Organization and Management Theory OMT

Location: UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, London

The UCL Institute for Global Prosperity

is looking for a full-time Postdoctoral Research Associate for a research project in the area of entrepreneurship, creativity and organisation studies. You will work with Dr Tuukka Toivonen, Senior Lecturer in Social & Economic Innovation, on an exciting new ESRC-funded project entitled Networked Creativity in London's Hubscape: Digital Entrepreneurs in Search of Value and Systemic Change ('NetCreate') to conduct primarily qualitative research into entrepreneurial creativity in and around London's innovation hubs. 

'NetCreate' is an 18-months research project that looks at how innovation hubs benefit early-stage digital entrepreneurs' creative trajectories. By focusing primarily on how person-to-person interactions that unfold within entrepreneurial networks shape the original ideas that (in some cases) lead to success, the project will tackle a key research gap and make an important contribution to current understandings of the forces that drive the digital economy and how it can become an engine of value-creation and sustainability in the UK context and globally. 

As Postdoctoral Research Associate, you will lead on dynamic, rigorous sociological research into the 'creative clashes'-or more specifically, conversations that suggest additions or modifications to business models under development-that occur within London's hubscape. You will be tracing and analysing creative interaction sequences of up to 15 entrepreneurs, while (towards the final half of the research period) preparing publications for journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice and Organization Science in collaboration with the Principal Investigator.

You will have a strong PhD in social science, such as organisation or entrepreneurship studies, internet studies, economic geography, sociology, anthropology or social psychology. You will have a passion for understanding how collective creativity operates in knowledge-intensive urban communities and networks that can be highly complex and fluid. 

You will be an excellent, energetic communicator, in both oral and written forms, and have experience in conducting primary research using mixed methods (including interviews, phone interviews and digital app-driven data collection). You will be confident in a variety of social situations and demonstrate high emotional intelligence in both facilitating conversations as well as listening. The ability to organise and share data efficiently and distill complex information into concise messages will be key to this role. Familiarity with various software packages that support qualitative data and network analysis is desirable.