© University of Kent - Contact | Feedback | Legal | Cookies
The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Industrial Relations MA, PhD
This is a research programme within the Business subject area.
Outline
We have international expertise in the following areas: accounting and finance, operational research, international business strategy, tourism management, organisational behaviour, human resource management and industrial relations, and food marketing and supply chain management.
MA, MPhil and PhD degrees are available in most of these areas or in the general subject area of management. We encourage potential applicants to contact academic staff on an individual basis for an informal discussion before submitting a research proposal. There are contact details of individual members of staff on our website. For more information, contact the Research Secretary at the Business School.
Key facts
- Subject area: Business
- Location: Canterbury and Medway
- School: Kent Business School
- Start: September or January.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A good first degree, or if applying for an MPhil or PhD, a relevant qualification at Master's level from a UK or other approved university and/or equivalent. You must submit a research proposal of approximately 1,500 words on your intended topic. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Research groups
Accounting and Finance
This group pursues research in a variety of areas including financial management in the public and profit-seeking sector, environmental and social aspects of accounting, cash flow analysis, the law and practice of auditing, accounting history and international accounting, financial econometrics, corporate finance, asset pricing, real-estate modelling, security price behaviour.
Food Marketing and Supply Chain Management
The Food Marketing and Supply Chain Management Group has both a disciplinary and a sectoral focus. The disciplinary focus is on food marketing, consumer behaviour and supply chain management. The sectoral focus is the food industry, with research covering a wide range issues from farm to fork. Strong links with industry and an international network of research partners support the Group's empirical research and a growing body of postgraduate research students is at the heart of the theoretical and conceptual work in which the Group is engaged.
Management Science
The Management Science Group covers a wide range of research areas in Operational Research and Systems Thinking. These include research in the area of logistics including green logistics and network security with a special emphasis on the innovative design and analysis of heuristic and exact optimisation, DEA, operation management, multi-variate analysis, biometrics, multi-methodology and Soft OR/Systems.
People, Management and Organisation
Research examines key themes in the areas of Employment Relations, Human Resource Management, Organisational Behaviour and Leadership at both national and international levels. The Group covers a wide range of research, including employment relationships, the role of social partners, the effects of skills, technology, and culture, on the world of work, employee engagement, and the role of leadership in determining organisational performance. The Group includes researchers from a variety of academic backgrounds. It therefore works from a multi-disciplinary perspective, utilising both historical and futuristic perspectives.
Strategy and International Business
The Strategy and International Business (SIB) Group at the Kent Business School carries out research in Strategic Management and International Business. Current research topics include:
- Corporate social responsibility
- Dynamic capabilities and performance management
- International business in Central and Eastern Europe
- International strategic alliances
- Internationalisation of professional services Firms
- Management of multinational enterprises
- Management of not-for-profit organisations
- Non-market strategies.
Interdisciplinary research themes
Kent Business School also offers supervision in a number of other areas that cut across its research groups.
Show all
|Key facts
- Subject area: Business
- Location: Canterbury and Medway
- School: Kent Business School
- Start: September or January.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A good first degree, or if applying for an MPhil or PhD, a relevant qualification at Master's level from a UK or other approved university and/or equivalent. You must submit a research proposal of approximately 1,500 words on your intended topic. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Staff research
Full details of staff research interests can be found on our website.
Faiza Ali: Lecturer in Human Resources Management
Gender equality at work; cross-cultural studies; international HRM; ethnic privilege at workplace.
Louise Ashley: Lecturer in Human Resources Management
Career success; organisational politics; ethnic diversity; gender diversity; political skill; politicians; occupational psychology.
Nader Azizi: Lecturer in Operations Management
Operational research; operations management; optimisation; mathematical programming; computational intelligence; logistics; manufacturing.
Xuemei Bian: Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Consumer studies; consumption behaviour (cognitive process and emotional process); branding and brand management.
Luca Cacciolatti: Lecturer in Marketing
SME marketing; supply chain management; value chains; market orientation; information use; information utilisation; SME growth; SME performance; ultivariate data analysis; multivariate statistics.
Ashley Casson: Lecturer in Financial Accounting and Taxation
Financial accounting; taxation.
Dr Vinh Chau: Senior Lecturer in Strategy
Strategy; strategic management; policy deployment; performance management; service quality; retail banking; Chinese cultural values; regulation; balanced scorecards; public service; utilities; quality management tools; dynamic capabilities; global financial crisis; organisational effectiveness; Asia-Pacific management; health management. Recent publications include: Strategic Management: Principles and Practice (co-author, 2010).
Dr Li-Cheng Chang: Senior Lecturer in Financial Accounting
Institutional theory and organisational change; performance measurement and balanced scorecard; behavioural aspects of budgetary and management control; public sector accountability.
Dr Alison Dean: Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management; Faculty Director of Learning and Teaching
Internationalisation/globalisation of professional service firms; engineering and managing change; knowledge, innovation and change; intellectual capital.
Dr Gavin Dick: Lecturer in Operations Management
Organisation commitment; management support; bullying; police; ISO9000; ISO9001; business performance; attribution; causation; quality management in higher education.
