Roffey Park Institute - Sussex Studentships

Roffey Park Institute - Sussex Studentships in the Future of Work (2019)

What you get

• Full tuition fee waiver for 3 years full-time at the Home/EU rate.  Current fees for the PhD in Management can be found here: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/phd/degrees/management-phd
• A tax-free bursary for 3 years full-time at the standard UKRI stipend rate. For 2018/19 this is £14,777 per year

Type of award

3 x PhD Studentships

PhD project

Roffey Park Institute - Sussex Studentships in the Future of Work

We are delighted to announce three PhD studentships, jointly offered by Roffey Park Institute and the University of Sussex Business School.  The awardees will be formally based in the PhD in Management programme at the University of Sussex and are expected to commence studies in September 2019.   

On this occasion we are seeking applications for full-time study, from UK and EU nationals only.  The award holders are expected to be visible and active members in both organisations. Required classes in the first year will demand presence at the University multiple days of the week, with subsequent years continuing to require frequent presence at the School and University.  It is also expected that the award-holding researchers would be at Roffey Park Institute in person as often as is possible and at least on a monthly basis.

The Sponsors

The University of Sussex Business School is a leading research-intensive institution, with world-renowned expertise in science and technology policy, the economics and management of innovation, and their implications for policy, practice and people. The School has a long and distinguished track record of conducting highly impactful, world-leading research across a range of subject areas, and is one of the top three business schools in the UK by research grant income. The Department of Management is home to research and teaching in the areas of human resource management, work and employment studies, leadership, organisational behaviour, operations management, supply chain management, and information systems, with over fifty academic staff members.

Roffey Park Institute is an internationally renowned leadership institute based in the UK, Singapore and Ireland. With over 70 years’ experience of leadership, organisational development, human resource and coaching, they provide executive education and research to many of the world’s leading companies and organisations. Roffey Park Institute works to enhance organisational performance by developing the skills and capabilities of individuals and training future leaders in order to realise its overarching ambition of improving the world of work. It achieves this by delivering high impact training, qualifications and bespoke research, putting people at the heart of organisational development.

The PhD researchers would become members of the Sussex Future of Work Research Hub, an interdisciplinary platform based in the Business School, with members from across a range of University departments. The Hub is currently in an exciting, fast-growth phase, seeking to facilitate further collaborative research into the changing nature of employment, work and industry, as well as engage with a wide range of external partners and stakeholders for realising impact from such research.  

The studentships are the outcome of a seminal collaboration between Roffey Park Institute and the University of Sussex Business School. The outstanding PhD students to join us in this search will be key actors in further developing and consolidating the collaboration both through their own projects and by being highly active organisational citizens. We will support the awardees with expertise, engagement and funding from both organisations. They will be required to produce a very high quality, rigorous doctoral thesis with potential to generate multiple academic outputs in reputable outlets, such as highly regarded academic journals. They will also be expected to produce at least one output each year of study, to be shared in the public domain and accessible to practitioner audiences, about an element of their study/research, such as in the form of blog entries, short pieces on the state of research in the selected field, or initial reports from ongoing study. 

Research Proposals  

All applications must be accompanied with an independent research proposal of up to 5000 words, including references, and which engages with one of the following research topics. The selection committee will consider the merits of proposed projects based on both the potential scholarly contribution, theoretically and empirically, and relevance to practice. Proposals must describe in sufficient detail the specific context, questions and methodologies that would be involved and highlight how access to the relevant research sites and/or organisations would be secured. 

For the requirements of what a good proposal must include please consult the University of Sussex Doctoral School Guidelines, available here:

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/phd/apply/tips-research-degrees/research-proposal

Research topics   

We are seeking original proposals about the Future of Work, and in particular the organisational challenges that can be expected to arise and practices that can be developed to address these challenges. We particularly welcome projects that interrogate popular assertions about changes in the world of work and explore the implications for management practice in relation to leadership and organisational development.   

Research topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Future and emergent business models and forms of organisational design, and the impact of these on the nature and quality of work and employment

• Group dynamics, team collaboration, the sharing of value and the distribution of rewards in a context of the transformation of inter-organisational boundaries
• Demographic, social and cultural shifts and the implications of these for work and workers
• The role of leaders, managers, and / or the HR function in future workplaces
• The future of Organisational Development, its goals, approaches and methods
• The role of relational and dialogic leadership in the  organisations of the future and especially during organisational transformation
• Individual resilience and wellbeing in the context of changing and emergent arrangements of work
• Craft approaches to skills and skills development, over corporate atomization of work
• Lifelong learning in the future of work
• Corporate memory and how it may shape organisational futures
• Employee commitment within the changing context of work
• New technologies and the organisation and experience of work, and how technology may be linked to inequalities and social and economic justice in work and employment

 Tuition fee and bursary details as shown below.

Eligibility

To be eligible you must:

• Have or expect to have a UK Master’s degree, or its equivalent, in a relevant subject such as management, human resource management, sociology, business, economics, organisational behaviour or psychology.  

Number of scholarships available

Three.

Deadline

How to apply

Apply online here.

Select the PhD in Management with a September 2019 start date.

In the Finance section, you should enter the name of the studentship, which is: Roffey Park Institute - Sussex Studentship in the Future of Work

Be sure to supply all of the required documents including:

• All transcripts from Higher Education degrees, including partial marks for any Master’s degree currently in progress;
• A current CV detailing all educational and employment history;
• Letters from two referees, where possible in relation to the specific project proposal being submitted.

All applicants invited for interview will also be requested to submit a sample of written academic work prior to interview.

Due to the high volume of applications received, you may only hear from us if your application is successful.

Contact us

For academic questions, please contact the Future of Work Hub Director, Dr. Ödül Bozkurt: O.Bozkurt@sussex.ac.uk

For questions about the PhD programme, please contact the convenor of the PhD in Management programme, Dr. Michelle Luke: M.A.Luke@sussex.ac.uk

For practical questions about applications, please contact the Business School Research Support Team: business-research@sussex.ac.uk

Timetable

All complete applications must be submitted 1 August 2019 by 23:59 (BST) through the University of Sussex online Postgraduate Application System.

A short-list of candidates will be invited for interview at the University of Sussex on 21 Aug 2019, subject to a small change under exceptional circumstances. Candidates unable to attend may arrange a Skype interview.

Every effort will be made to notify applicants selected on or shortly after 12 August 2019, by email.