Michal Izak

Before being appointed a Reader in Management at the University of Roehampton I had gained over eleven years of academic experience (at the University of Lincoln and the University of Essex) as well as two years of industry experience (business support for SMEs - Consultant/Project manager). I hold two standalone MA degrees (Management and Philosophy, from the University of Warsaw, Poland) as well as a PhD in Management Studies (from the University of Essex, UK).

I have authored and co-authored over twenty journal articles, edited volumes and book chapters published in English and Polish, including high-ranked peer reviewed journals (such as Management Learning) and major publishers (Palgrave, Routledge). I have been acting as a reviewer for more than twenty academic journals and as an editorial board member of the leading journals in the field (Organization Studies; Management Learning). I have been regularly presenting my work at academic conferences, co-edited Special Issues of academic journals as well as co-convened international academic conferences (e.g. International Conference on Organizational Discourse) and conference streams (e.g. at APROS/EGOS and CMS). My recent ethnography-informed research investigates technological, conceptual and spatial reformulations of modern workplaces, and the redefinition of concept of work as such (through mobile working). I also investigate how discourses become vehicles for transmitting legitimacy and power as well as ensure control through semantics and space in bureaucratic organizational frameworks.

In other critical research, I explore the ‘soft’ capitalist organizational discourses focused around the notions of responsibility, inclusiveness and empowerment, and I am currently researching the area of organizational learning by proposing a radically dialogic and sustainable program for learning. The collegial research initiatives which I had a pleasure to coordinate were aimed at bringing to the fore the disempowering aspects of discursive silence and opportunities for constructing more inclusive social, educational and economic systems thus jointly addressing the issue of sustainability in management and organization studies from the critical angle.