Professor George Saridakis

George Saridakis joined Kent Business School (KBS) in December 2017 as a Professor of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. At the time of his appointment, he acted as a Director of the (previously known as a) Centre for Employment, Competitiveness and Growth. Currently he is the Head of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and International Business (MEIB) Department.

He received his PhD in Economics from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex in 2006. During the final year of his PhD, he took up a research post (Research Fellow in Applied Economics) at the University of Warwick.
In 2007, he joined Loughborough University as a Lecturer in Business Economics. After 3 years, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer, and subsequently to Reader. He was also the Director of the PhD programme (Business) from 2011-2012.
He left Loughborough University in 2012 to take up a research professorship at the Small Business Research Centre in Kingston University at age 33, where he stayed for 5 years.
During his time at Kingston, he undertook various managerial responsibilities, including the directorship of the PhD programme (Business) and the Centre for Research in Employment, Skills and Society (CRESS). Also, he held a short appointment as Director of the Global Entrepreneurship Development Centre (GEDC) before his move to KBS.
George is also an Honorary Professor at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago since 2013. Recently he was re-appointed to this position for a period of 3 years. He is also an Eminent Visiting Professor at Universiti Brunei Darussalam and a Visiting Professor at Aston University School of Business and Social Sciences in the UK.

George is interested in the area of small firms and entrepreneurship, with a further interest in the social media, illicit behaviour and supply chain linked to business performance and economic growth. His research typically uses cross-sectional, time-series and panel data approaches.
George’s research has been presented at various international conferences for which he has won four best conference paper’ awards, the Scottish Enterprise award and he has performed the duties of chair and/or discussant at many of these conferences. Currently, he is the Chair of the “Business Creation, Early Stage Development and Business Closure” track at the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE).

He has published more than 70 journal articles. Most of his articles have appeared in top-rated journals listed as world-leading or internationally excellent/recognised, according to the Association of Business School (ABS) journal ranking list. He is also the author of several edited books, book chapters and official reports. He is considered as one of the top 2% of influential researchers in the world based on the report updated for 2021 by researchers at Stanford University.

George is a member of various editorial boards, including the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business and Spoudai: Journal of Economics and Business and the Editor of several special issues and has appeared in journals such as the International Small Business Journal and Economic and Industrial Democracy. He has also been called for three special issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic. He is currently editing a special issue on sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation. In 2021, George was appointed as Senior Editor of Information Technology and People.

He has been a Visiting International Scholar at Belk College of Business (USA) and Goodman School of Business (Canada), Honorary Fellow at Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies (Trinidad), Affiliate Researcher at Applied Microeconomics Research Unit (Portugal) and Research Associate at the Enterprise Research Centre (UK).  

At Kent, George teaches Entrepreneurship, which introduces students to a wide range of approaches to entrepreneurship and explains its role in innovation and economic growth. He has been awarded two Kent Union awards for going above and beyond expectation in entrepreneurship teaching.
Previously he has taught at Kingston Business School, Loughborough Business School and Warwick Business School. At these institutions, he mainly taught panel data, time-series analysis and research methodology for postgraduate students, and lectured undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Business Economics.
He has also taught in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship in times of crisis at the University of North Carolina in the USA, where his teaching contribution to students’ experience was commented on in the senior survey. He has taught similar topics at the IAE Lyon School of Management, Jean Moulin University, in France.
During the early stages of his career, he tutored modules in economics and econometrics at the universities of Leicester, Essex and Warwick.
Since 2010, he has been a fellow at the Higher Education Academy.  

George has acted as an external examiner for doctoral vivas at various universities including Brighton University, Cranfield University, Surrey University, Loughborough University and University Putra Malaysia, as well as independent chair, internal examiner and external advisor.
He has successfully supervised 6 PhD students to completion. His students have published in well-established journals (e.g. Journal of Business Venturing, International Small Business Journal) during and/or soon after their PhD completion. Recently, one of his research students received a Best Paper Award in the International Entrepreneurship track at ISBE conference.
He welcomes applications from candidates with a background in economics or management and with a strong interest in applied work in the area of small firms and entrepreneurship. 

Current supervisees

Sara Odat: The effect of the sharing economy at innovating SMEs business model in developing economies 

Past supervisees

• Bochra Idris: Essays on SMEs' internationalisation: an empirical analysis using large-scale survey data.
• Bernard Owens Imarhiagbe: SMEs and access to finance: an investigation of different sources of funding. 
• Yanqing Lai: Employee relations in SMEs: an empirical approach using the Workplace Employment Relation Survey (WERS 2011). 
• BM Razzak: The working life of employees in the context of UK SMEs of Bangladeshi origin. 
• Hemamali Tennakoon Mudiyanselage: The impact of information security and its related constructs on purchase intention of social commerce users. 
• Nicholas Litsardopoulos: Entrepreneurship as an employment career path and the role of entrepreneurial well-being.    

George has been invited as a keynote speaker for various research events, including talks at the European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies and the 13th Convention International Community of Banyakigezi.

Part of his research activities and work has been funded by major funders such as the European Union (EU) Leonardo da Vinci programme, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the British Academy, Barclays Bank, the Legal Services Board (LSB) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS). Recently he carried out research on Great Britain Microbusinesses which received attention from various media (e.g. Forbes).

During his academic career he has acted as an external assessor for promotions at various national (e.g. Reading University, Cranfield University, Westminster University, University of Brighton) and international (e.g. The University of the West Indies, University of Patras, Athens University, University of Piraeus) universities. He has also been involved in assessing the quality of academic programmes in various institutions (e.g. Aberystwyth University, Liverpool University, University of Ioannina and represented Kent at the South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) PhD studentship competition.