Dr David Hollis
BSc (Hons), MSc, MRes, PhD, FHEA
Management School
Lecturer in Organisation Studies
+44 114 222 3468
Full contact details
Management School
A019
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL
- Profile
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My research is interdisciplinary, blending organisation studies (OS) and communication studies theory to explore themes of organisational power, authority, leadership, gender, and exploitation. To date, this has been published in Organization Studies, MIT Sloan Management Review, The SAGE Handbook of Leadership and The Handbook of Management Communication, and commended at The European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) and The Academy of Management conferences. Connected to these themes, I am immersed in collective data analysis and theory processes within the international OS community. Since 2022 I have facilitated online sessions as co-lead of The CCO Data Collective, convened workshops at EGOS colloquia, and been awarded Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS) funding to lead an innovative qualitative methods workshop (2025).
- Research interests
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I primarily explore how themes of organisational power, authority, and exploitation come to exist, persist and become transformed through relations of human/non-human actors and their material-discursive practices. I have given invited talks on my publications (please see below) at The University of Twente in 2022 and at The Open University Business School’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity seminar series in 2024. Further, in 2024 I delivered a practitioner-focused video of my impact-led MIT Sloan Management Review article.
My second interest centres around critical research methodologies. This informs my co-leadership of The CCO Data Collective, an initiative that regularly brings together 70 international and interdisciplinary academics online to jointly analyse one another’s "raw" qualitative data from a range of interpretive perspectives. I also co-convened The Collective's first in-person workshop at The University of Vienna (2022) and, in 2023 and 2024, I co-convened EGOS Pre-colloquium Development Workshops in connection with the EGOS Communication, Performativity and Organization (CPO) Standing Working Group.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Own your words to gain authority. MIT Sloan Management Review, 65(3), 19-21. View this article in WRRO
- From ‘pretty’ to ‘pretty powerful’: the communicatively constituted power of facial beauty’s performativity. Organization Studies, 42(12), 1885-1907. View this article in WRRO
Chapters
- Technology and Leadership In Schedlitzki D, Larsson M, Carroll B, Bligh MC & Epitropaki O (Ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership Sage Publications Limited
- 13 Routinizing, Handbook of Management Communication (pp. 247-262). De Gruyter
- Own your words to gain authority. MIT Sloan Management Review, 65(3), 19-21. View this article in WRRO
- Research group
- Grants
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I have been awarded Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS) funding to lead an innovative qualitative methods workshop. In this two-day workshop, set for 2025, I will facilitate collective data analysis and theorisation processes with postgraduate research students and early career researcher attendees.
Relatedly, in 2024 I was awarded stimulation funding to investigate the participatory and inclusive nature of the collective data analysis workshops I co-lead with the scholars and students who attend them. This funding will serve as a foundation for further funding applications around methodological development from national and international bodies.
Finally, I was awarded a full four-year doctoral scholarship by The Open University (2014-2018).
- Teaching interests
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I have several years' experience leading and teaching modules around language and organisation, organisational behaviour, and leadership. This is within my current role at Sheffield University Management School (from 2022) and while lecturing at Nottingham Business School (2018-2022).
My approach to teaching is research-led. For instance, as the Module Leader of MGT364 (Language and Organisation), I draw on my interest around communication's constitutive and performative force to encourage students to critically evaluate (often) presumed sources of authority within academia and organisations.
My pedagogy is informed by various teaching qualifications (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Academic Professional Standard, The Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice).
- Teaching activities
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- MGT364 - Language and Organisation
- MGT219 - Organisational Behaviour
- MGT6127 - Management and Organisational Theory
- MGT679 - Employee Performance Management
- Professional activities and memberships
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I have close connections with the Leuphana Organization Studies (LOST) research group at Leuphana University of Luneburg (Germany). In 2022, I was invited as a paper discussant at LOST’s annual research colloquia. I also review for Organization Studies. Within Sheffield University Management School, I am the Lead Ethics Reviewer for the Work, Employment and Organisation department.
- PhD Supervision
I have supervised one doctoral student to completion and I am currently supervising a first-year student. I am interested in receiving enquiries about potential PhD projects in areas allied to my research interests.