Research & Ideas
Evidence applied to questions about work, workplaces and organisational change.
I research how people interact with work, workplaces, technology and organisational systems. I am particularly interested in practical problems: how we design work, how different parts of a system interact, and how research can help us understand what might work differently.
My work combines organisational psychology and socio-technical systems thinking. Much of it has been conducted with organisations and in real workplaces. Research and practice inform one another throughout my work.
QuestionsResearch & evidenceResearch in practiceIdeasCollaboration
Questions I research
My research covers a number of connected questions about work and how it is changing. Across them, I am interested in the interaction between people, technology, work, workplaces and organisational context.
How should we design hybrid work?
Hybrid working involves much more than deciding where people work or how often they come into an office.
My research looks at how location, work activities, autonomy, technology, management practices and workplaces interact. A recurring question is how we move beyond arrangements that have developed organically and think more intentionally about what people and their work require.
How does workplace design shape how people work?
Workplace design can influence interaction, communication, concentration, relationships, wellbeing and people’s wider experience of work.
I have researched workplace design for much of my career. A central theme has been that the physical workplace cannot be understood separately from the work and organisational system around it. The same environment can work very differently depending on the tasks people perform, the autonomy they have, the technologies they use and how their work is managed.
How can we understand work as a socio-technical system?
Socio-technical systems thinking has shaped how I approach organisational problems for most of my career.
The starting point is simple. Goals, people, culture, processes, technology and infrastructure interact as parts of a wider system. A change to one part can have consequences elsewhere.
This is particularly useful for complex problems where there is no single cause or solution. It provides a way of understanding those problems and of bringing different forms of expertise and experience together to explore what might work.
How is technology changing work?
Technology can change tasks, roles, relationships, skills and decision-making, as well as the boundaries between different parts of a work system.
I am particularly interested in the interaction between technological and organisational change: how technologies become embedded in work, how people work alongside them, and what else may need to change for them to work effectively.
This has included research on digital transformation, human-robot teams and technology-enabled changes in where and how people work.
AI brings many of these questions into sharper focus. What matters is not only what a technology can do, but how tasks, roles, relationships and ways of working develop around it.
How can we design work and organisational change for sustainability?
Environmental sustainability involves technology, behaviour and the wider organisational context in which people work.
My research has examined employee pro-environmental behaviour, workplace interventions and organisational change for sustainability. This work considers how factors including motivation, goals, feedback, management, infrastructure and organisational context affect what people actually do at work.
Selected research and evidence
The research featured here is a selection. My wider publication record includes work on organisational psychology, workplace design, hybrid working, socio-technical systems, sustainability and technology-enabled organisational change.
Featured reports
Where is your office today? A research-led guide to effective hybrid working
University of Leeds | Research report
Developed through the Adapting Offices project, this research-led guide brought together evidence from organisations and employees to examine how hybrid working was changing work and workplaces, and what organisations could do in response.
Where is your Office Today? New insights on Employee Behaviour and Social Networks
University of Leeds | Research report
The second report drew on employee diary, survey and social network research to examine working patterns and their implications for wellbeing, performance, relationships and workplace design.
Hybrid work
A diary study on location autonomy and employee mental distress: the mediating role of task-environment fit
Personnel Review | Peer-reviewed research
A 10-day diary study examining how choice over work location can help people match their working environment to their tasks, and how this relates to mental distress, satisfaction and performance.
The hybrid workspace: testing an activity-based model of hybrid workspace design
European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology | Peer-reviewed research
Research testing an activity-based model of hybrid workspace design and examining the fit between what people are trying to do and the characteristics of the environments available to them.
Preparing a Graduate Talent Pipeline for the Hybrid Workplace: Rethinking Digital Upskilling and Employability
Academy of Management Learning & Education | Peer-reviewed research
Research examining the experiences of people entering hybrid workplaces and the implications for development, digital skills, employability and inclusion.
Workplace design
Breaking Out of Open-Plan: Extending Social Interference Theory Through an Evaluation of Contemporary Offices
Environment and Behavior | Peer-reviewed research
Research examining how physical workplace features and job design interact. Access to breakout spaces was associated with better communication, satisfaction and wellbeing, while autonomy helped people manage less supportive environments.
The Physical Environment of the Office: Contemporary and Emerging Issues
International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Research synthesis
Research examining what organisational psychology can tell us about office environments and the psychological and behavioural consequences of workplace design.
Socio-technical systems thinking and the design of contemporary workspace
Organizational Behaviour and the Physical Environment | Book chapter
Applying socio-technical thinking to workplace design by considering physical environments alongside people, work, technology and organisational arrangements.
Socio-technical systems
Advancing socio-technical systems thinking: a call for bravery
Applied Ergonomics | Peer-reviewed research
An argument for taking socio-technical systems thinking beyond its traditional applications and using it more ambitiously to address complex contemporary problems.
Technology and work
Leveraging socio-technical systems to tackle grand challenges: Reflections on human-robot teams, hybrid workplaces, med-tech, and digital transformation
Ergonomics | Peer-reviewed research
Reflections on applying socio-technical systems thinking to human-robot teams, hybrid workplaces, med-tech and digital transformation, including its role in bringing disciplines and stakeholders together around complex problems.
Sustainability and organisational change
Changing Behaviour: Successful Environmental Programmes in the Workplace
Business Strategy and the Environment | Peer-reviewed research
A multidisciplinary review examining workplace environmental programmes and how individual, group and organisational factors combine to shape pro-environmental behaviour.
Can green behaviors really be increased for all employees? Trade-offs for “deep greens” in a goal-oriented green human resource management intervention
Business Strategy and the Environment | Peer-reviewed research
Research with more than 1,100 employees examining a workplace environmental intervention and showing that the same behaviour-change approaches do not necessarily work equally well for everyone.
Organizational Change
The Psychology of Green Organizations | Book chapter
Bringing evidence on organisational change, employee engagement and socio-technical systems thinking together to consider environmental change as a wider organisational challenge.
Research in practice
My work brings research and practice together.
I have always been drawn to research that engages with real organisational problems.
Research in organisations is rarely tidy. Priorities change, technologies and workplaces evolve, and different stakeholders have different interests. Research designs also have to respond to what is practically possible.
I see value in that. Having to explain why a question matters, why people should give their time to answering it and what an organisation might learn creates a useful discipline. Organisational partners can challenge assumptions, identify questions researchers have missed and help make sense of what findings mean in practice.
Good applied research should create value in both directions. Organisational problems can generate important research questions, while research provides evidence and methods that help us understand those problems differently.
The pursuit of organisational impact
My colleagues and I have written about this approach directly, reflecting on the successes, failures and lessons from undertaking applied organisational research and trying to create meaningful impact.
Read “The pursuit of organizational impact: hits, misses, and bouncing back” →
Ideas
Research papers are only one way of sharing evidence.
Ideas will provide a space for shorter pieces about work, organisational psychology and the changing workplace. They will connect research with current questions and explore what the evidence might mean in practice.
Research and evidence collaboration
I selectively work with organisations and other consultancies where there is a strong match between the question they are exploring and my expertise.
This can include research advisory, evidence reviews, methodological input, research design and evaluation, either as focused expert input or as part of a wider project.
For broader work design and change questions, my Strategic Advisory work combines research evidence with organisational psychology, socio-technical systems thinking and facilitated approaches to design.
Interested in using research to understand a problem differently?
Explore my research and Ideas, or get in touch if you are working on a question where organisational psychology, socio-technical systems thinking or research evidence could help.