Dr. Nicholas Wylie

Principal Lecturer in Human Resource Management

School of Marketing and Management
Faculty of Business and Law

Email: nick.wylie@coventry.ac.uk
Twitter: @NickWylie
LinkedIn Profile

Biography

I am Course Director for the MA HRM, MSC IHRM and PG DIP HRM. I also teach Leading Managing and Developing People on these courses. My research interests focus on the nature of internal consultancy and its implications for management. I am currently research the role of the Independent HR consultant. I am an Academic Member of the CIPD.

I graduated from Newcastle University 1996 and went to work in the financial services industry. During the next five years I had experience of leading teams in retail and telephone banking. In 2001 I re-entered academia studying a MA in HRM at Leeds University Business school. Here I was exposed for the first time to a range of theories and debates about the nature of work and the role of HR. I explored these further in my doctorate at Warwick Business School which explored the HRM-performance relationship from a critical perspective. After a short period as Teaching Fellow at Warwick teaching a range of UG and PG modules I moved to University of the West of England.

In 2010 I took up a role at Oxford Brookes Business School where I had responsibility for UG Placements and was also Co-ordinator for PG HRM programmes. I combined these responsibilities with involvement in an ESRC funded research project on internal consultancy. This research has led to a number of publications and a recently published book entitled ‘Management as Consultancy: Neo-bureaucracy and the consultant manager’ (Cambridge University Press). My current research focuses on the relationship between the HR profession and consultancy.

Qualifications

• PhD, Warwick Business School, 2006.
• HRM MA, Leeds University, 2002.
• History BA, Newcastle University, 1996.

Research interests

My research draws on theories of professionalisation to examine the changing nature of management and the role of the HR function. Most notably I have participated in an ESRC funded project looking at the role of internal consultancy and its impact on different management occupations including HR. I am currently research the impact on the HR profession of HR practitioners who now operate as Independent HR consultants. In addition to this area I am also developing the notion of a Voluntary Sector Ethos amongst employees in the non-profit sector.

Recent outputs and publications

• Sturdy, A., Wright, C., and Wylie, N. (2016) ‘Managers as consultants: The hybridity and tensions of neo-bureaucratic management’. Organization 23 (2), 184-205.
• Wylie, N., and Sturdy, A. (2016) ‘Organising change delivery through consultant managers: the TESI model’. CIPD Applied Research Conference. Held December 2015 in London, UK.
• Sturdy, A., Wylie, N., and Wright, C. (2015) Management as Consultancy: Neo-Bureaucracy and Consultant Managers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wylie, N., Sturdy, A., and Wright, C. (2014) ‘Change agency in occupational context: Lessons for HRM’. Human Resource Management Journal 24 (1), 95-110.
• Wylie, N., Sturdy, A., and Wright, C. (2014) ‘Change agency in occupational context: Lessons for HRM’. Human Resource Management Journal 24 (1), 95-110.
• Sturdy, A., Wylie, N., and Wright, C. (2013) 'Management Consultancy and Organizational Uncertainty: The Case of Internal Consultancy'. International Studies of Management and Organization 43 (3), 58-73.
• Wright, C., Sturdy, A., and Wylie, N. (2012) 'Management innovation through standardization: Management consultants as standardizers of organizational practice'. Research Policy 41 (3), 652–662.

Teaching modules

• Developing Yourself and Others (WMP)
• Leading, Managing and Developing People (M06HRM)
• Work Placements (A205EEI)

Areas of expertise

• HRM
• Employability
• Talent Management
• Change agency
• Voluntary Sector Ethos
• Management Consultancy