the articles have been edited to aid digestion.
Professor Keith Grint, Cranfield University, kindly supplied the following recommendation which has been added to the back cover: 'This aptly named collection provides an excellent introduction to the contemporary world of leadership studies. For once we have a volume that challenges the solid ship of taken-for-granted heroes and creates a melting map of contested accounts. A great addition to the literature.'
October 2008: I'm absolutely delighted to announce that I have been offered a chair at Coventry University, which I have gratefully accepted. My title will be Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the business school; I start on the 1st February 2009. Exciting times ahead.
September 2008: It's been a busy couple of months with the Academy of Management and British Academy of Management conferences. The highlight was probably the 'If we taught managers like we teach doctors...' symposium in Harrogate. There was a large audience, much interaction and discussion and a lot of post-session interest. It looks like the project has life and we hope to develop the ideas further.
July 2008: I stood in the election for the Governing Council of the British Academy of Management. There were eleven candidates and five vacancies. In my pitch, I talked about the vocational underperformance of undergraduate management education and my desire to use my council membership to explore the issue. I'm delighted to say that I was one of the five successful candidates and my service begins at the start of 2009 and runs for three calendar years.
June 2008: This month, UEFA Euro 2008 got under way and interest in my penalty shootout research grew tremendously. The website received more than 10,000 visitors during the tournament. In addition, I was interviewed by The Sun, Britain's largest newspaper by circulation, and my penalty shootout research was prominently featured. They described me as a 'top football boffin'! Click here to read the article in The Sun.
May 2008: 1st May and I walk into my office, switch on the computer and there is an email telling me that the paper I published last year in the Journal of Managerial Psychology has been chosen by the editorial team as their best paper of 2007. This is going to be a good month. ... I was right; I've also won a Best Paper award from the organisational psychology at the British Academy of Management. But best of all, I won the election at the Academy of Management for the executive roles of the Management Education and Development division. This is a four year appointment with different jobs each year:
- 2008-2009 Professional Development Workshop (PDW) Chair (Chicago)
- 2009-2010 Program Chair (Montréal)
- 2010-2011 Division Chair-Elect (San Antonio)
- 2011-2012 Division Chair (Boston)
April 2008: Wow, another month and another honour. I have accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of the world's leading management education journal, the Academy of Management Learning & Education (AMLE).
March 2008: I'm honoured to have been nominated as one of two candidates to run for the Program Chair of the Management Education and Development division of the Academy of Management. The election takes place during April and May.
January 2008: I've just begun a new research project with Sharon Williams of Warwick University Medical School looking at how management education would change if we modelled it on the training of doctors. We are currently putting a symposium together for BAM. Click here for more details.
November 2007: Although every effort is building towards the fit conference later this month, I've just had tremendous news from Wiley that they are keen to support our New Directions in Organizational Fit project that I've been developing with Amy Kristof-Brown (University of Iowa) and Dan Turban (University of Missouri).
October 2007: Just had acceptance of a second paper in the Journal of Business Ethics. This one is co-written with Andreas Birnik from the National University of Singapore. It addresses the relevance vs. rigour debate and ask whether righteousness might offer a synthesis.
August 2007: I've just been appointed co-editor of the Organization Management Journal, the refereed online journal of the Eastern Academy of Management. Please go to www.omj-online.org to find out more about journal. Subscribe now; at the moment it is free!
July 2007: I've just launched the promotional website for the 1st Global e-Conference on Fit for which I am the conference organiser. As far as I know, this will be the first conference dedicated to the topic of fit. It will be conducted online (the environmentally-friendly way to conference) and it is completely free. Please go to www.fitconference.com to find out more.
June 2007: I'm delighted to say that we've just signed contracts with Information Age Publishing for the publication of the Moving Images book. This book is a series of commissioned articles by experts in the field about teaching in HE using film and other visual images. I'll be in touch with prospective authors as soon as we have agreed the production schedule with the publishers. There are still one or two gaps in our coverage, so if you are interested in contributing, please get in touch.
April 2007: Just had an amazing run of success with conference submissions. Two papers and a Professional Development Workshop have been accepted for this summer's Academy of Management in Philadelphia. Three papers have been accepted for the British Academy of Management annual conference in Warwick. And I've had papers accepted at EGOS and EAWOP. I've also finished my latest book (thanks once again to all the critical readers) and have handed it over to Wiley. But the best news of all has been acceptance of my Willy Wonka paper by the Journal of Management Education. I've been working hard on this slightly wacky paper for more than five years so I'm delighted that it'll finally be published.
March 2007: My book entitled Experiencing Recruitment and Selection is nearing completion and will go out to critical readers shortly. If you'd like to help me by critically reading the draft, please contact me. I'd certainly appreciate your help. In the meantime, the graphic artists at Wiley have finalised the cover design.
February 2007: The special issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology on person-organisation fit has just been published containing one of my articles.
January 2007: Just had a successful run of paper submissions at journals with papers accepted at the Journal of Business Ethics and New Technology, Work and Employment.
November 2006: We've just analysed some data on penalty shoot-outs in international football tournaments and appear to have some startling findings. Two conference papers and two journal articles are under review. There'll be more later once the findings are fit for human consumption.
September 2006: With colleagues, I've just had three papers accepted for the 40th Occupational Psychology conference being held in Bristol in January 2007. Two are on matters to do with the Fit Project and the third is on my narrative study of contemporary recruitment and selection.
August 2006: I gave a keynote speech at the 2nd Association of Commonwealth Universities' Human Resource Management network in Kuala Lumpur where I talked about adding an organisational research function to university HR departments.
john bilsbury
jon bilsbury
john bilbury
jon billsbury
john billsbury
Jon bilsberry