Bob Townley

Doctoral Student

Contact details

• Email: rkt6@le.ac.uk

Personal details

Bob gained a BA (Hons) in Business Studies from South Bank Polytechnic and an MSc (Econ) in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management from the London School of Economics (LSE). He has worked for several years as a researcher / evaluator in a commercial and academic environment.

Supervisors

• Professor Mark Stein
• Professor James Fitchett

Research

Bob’s research (and evaluation) interests have spanned a range of labour market and work issues including education, skills, small businesses / SMEs, discrimination, disability, mental health and workforce diversity. He also has an interest in participative and democratic methods including ‘interactive’ and user-led approaches.

A particular interest in mental health and organisational well-being has led Bob into his PhD research. It is hoped that this study will contribute to an understanding of how psychoanalytic concepts and approaches can inform organisational practice and address organisational issues arising from manifestations of loss and mourning. It is, therefore, potentially of interest to the broader management and leadership field in terms of organisational functionality: the extent to which organisations recognise, understand, manage and ‘cope’ with loss is likely to have implications for their performance, well-being and sustainability.

Publications

Democratic Evaluation: Putting Principles into Practice.  With Stuart Wilks-Heeg.

Local Economy, Vol.14. Issue 1. May 1999.

Strategic Interventions? Realising the potential of strategic training and development for high performance. With Brian Blundell, Lyn Daunton and Mike Saunders. Management Research News, Vol. 19 1996

Conference Papers

Interactive and User-led Research: New challenges to Academic research. Paper delivered to the HSS 05, interactive research conference. Mid Sweden University, April 2005. With Ann-Christine Larsson, Lennart Svensson, Ruth Sayers and Peter Garside.

Other

Assisted Prof. Sam Aaronovitch in the organisation of international conference: 'Exclusion from Work. Who? Why? And what can we do about it? What can we learn from London, Paris, Berlin, and New York? (Local Economy Policy Unit, 1996)