Professor David Knights

Emeritus Professor

Research Overview

My research interests are broad within the area of work and organization studies including gender, technology, higher education and the financial sector. My current research has been related to academics in business schools, the global financial crisis, the body and embodiment and most recently, veterinary surgeons. I jointly created and edited Gender, Work, and Organization from 1994 until 2016 and now am on the advisory editorial board. I have published several books and international refereed journal articles, the latest of which is an edited book entitled Leadership Matters?”: Finding Voice, Connection and Meaning in the 21st Century, New York: Greenleaf, 2017 with Chris Mabey. I have benefited from securing numerous research grants the latest of which are concerned with the study of veterinary surgeons.

Fourteenth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies
Participation in conference - Academic

Embodied Methods in the Social Sciences
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Emerson College, Boston, USA, Video-conference workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Re-founding leadership studies as an embodied, post-humanist, philosophical project, Against or After Leadership? Exploring possibilities for radical change, Symposium on Leadership, Academy of Management Annual Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

8th Annual Social Ontology Workshop, KEDGE BUSINESS SCHOOL in collaboration with Chaire Economie & Finance Autrement Creative Industries & Culture
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

A neo-humanist enlightenment approach to leadership and its development, 35th EGOS Colloquium, Enlightening the Future: The Challenge for Organizations
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Mental Health Conditions at work, 35th EGOS Colloquium, Enlightening the Future: The Challenge for Organizations
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Y Practices of ableism/normalisation within welfare organizations for disabled people, Critical Management Studies Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

A it is a matter of life and death: sociomaterial entanglements in the technology of managing diabetes, 14th Organization Studies Summer Workshop – Technology and Organization
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Impossible to resist? Seeking agendered alternatives to Masculine Managerial Regimes in Academia
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Funding research through business engagement at the British Academy of Management Conference, Gaining Research Funding: An interdisciplinary perspective
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Perfect and Imperfect Tensions in speaking about the Unspeakable: Hubris, Vulnerability and Wisdom in Organizational and Professional Life? 36th Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS)
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The Bell Jar at Work, 36th Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS) and Australasian Caucus of Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (ACSCOS)
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Piles of crumbs: Exploring vulnerability as the route to wisdom and repair in organizations, 36th Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS) and Australasian Caucus of Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (ACSCOS)
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Plenary Speaker The (ir)reality of Virtual Worlds: revisiting truth and reality in dematerialised environments, 7th Annual Social Ontology Workshop
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Business Ethics Quarterly (Journal)
Editorial activity

De-professionalization at Work: A Comparison of Academics and Veterinary Surgeons submitted to Sub-theme 08: (SWG) Management, Occupations and Professions as Contested Terrains
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The performativity of social exclusion/inclusion: Process, temporality and writing people up, 10th International Process Symposium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Milking it for all its worth? Unpalatable Practices, Dairy Cows and Veterinary Work, 12th Organization Studies Summer Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

. Practice Makes Perfect? Skillful Performance in Veterinary Work, Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Keynote: Publication strategies that work, and what to do when they don’t at The Giving Voice to Values approach to management education, Trilateral Workshop Programme
Invited talk

Practicing case study research methodologies, Developing Values-driven Leadership - at The Giving Voice to Values approach to management education Trilateral Workshop Programme
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Research challenges and preferred methods at The Giving Voice to Values approach to management education Trilateral Workshop Programme
Invited talk

Invited plenary/panel and keynote speaker at the BEN-Africa Conference, the Stias Wallenberg Research Centre
Invited talk

