Andrew Timming

Andrew R Timming is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at the University of Western Australia. He is an experimental psychologist and an expert on the role of physical appearance in employee selection. He also researches employee involvement and participation in decision making.

He has a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall). Prior to that, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln he was awarded an MA in Sociology and a BA in Sociology and Latin American Studies.

Dr Timming is an expert in the field of employee selection. He is particularly interested in how variations in physical appearance influence one's chances of employment. He employs a visual methodology, consisting of photographic stimuli, to evaluate the social psychological impact of job applicants' physical characteristics on employers' perceptions. Within this context, he draws from several literatures, including: aesthetic labour, stigma, prejudice, discrimination and diversity management.

He is mostly known for his research on the effects of body art (i.e. tattoos and piercings) on employment chances, but he is also conducting research looking at the effects of other forms of stigma, including: obesity, old (and young) age, unattractiveness, facial asymmetry, skin tone and physical deformities, among others.

His second area of research centres around employee involvement and participation in decision making, also referred to as employee voice. He has written on the question of whether Aristotle's The Politics can shine any new light on workplace democracy. He is currently conducting research with colleagues in the USA on the extent to which employee involvement in decision making is associated with broader political participation, including voting.