Professor Nelson Phillips is the chair in Strategy and Organisational Behaviour at the Imperial College Business School in London. Prior to joining Imperial, Professor Phillips was the Beckwith Professor of Management Studies at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School from 2002 to 2005 and was an Associate Professor in the Strategy and Organisation Area at McGill University in Montreal, Canada from 1993 to 2002.Professor Phillips teaches courses in strategy, organisation behaviour, innovation, and leadership at the undergraduate and graduate level. In addition, he is active in executive education, having worked on program design and delivery for a wide range of clients including: the Royal Society, Telefonica, BT, Atkins, Shell and Laing O’Rourke.

Professor Phillips has published more than 75 academic articles and book chapters including articles in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Sloan Management Review. He has also co-authored four books: “Discourse Analysis” (2002); “Power in Organisations” (2006); “Technology and Organization” (2010); and “The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management” (2013). He is currently working on a book on the use of linguistic methods in management research and a book examining the role of religion in organizations.

His research interests lie in four main areas. Firstly, his work in new institutional theory connects conventional approaches to understanding institutional process with new theoretical perspectives such as discourse analysis or with new empirical areas of study such as social entrepreneurship.

Secondly, he is interested in applying social theory to developing deeper understandings of family businesses, technology entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship.

Thirdly, Professor Phillips has a strong interest in technology strategy and innovation, and has been working for several years on various aspects of the social dynamics of technology adoption and the ramifications of these dynamics for technology strategy and innovation.

Finally, he has a strong interest in qualitative research methods, and in particular, in the application of discourse analysis, narrative analysis and other related methods of investigation to the study of organizations.