People, Work and Organisations

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The way we work is fundamentally changing. like ubiquitous technology, alternative work arrangements, and hyper-efficiency are revolutionising our work experiences, making it easier to share information, collaborate with others, and achieve more with less effort. At the same time, these changes can have hidden and sometimes unintended negative consequences across all aspects of people's lives, including on work-life balance and mental health.

Given that people spend most of their life at work and that work and can add value to society, researchers in this theme are working to redesign the world of work such that it enables people to make a positive difference through the work they do, without compromising well-being or productivity.

Organisations are becoming increasingly complex, more dynamic and faster changing social systems. To confront these changes, organisations need to become nimble, innovative and effective if they are to survive and thrive. 21st century organisations require therefore more flexible organisational structures, new types of leadership and new ways of managing. Our research and practice aims to help organisations and institutions navigate this difficult terrain.

We have also seen how since the Great Recession, employment conditions have changed across the world and employment risk is shifting from state and employers to citizens and employees. Labour markets have become characterised by a decline in attachment to employers, with an increase in long-term unemployment, underemployment and working poverty, and non-standard and contingent work (International Labour Organisation [ILO], 2018). Thus, people, work and organisations, face challenges that cannot be addressed with 20th century thinking.

Researchers in this theme explore the current and future challenges regarding work, employment and organisations from both a theoretical and practical perspective. We draw on theory and methods from social psychology, management, organisation studies, sociology and behavioural science to look at the processes of organising in both organisations and society.

Expertise and resources

Below you can find experts, research and media focussed on the role of current and future challenges regarding work, employment and organisations.

Dr Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo

Associate Professor

Dr Ilka Gleibs

Associate Professor

Professor Alex Gillespie

Dr Laura M. Giurge

Assistant Professor

Dr Liora Moskovitz

Visiting Fellow

Dr Tom W. Reader

Associate Professor

Professor Elizabeth Stokoe

Garcia-Lorenzo, L., Carrasco, L., Ahmed, Z., Morgan, A., Sznajder, K., & Eggert, L. (2023). The becoming of worker mothers: The untold narratives of an identity transition. Gender, Work & Organization.

Al-Dajani, H., ... Garcia-Lorenzo, L. et al. (2023). A multi-voiced account of family entrepreneuring research: expanding the agenda of family entrepreneurship. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.

Humă, B., & Stokoe, E (2023). Resisting in business-to-business “cold” sales calls. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X2311855

Okoroji, C., Gleibs, I.H., & Howard, S. (2023). Inferring incompetence from employment status: An audit-like experiment. PLoS ONE, 18(3).

Niemants, N., Hansen, J.P.B., & Stokoe, E. (2023). The Conversation Analytic Role-Play Method: How authentic data meet simulations for interpreter training. In L. Gavioli & C. Wadensjö (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Public Service Interpreting. London: Routledge.

Reader, T.W., & Gillespie, A. (2022). Developing a battery of measures for unobtrusive indicators of organisational culture: a research note. Journal of Risk Research, 26(1), 1-18.

Gillespie, A., & Reader, T.W. (2022). Online patient feedback as a safety valve: An automated language analysis of unnoticed and unresolved safety incidents. Risk Analysis, 43(7). 1463-1477.

Bracht, E., …Gleibs, I., et al (2022). Innovation across cultures: Connecting leadership, identification, and innovative behaviour. Applied Psychology, 72(1), 348-388.

van Dael, J., Reader, T.W., Gillespie, A.T., Freise, L., Darzi, A., & Mayer, E.K. (2022). Do national policies for complaint handling in English hospitals support quality improvement? Lessons from a case study. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 115(10), 390-398.

Giurge, L. M. & Woolley, K. (2022). Working during non-standard work time undermines intrinsic motivation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 170, 104134.

Giurge, L.M., & Bohns, V.K. (2021). You don’t need to answer right away! Receivers overestimate how quickly senders expect responses to non-urgent work emails. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 167, 114-128.

Lucas, B.J., Berry, Z., Giurge, L.M., & Chugh, D. (2021). A longer shortlist increases the consideration of female candidates in male-dominant domains. Nature Human Behaviour, 5, 736-742.

Garcia-Lorenzo, L., Sell-Trujillo, L., & Donnelly, P. (2020). Entrepreneuring after 50: the liminal identity transitions of older emergent entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 32(9-10), 922-942.

Garcia-Lorenzo, L. (2020). Organizational remembering as a trigger for cultural change: Exploring the episodic memories of a financial scandal. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 36(1), 101089.

Heliot, Y., Gleibs, I.H., Coyle, A., Rousseau, D.M., & Rojon, C. (2019). Religious identity in the workplace: A systematic review, research agenda, and practical implications. Human Resource Management, 59(2).

Giurge, L.M., van Dijke, M., Zheng, X., & De Cremer, D. (2019). Does power corrupt the mind? The influence of power on moral reasoning and self-interested behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 69(6): 1387–1418.

Garcia-Lorenzo, L., Donnelly, P., Sell-Trujillo, L., & Imas, J. M. (2018). Liminal entrepreneuring: The creative practices of nascent necessity entrepreneurs. Organization Studies, 39(2-3), 373-395.

Gleibs, I. H., & Haslam, S. A. (2016). Do we want a fighter? The influence of group status and the stability of intergroup relations on leader prototypicality and endorsement. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(4), 557-573.

Moskovitz, L., & Garcia-Lorenzo, L. (2016). Changing the NHS a day at a time: The role of enactment in the mobilisation and prefiguration of change. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4(1), 196-219.

Selected news articles

The workers leaving their dream jobs, BBC Worklife, 13 October 2022. Dr Laura Giurge comments. Read it here.

The non-linear workdays changing the shape of productivity, BBC Worklife, 4 October 2022. Dr Laura Giurge comments. Read it here.

Why must we work so hard before vacation? The Atlantic, 25 July 2022. Dr Laura Giurge comments. Read it here.

Why ending favouritism is the key to building a diverse workforce, Financial Times, 21 July 2022. Dr Grace Lordan writes. Read it here.

Would you trust a robot recruiter? AI is better at hiring staff than human bosses – but companies still don't want to use it, study finds, Daily Mail, 17 May 2022. Dr Grace Lordan comments on study. Read it here.

Why you should think twice about wanting to work on weekends, Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2022. Dr Laura Giurge comments on research with Dr Kate Woolley. Read it here.

Is remote work actually better for the environment? Harvard Business Review, 3 March 2022. Dr Ganga Shreedhar, Dr Kate Laffan and Dr Laura Giurge write. Read it here.

LSE event podcast recordings

Couples That Work, with Dr Jennifer Petriglieri (INSEAD) and Dr Ilka Gleibs. 17 November 2020. Jennifer Petriglieri spoke on her book and research into how people’s close relationships shape who they become professionally and personally, and for the past 6 years she has been studying the lives of dual-career couples. Access the podcast recording via LSE Player here.