Professor Paul Thompson

Emeritus Professor

Management, Work and Organisation University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Paul Thompson

About me

Before his arrival at Stirling Paul was Professor of Organisational Analysis, Department of Human Resource Management, Univesity of Strathclyde (1999-2015, including Head of department 2005-8); Vice Dean Research of Strathclyde Business School (2002-5; 2010-13); Professor of Management and Head of Department of Business Studies, University of Edinburgh 1995-9. Professor and Principal Lecturer, Department of Organisation Studies, University of Central Lancashire 1984-1995.  He is Consulting Editor to the joural Work in the Global Economy and serves on the Boards of New Technology, Work and Employment and Industrial Relations./Relations Industrielle. Paul is an internationally known theorist of the labour process and of changes in work, employment and organization. Amongst his single or co-authored books are The Nature of Work, Workplaces of the Future, New Technology@Work, Work Organisations, and Organizational Misbehaviour. He has over 70 articles in leading journals. His work has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Hungarian and Swedish. He is Convenor of the Steering Group for the International Labour Process Conference.  Paul has led or been part of teams researching the commercial vehicle, hotel, call centre, spirits and supermarket sectors. With various colleagues, research grants have been secured from the ESRC (Management Innovation Programme, studentships and Seminar Programme), private companies (e.g. United Distillers and Allied Distiller Ltd), the Trades Union Congress, the Carnegie Trust and the Australian Research Council.

My recent projects have been on global value chains and labour with Racel Parker at Queensland University of Technology) and social media and employment relations (with Paula McDonald of Queensland University of Technology). Longer term research interests have focused on managerial control and worker resistance/misbehaviour; and on the inter-relations between capitalist political economy, firms, technology and the labour process. Since the early 2000s I have been developing an account of the impacts of financialization on work and employment relations at firm/chain level.