Professor Andrew Fearne: Professor of Food Marketing and Supply Chain Management; Director, Centre for Value Chain Research
Supply chain management; value chains; food marketing; consumer insight; loyalty card data; buyer-supplier relationships; value chain analysis; sustainability; consumer behaviour. Recent publications include: Regoverning Markets: A Place for Small-scale Producers in Modern Agrifood Chains? (co-ed, 2007).
Dr Fragkiskos Filippaios: Senior Lecturer in International Business; Director of Graduate Studies
Multinationals; foreign direct investment; culture; cultural distance; performance; political and civil liberties; roles of subsidiaries; technology.
Professor Warwick Funnell: Professor of Accounting and Finance
Public sector accounting; public sector accountability; accounting history; constitutional accountability. Recent publications include: In Government We Trust: Market Failure and the Delusions of Privatisation (co-ed, 2009); Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (co-ed, 2012).
Dr Marian Garcia: Senior Lecturer in Agri-Environmental Economics
Crowdsourcing; open innovation; online communities; co-creation; value creation; food industry; innovation performance; customer-value-focused innovation.
Dr Mark Gilman: Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management
Employment relations; regulation of labour, pay and reward; HRM; SME growth and performance; SMEs and HRM. Recent publications include: The Ten Characteristics of Successful SMEs (co-author, 2012).
Dr David Godsell: Senior Lecturer in Financial Accounting
Auditing; auditing and corporate governance; auditors' legal responsibilities.
Dr Mark Hampton: Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management
Tourism planning; tourism management; tourism impacts; developing countries; island tourism; island development; marine tourism; backpackers; south-east Asia; tax havens; offshore finance; political economy. Recent publications include: Backpacker Tourism and Economic Development in the Less Developed World (forthcoming).
Dr Sue Hornibrook: Lecturer in Strategic Management and Corporate Responsibility
Buyer supplier relationships; supply chain management; justice; corporate responsibility; social enterprise.
Dr Abdullah Iqbal: Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance
Market-based accounting research; corporate finance; corporate governance; earnings management; operating and stock return performance; seasoned equity offerings; initial public offerings; Islamic finance.
Dr Robert Jupe: Reader in Accounting
Rail privatisation; Railtrack; Network Rail; nuclear privatisation; British Energy; London Underground privatisation; accounting history. Recent publications include: In Government We Trust: Market Failure and the Delusions of Privatisation (co-ed, 2009).
Dr Ortenca Kume: Lecturer in Finance
Credit risk; corporate bond ratings; mutual fund performance; capital structure; alternative investment market listings and delistings.
Des Laffey: Lecturer in e-Commerce
Search engines; comparison websites; social media; online gambling; new venture creation.
Dr Patricia Lewis: Senior Lecturer in Management
Entrepreneurial identity; female entrepreneurs; mumpreneurs; femininity; postfeminism; gender and organisations. Recent publications include: Voice, Visibility and the Gendering of Organizations (co-author, 2007); Gendering Emotions in Organizations (co-ed, 2007); Revealing and Concealing Gender: Issues of Visibility in Organisations (co-ed, 2010); Dirty Work: Concepts and Identities (co-ed, 2012).
Dr Shenxue Li: Senior Lecturer in Strategy
Knowledge management; organisational learning; dynamic capabilities; corporate rigidity; global talent management; decision making; local knowledge; multinational company; international strategy; cross-border management; China.
Professor Steve Wenbin Liu: Professor of Management Science and Computational Mathematics
Performance management; bibliometric; DEA; optimisation. Recent publications include: Recent Progress in Scientific Computing (2007).
Dr Ben Lowe: Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Consumer behaviour; pricing; reference price; innovation acceptance; innovation; water consumption; virtual health communities; nutrition labelling. Recent publications include: Marketing Research: An Asia Pacific Edition (co-ed, 2007); Essentials of SPSS for Windows Versions 14 and 15: A Business Approach (co-author, 2007). Marketing Research: 2nd Asia Pacific Edition (co-ed, 2010).
Dr Samantha Lynch: Lecturer in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management
Trade unions; line managers; performance management; retail industry.
Professor John Mingers: Professor of Operational Research and Systems; Director of Research
Multimethodology; pluralism; critical realism; ethics, habermas; systems; SSM; soft systems; bhaskar; semiotics; bibliometrics; h-index; citations; journal ranking.
Professor Cecilio Mar Molinero: Professor of Management Science
Efficiency; multivariate statistics; social problems; statistics of accounting numbers.
Professor Alex Mohr: Professor of Strategy and International Business
Enterprises (MNEs); alliances; joint ventures; political strategies; international human resource management (IHRM); trust; expatriates; social capital. Recent publications include: Multinationals and Asia: Organizational and Institutional Relationships (co-ed, 2012).
Dr Diogo Souza Monteiro: Lecturer in Marketing
Food marketing; nutrition; food chains; consumer behaviour; social marketing; obesity; marketing research; discrete choice models; applied economics.
Dr Jesse O'Hanley: Lecturer in Environmental Systems Management
Integer programming; heuristic algorithms; facility location; biodiversity conservation; natural resource management; fish passage; species distribution modelling; climate change impacts; nature reserve selection.
