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Dalvir Samra

Dalvir Samra

Professor

Nottingham Business School

Staff Group(s)
Department of Human Resource Management

Role

Dalvir is Professor of Organisation Studies. Her teaching has spanned both topic-based content delivery in the broad field of organisation studies (leadership, strategy, stories/narratives, emotions, skills/competencies) and methodological issues and debates. The latter is specifically informed by the linguistic and interpretive 'turns' within the social sciences. She has also been a Programme Leader for the Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) for over three years, as well as, being the Module Leader for the DBA Qualitative and Interpretive Research Methods module for nearly a decade. She is also the Module Leader for the first DBA module, alongside supervising students across the suite of Open, Dubai and China DBA programmes. An integral part of this role entails undertaking staff development activities. She is also an active member of both the College Research Degrees Committee and the University Research Degrees Committee.

Research areas

Dalvir is a member of the Organising as Practice Research Group in Nottingham Business School.

Dalvir pursues research into the real-time interactional practices of senior managers (strategists) doing their everyday work. A sociological approach is adopted with the empirical materials generated from extending the ethnographic/observation 'method' to include audio/video recordings of organisational members' interactions. From doing so, a critical rendering of what they do and how is advanced with insight into the interactional constitution of effective strategic practice being a prime goal. Other analytical threads include identity-work and the ways emotion and a moral order are intricately spoken and made consequential. This innovative research approach and its contribution to methodological developments has been recognised in a number of publications, the most recent being in a Ten Year Review of Qualitative Research in the Journal of Management Studies (Dec 2011).

In more orthodox terms, Dalvir's field of interest/study includes strategic management and decision-making, boards at work, as well as, encompassing elements of strategy-as-practice scholarship.

Current work is examining the nature of senior managers' everyday learning on-the-job (with Dr Amanda Hay). A second 'live' strand is work on a long-standing project aiming to advance our current Weickian conceptions of 'sense-making' in organisations.

Please visit the NTU Doctoral School website for information on doctoral research opportunities at NBS.

External activity

  • Editorial Board Member, Organization Studies
  • Visiting Professor at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki/Finland (and distinguished research fellow, 2012)
  • Guest editor for a symposium issue of Organization Studies on The Foundations of Organizing (2008, with F Bargiela-Chappini)
  • Guest editor for a special issue of Organization Studies on the theme of Practice (2009, with R Miettinen & D Yanow)
  • Reviewer for AIM/Economic and Social Research Council
  • Co-convenor for the 2nd Organization Studies summer workshop (2006, Greece with Professors Miettinen and Yanow)