'Bodies at Work': Normalising problematic practices in the veterinary profession? 34th Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism Uppsala
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

mpossible to resist? Seeking alternative agendered agendas in academia at the 16th International Gender, Work and Organization Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Impossible to resist? Seeking alternative agendered agendas in academia at the 16th International Gender, Work and Organization Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Embodied Work? Animal Welfare or Malware within Veterinary Practice?
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Convening the 6th ESRC Seminar Series Workshop on Ethical Leadership: Philosophical and Spiritual Approaches to Organization
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Ensnared by the Body? The Somatic Seduction and Semantic Sedition of Embodied Methods: Epistemic, ethical and political challenges in embodied research, APROS conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Ensnared by the Body? The Somatic Seduction and Semantic Sedition of Embodied Methods: Epistemic, ethical and political challenges in embodied research, APROS conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Struggling to Resist: Academics in Business Schools, Seminar Presentation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Struggling to Resist: Business School Academics, Seminar Presentation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Struggling to Resist: Academics in Business Schools, Seminar Presentation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Living on the Edge? Professions: their Preoccupations and Paranoias, ASCOS Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Living on the Edge? Professions: their Preoccupations and Paranoias, ASCOS Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Struggling with Resistance? Masculine Discourses of New Managerialism in UK Academia, Keynote Plenary Lecture at the Quadrangular Conference
Invited talk

Knights D Identity at Work in Contemporary Organizations, Quadrangular Conference 2015: Organisational practices within contemporary landscapes
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

International Interdisciplinary Conference on Research on Work, WORK2015 - New Meanings of Work
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The ‘Missing Masses’ of Resistance: An ethnographic understanding of a university workplace dispute, submitted to the Finland Annual Management and Organization Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Still wet behind the ears? Veterinary Professionals, Age and Gender, Submitted and accepted by Sub-theme 33 Organizations and the Examined Life: Reason, Reflexivity and Responsibility EGOS
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

What’s Trust Got To Do With It? How Remote Workers Socially Construct Their Understandings of Trust, Sub Theme 02 (SWG): The Dynamics of Trust in Challenging Contexts, 31st EGOS Colloquium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The Art of Vetting? Enacting expertise, competence and skilful performance in veterinary practice
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The Role of The Written Form in Processes of Organising: Disability, Embodiment, Sociomaterial Performances, submitted to Skillful Performance: Enacting Expertise, Competence, and Capabilities in Organizations, 7th International Process Symposium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Keynote Speaker: Reflecting on the Financial Crisis: Ethical Leadership in Short Supply in What Can Ethics, Philosophy And Spirituality Contribute To Organizational Leadership?
Invited talk

Seminar on publishing in refereed journals
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

11tth International Conference on Organizational Discourse “Terra Firma, Terra Nova, Terra Incognita”
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Co-Convened the 8th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Gender
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Reconfiguring Resistance: Gendered subjectivity and New Managerialism in UK Business Schools 9th Organization Studies Summer Workshop and Special Issue Resistance, resisting, and resisters in and around organizations
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Diversity Management or Mismanaging Diversity: Reflections on Re-covering Difference in Organization Studies Latin American and European Meeting on Organization Studies, Constructing Alternatives: How can we organize for alternative social, economic, and ecological balance?
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Co-convened a subtheme on Language and Leadership: Discursive Variations in Ways of Leading, 30th EGOS Colloquium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Advice to the British Bankers Association (BBA) in preparing a new syllabus for banking practitioners on their HRM course
Consultancy

Open Univ, Open University - UK
Visiting an external academic institution

British Academy of Management
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

10th International Conference on Organizational Discourse
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

28th EGOS Colloquium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

4th International Symposium on Process Organization Studies
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Critical Management Studies 2011
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Critical Management Studies 2011
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

9th International Conference on Organizational Discourse
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Gender, Work and Organization 6th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference, Emotion and Aesthetics Stream
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

6th International Interdisciplinary Gender, Work and Organization Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

6th International Interdisciplinary Gender, Work and Organization Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

5th International Workshop on critical studies of project based work
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Governance and Accountability in Financial Services Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

EGOS Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Thirteenth European Business Ethics Network UK Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

British Academy of Management Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

24th EGOS conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

24th EGOS Colloquium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Gender, Work and Organization (Journal)
Editorial activity

Gender, Work and Organization (Journal)
Editorial activity

This is Your Life – a celebration of David Knights contribution to academia
Prize (including medals and awards)

The International Board of Critical Management Studies Rosa Luxembourg Award
Prize (including medals and awards)

British Academy
Election to learned society

  • Centre for Technological Futures
  • Management and Society