Meet Scott Taylor, Head of Strategy, Leadership and Economic Development Group
Some of you know me from when I worked here as a lecturer in the International Management & Organization group from 2002 to 2007; but some of you don’t, so this is a good opportunity to introduce myself.
On 1st April I rejoined the school as Reader in Leadership & Organization Studies, in the Strategy, Leadership & Economic Development (SLED) group, in the Department of Management. In the six years since 2007, I’ve worked at Essex, Exeter, and Loughborough universities, gaining helpful insights into how a variety of institutions do education and research (and catering). I still research the management of people in small companies, religion and spirituality in workplaces, and training in organizations. I’ve also developed an interest in research methods, especially how messy they are in practice compared to the tidy stories we tell in print and in research methods modules; and I’ve started to write about the construction of leaders by followers (for example, analysing how people responded to Steve Jobs’ death recently).
Alongside that, I’ve been teaching a range of undergraduate and postgraduate students, in this country and then last year in India and Saudi Arabia. I really enjoyed working on a ‘blended’ postgraduate leadership programme at Exeter, which students followed through online materials with the support of coaches; and I also enjoyed, in a different way, teaching the largest group I’ve ever seen (or hope to see), 387 postgraduate accounting, finance, and economics students at Loughborough.
I think working in the SLED group is going to be fascinating, because it’s so varied. It’s also the largest group of academics I’ve been asked to head, so that should also be interesting intellectually and administratively. We should be able to consolidate all the good work that’s been done to put the group together, and develop the research and teaching to continue contributing to the activities in the school.
Scott Taylor, Department of Management