Research output per year
Research output per year
Phone: +44 (0)121 204 3184 Email: burkeg@aston.ac.ukRoom: ABS 232
Gary joined the Strategy Department in 2010 after receiving his PhD. Prior to this, he held management positions in various multinational companies, before entering the education sector in 2003 to work on a CIMA funded research project and then to manage Aston’s Executive Development Programme.
His research uses qualitative and ethnographic methodologies to study how managers’ experience and manage within complex pluralistic settings. Adopting a processual lens, his doctoral work focussed on studying partnering practices and identity change dynamics within public-private partnerships. He is also part of an ethnographic study of Lloyd’s of London, which is generating new insights about how managers balance competing logics, perform strategizing work and use client portfolios to generate ambidexterity. He recently joined a project, sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is studying business growth in small businesses.
Gary has received numerous Best Paper Awards and his work has been published in leading academic journals. In 2014, he was the recipient of Aston’s Outstanding Early Career Researcher award.
I am especially interested in questions related to strategy-as-practice. I use in-depth qualitative methodologies to study how managers work and strategize in complex pluralistic settings often characterised by high degrees of ambiguity, competing logics and contradictions. My research tends to be problem-centered, focussing on questions such as how do managers adopt to new strategic challenges, balance competing demands or cope with ambiguity?
Theoretically, my research draws from theories of social practice, identity, sociomateriality and institutions. Methodologically, my work tends to be process-oriented and ethnographic in nature, with a growing interest in using video-ethnographic approaches. My current research is addressing three key topics; (1) the affordances of strategy toolmaking in ambiguous strategic environments, (2) the dynamics of changing and maintaining complex collective organizational identities (3) the extension of strategy-as-practice perspectives to new fields, such as marketing and entrepreneurship.
I currently supervise PhD students in the area of strategy-as-practice and process.
2014-2017 I was secretary of the Strategizing Activities and Practices (SAP) Interest Group of the Academy of Management. I was also co-founder and organizer of the Strategy-as-Practice Review (SAP_R) Group with Sotirios Paroutis (Warwick) and Richard Whittington (Oxford). SAP-R Group is a supportive forum to help authors develop papers and, in particular, deal with reviewers’ comments.
Available to supervise new suitable PhD applicants in the field of strategy-as-practice.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Conference article › peer-review
Research output: Unpublished contribution to conference › Unpublished Conference Paper › peer-review
Burke, Gary (Recipient), 2022
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Burke, Gary (Recipient), 2022
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Burke, Gary (Recipient), 2021
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Burke, Gary (Recipient), 2017
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Burke, Gary (Recipient), 2015
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)