Dr Dan Petrovici: Lecturer in Marketing
Advertising; cross-cultural marketing; consumer behaviour; emerging markets; comparative advertising; advertising avoidance; attitudes toward advertising; cross-cultural research methods.
Professor Paul Phillips: Professor of Strategic Management
Tourism and hotels; e-business strategy; performance measurement and management; emerging economies.
Professor Said Salhi: Professor of Management Science and Operational Research; Director, Centre for Logistics and Heuristic Optimisation
Logistics; routing problems; location problems; heuristics; optimisation.
Professor John Saunders: Professor in Marketing
Courage; evolution; marketing; strategy; research; academic; RAE; REF; effectiveness; competitive; international. Recent publications include: Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning (co-author, 2007); Principles of Marketing (co-author, 2012).
Dr Maria Paola Scaparra: Senior Lecturer in Management Science; Director, Management Science and Business Analytics MSc
Mathematical modelling; network and combinatorial optimisation; location analysis; infrastructure protection planning; supply chain reliability.
Rajendra Shirolé: Director, MBA Programmes
Information technology outsourcing; implications of social capital; learning intent in client-vendor relationships; spirituality and practical wisdom for management; a case for implications to business form.
Dr Radha Shiwakoti: Lecturer in Accounting
Corporate governance; building societies; executive remuneration.
Dr Ebrahim Soltani: Reader in Operations Management
Operations improvement; total quality management; buyer-supplier relationship; supply chain quality management; management's attitudes.
Dr Silvia Stanescu: Lecturer in Finance
Quantitative finance; financial econometrics; financial risk management.
Dr Carmen Stoian: Lecturer in International Business
Transition economies; foreign direct investment; institutional theory; corporate social responsibility; strategic corporate social responsibility; central, eastern and south-eastern Europe.
Dr Jawad Syed: Reader in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management
Gender; diversity; equality; knowledge management; strategic human resource management; international HRM. Recent publications include: Managing Cultural Diversity in Asia: A Research Companion (co-ed, 2010); Managing Gender Diversity in Asia: A Research Companion (co-ed 2010); Human Resource Management in a Global Context: A Critical Approach (co-author, 2012).
Professor Katie Truss: Professor of Management; Director of Studies, Employee Engagement PCert
Employee engagement; strategic human resource management; gender; volunteering; public sector management; change management; role of the HR department. Recent publications include: Strategic Human Resource Management (co-ed, 2012).
Professor Radu Tunaru: Professor of Quantitative Finance
Property derivatives; financial engineering; financial mathematics; MCMC applications in finance; statistical properties of risk measures; pricing and hedging of reverse mortgages; calibration of market price of risk with stochastic filtering methods; Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods for risk management in asset-backed securities market; dependence modelling for portfolio analysis.
Dr Nikolaos Voukelatos: Lecturer in Finance
Econometrics; risk-neutral densities; efficiency of options markets; forecasting; conditional variance models.
Maddy Wyatt: Lecturer in Human Resources Management
Career success; organisational politics; ethnic diversity; gender diversity; political skill; politicians; occupational psychology.
Dr Pamela Yeow: Lecturer in Human Resource Management; Deputy Director, MBA Programmes
Communication of trust; communities of practice; ethical consumerism and bags for life.
Tuan Leng Yu: Lecturer in Organisational Management and E-commerce
E-commerce; technology management; technology and organisation; technology and innovation.
Fangming Xu: Lecturer in Accounting and Finance
Corporate finance; mergers and acquisitions; financial markets.
Dr Krystin Zigan: Lecturer in Applied Management
Intellectual capital theory; social capital theory; strategic management in non-profit organisations; performance management.
Further information:
Key facts
- Subject area: Business
- Location: Canterbury and Medway
- School: Kent Business School
- Start: September or January.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A good first degree, or if applying for an MPhil or PhD, a relevant qualification at Master's level from a UK or other approved university and/or equivalent. You must submit a research proposal of approximately 1,500 words on your intended topic. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Contact details
Admissions enquiries
T: +44 (0)1227 827272
E: information@kent.ac.uk
Graduate Admissions
Kent Business School,
University of Kent,
Canterbury, Kent CT2 7PE, UK
T: +44 (0)1227 827726
F: +44 (0)1227 761187
E: kbsadmissions@kent.ac.uk
Facebook: Kent Business School
Skype Fridays: KENTMBA
Key facts
- Subject area: Business
- Location: Canterbury and Medway
- School: Kent Business School
- Start: September or January.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A good first degree, or if applying for an MPhil or PhD, a relevant qualification at Master's level from a UK or other approved university and/or equivalent. You must submit a research proposal of approximately 1,500 words on your intended topic. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
How to apply
Before applying, please read our ‘How to apply’ section.
You can then go straight to the online application form by clicking the programme below:
Key facts
- Subject area: Business
- Location: Canterbury and Medway
- School: Kent Business School
- Start: September or January.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A good first degree, or if applying for an MPhil or PhD, a relevant qualification at Master's level from a UK or other approved university and/or equivalent. You must submit a research proposal of approximately 1,500 words on your intended topic. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).