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Staff Profiles

Home > Staff Profiles > Dr Kathryn Fahy

Dr Kathryn Fahy

BSc, MA, PhD

RCUK Fellow

Department

Centre for Strategic Management

Contact

Tel: +44 1524 5 93430
Email:

Research Interests

Practice perspectives on processes of organisational change and how strategic change is accomplished in organisations.

Situated knowing and theories of practice in relation to organisational learning and knowledge.

Organisational ‘greening’/managerial responses to environmental sustainability pressures.

Current Research

Narrative Approach to Strategic Renewal

From February 2009 I am working with Professor Julia Balogun to develop her research exploring radical restructuring and strategic change in European operations of international organisations.  The research takes a strategy-as-practice perspective to focus on the how of strategic action and the day-to-day strategic practices of strategists.  We are exploring the ways in which a narrative approach contributes to developing understanding of processes of strategic renewal.

Organisational Learning and Knowledge

From 2006 to February 2009 I was Research Associate on the 'Grand Challenge' research project 'Knowledge and Information Management through Life' (KIM).  Funded by the EPSRC and ESRC, KIM is a large UK-based interdisciplinary project involving 11 universities researching issues around knowledge management associated with the shift from product delivery to through-life service support.  Firms are increasingly required not only to supply products, but also to provide support services throughout that product's useful life.  This is said to require new business, operational and information system models that extend thirty years or more into the future. This change is not without challenges.  For example, in the space of 30 years there is a natural turnover of staff and organisations; the environment within which the network operates is subject to change; and the software and hardware infrastructure upon which both the product and the network are built is constantly shifting.  Lancaster's KIM team included Professor Mark Easterby-Smith, Dr Carole Elliott and Dr Jon Lervik.

I am particularly interested in exploring the theoretical and practical significance of approaches to thinking about learning and knowing that highlight the situated, relational and socially and materially distributed nature of organisational learning and knowledge.

Corporate Environmental Response

I am currently completing doctoral research at Lancaster University on corporate responses to environmental sustainability pressures in the UK food manufacturing sector (with the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) and the Dept of Organisation, Work & Technology (OWT) at Lancaster).  The research explores the ways in which food manufacturers experience and respond to pressures to attend to environmental sustainability issues.  I focus on inertia and resilience, and perceptions of agency, in organisational and supply network arrangements and relations in connection with the ways in which food manufacturers are engaging with environmental sustainability agendas.  I am keen to develop understanding about the situated nature of organisational practices and arrangements around these issues and the institutional, cultural, political and historical practices through which ways of knowing and doing are constructed, sustained and transformed - and the meaning and role of human agency in all of this.

Teaching

I contribute to teaching on the Department of Organisation, Work & Technology's undergraduate module 'Management & Society' and have contributed to the Lancaster MBA module 'Global Society and Responsible Management'. I worked for a number of years as teaching assistant on a variety of modules within the Department of Organisation, Work & Technology.

Profile

I have undertaken research in the chemical manufacturing industry, the NHS, and the food manufacturing sector, on the management of change, the impact of new technologies, behaviour health & safety and corporate environmental response.

I have an MA in Organisational Analysis and Behaviour from the Department of Organisation, Work & Technology (formerly the Department of Behaviour in Organisations).  My undergraduate degree is in Marketing and Organisation Studies from Lancaster University Management School.

Beyond academia I have worked in commercial, educational and the voluntary sector - in marketing, fundraising and administrative posts.

I am a research fellow of the UK's Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) initiative (AIM Research).

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