Dr Will Lewis

Background

Will joined Cranfield School of Management in April 2021. He holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the University of Essex, in which he studied the micro politics involved in organisations when novel perspectives and practices come into contact with pre-established strategic plans, and how this politics might be embraced and managed in order to foster greater agility within changing environments.

Will's background is multidisciplinary, he holds an MSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA in English Literary Research and BA in English Literature from the University of Leicester.

Will is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2014) and a member of the European Group of Organisation Studies (2016).

Current activities

Will's research is interdisciplinary. He explores evolutionary approaches to organisation theory and questions around structure and agency from a perspective drawing from both 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophical traditions.

His work in Strategic Management studies organisations and their environments from a perspective of complex and dynamic systems, focusing on syntheses between emergence and strategic planning, with the purpose of enabling organisations to act in better fit with their environment. This involves an holistic meaning of environment, taking into account sociological and historical contexts, with organisational activity and its multi-faceted environments embedded primarily within the broader ecological sphere.