Professor Oliver Mallett

Professor of Entrepreneurship

Management, Work and Organisation Cottrell Building

Professor Oliver Mallett

Contact details

About me

I joined Stirling Management School in 2018 having previously worked at Durham University Business School and Newcastle University Business School. My research focuses on the sociology of entrepreneurship, principally in terms of the experience of self-employment and employment relationships in small firms. I also research the context for this activity in terms of enterprise policy and business support.

Prior to joining academia, I spent nearly 10 years working as a civil servant for the UK Department for Work and Pensions.

I have researched and written extensively on employment relationships in small and medium-sized enterprises, for example producing a book published by Routledge, Managing Human Resources in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises: Entrepreneurship and the Employment Relationship. This book has been described as 'a thoughtful, engagingly-written and compelling analysis of the importance of people to small firms and entrepreneurship'.

My research has explored identity challenges at work, for example in relation to the potential difficulties faced by older entrepreneurs marginalised and excluded by dominant conceptions of entrepreneurial legitimacy.

I am also interested in government policy and other forms of influence on small businesses and their owner-managers. As part of this research agenda I have studied the impacts of regulation on smaller businesses, including a project funded by the UK government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I also conducted a research project examining the interactions of formal and informal business support that was funded by the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

My research on enterprise policy produced a book published by Routledge, A History of Enterprise Policy: Government, Small Business and Entrepreneurship. This book examines the history of UK government policy relating to small businesses and entrepreneurship over the past one hundred years. It has been described as 'a fascinating insight into the evolution of enterprise policy'.

This was followed by a monograph (also published by Routledge) titled Small Business, Big Government and the Origins of Enterprise Policy. This book examines the emergence of UK enterprise policy through a detailed, archival analysis of the Committee of Inquiry on Small Firms (the Bolton Committee), its report and recommendations. The analysis provides new insights into the birth of enterprise policy in the UK as well as the wider changes in political economy that saw powerful tensions between free market rhetoric and new forms of interventionism in practice.

I also collaborated on a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council that explored the experiences of homeworking under crisis. More detail on this project can be found here: www.workingathome.org.uk