I have long been fascinated by stories and storytelling and have used them extensively in my organizational and social research. By eliciting, collecting, listening to and analysing stories, I have explored diverse phenomena such as leader-follower relations, experiences of job loss and unemployment, group politics, dynamics and fantasies, organizational nostalgia, insults and apologies. I am co-founder and co-ordinator of the Organizational Storytelling Seminar series, now in its ninth year. More recently, I have carried out a series of studies of leadership and management. I was part of a team engaged in a four-year field study of leadership and patient-care in the hospital sector, in which storytelling was used as a major part of the methodology. I have also recently carried out research into the experiences of unemployed managers and professionals in the current economic recession. As a committed teacher, I have written a number of textbooks, and have carried our research into the experiences of students in the classroom and have explored the nature of management and professional knowledge and its dissemination.

My current research includes work on the importance of an ethic of care in health and education, the dark side of certain organizations captured in the concept of miasma, the relation between image and narrative and the exploration of the ways in which clinicians defend themselves against work-related anxieties.

I have now retired from the University of Bath and no longer supervise doctoral students.