Professor Andrey Pavlov

Background

I am Professor of Strategy and Performance and Head of Strategy Group - a group of full-time faculty and visiting academics and executives engaged in all aspects of research, teaching, and executive development in Strategic Management. I have served as a Member of Cranfield University Senate since 2014 and have twenty years of experience in executive education, leadership development, and research in strategy implementation and organizational performance management. My past visiting appoingments included Marist University (USA), Bayes Business School (UK), and Gordon Institute of Business Science (South Africa).

My work examines what happens when leaders realise they have less control than they assumed. Drawing on complexity science, organisation theory, and philosophy, I study strategic change under conditions of complexity, ambiguity, and limited managerial power. I see this not as a critique of management as an institution, function, or practice, but a realistic description of how organisations actually work and what follows when the tidy rational frameworks fail to deliver the results they promise.

I also believe that management is too important to be left to management studies alone. My work therefore brings philosophical depth to a discipline that has has increasingly relied on simplified frameworks and techniques. This thinking is behind the "Leaders as Thinkers: Leadership through Philosophy," my original MBA module where students engage directly with original philosophical texts to examine enduring leadership dilemmas.

Besides serving as a Head of Group, I have held various leadership roles in the past, including Director of the Executive MSc in Managing Organisational Performance, Cohort Leader on the International Executive Doctorate (DBA), and Co-Director of the Strategic Performance Management open executive programme. I have also served as External Examiner for executive degree programmes in other UK universities.

PhD and MRes, Cranfield. MBA and BSc, Marist University (Summa Cum Laude). Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Case Method Teaching certification, Harvard.

Research opportunities

My research integrates three connected domains: strategy, complexity and the limits of managerial control; performance measurement and its effects in organizations; and philosophy as a practical resource for leadership. I am interested in applying these domains to one specific problem: how do we enable managers to act with intention in an uncontrollable world?

My earlier work in performance measurement helped shape the way scholars think about the effects of performance measurement on organizations and understand the unintended consequences of managerial interventions - i.e., why systems designed to improve performance so often produce distortion, gaming, and erosion of the very outcomes they were built to measure. My current work extends this thinking to strategy articulation, institutional change, and the role of philosophy in management practice.

I have supervised six PhD and DBA students to completion, including the recipient of the Cranfield School of Management Best Doctoral Thesis Award and a PhD candidate awarded a Distinction at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. I serve on mutiple doctoral panels (dissertation committees) and have examined doctoral theses at various universities in the UK and abroad.

At Cranfield, I serve as an assessor for UoA 17 (Business and Management) on the REF 2029 internal assessment committee.

My colleagues in the Strategy Group and I are always looking for exceptional doctoral candidates wishing to pursue an academic career in Strategy and Organizational Studies.

Current activities

In addition to research, I have been involved in executive education across the full range of formats - Open Programmes, Customised Programmes, Executive MSc programmes, Executive MBA, and the Executive Doctorate (DBA) - delivered both at Cranfield and in other universities and organizations through visiting and invited positions. I always try to bring my scholarly work directly into the executive and MBA classrooms and ensure that my programmes build on research and philosophical depth, not generic management frameworks. My recent work includes a flexible online module in Strategic Thinking, combining asynchronous and live elements to deliver a stackable micro-credential adapted to working professionals worldwide. Overall, I have designed and delivered executive development experiences for organizations including HSBC, Network Rail, BBC, Asda, AON, Sir Robert McAlpine, Kier Group, Barratt Developments, Sport England, and others and have taught delegates from hundreds of other organizations, including the UK Government Digital Service, Aer Rianta International, Festo, South African Airways Technical, KPMG, European Space Agency, United Nations, UK Capital Market Authority, Capgemini, Nationwide Building Society, the British Library, and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority.

Since 2018, I have taught "Leaders as Thinkers: Leadership through Philosophy," a full-time MBA elective that examines eight enduring leadership dilemmas through original works of ancient and modern philosophy, delivered using the Harvard Case Method. The module is unique in UK business education, as it is 100% discussion-based and requires serious engagement with philosophical texts as practical resources for leadership judgment. This work extends beyond the classroom through "Philosophy for Practical Professions," a studio-produced interview series hosted at Cranfield and available freely on the University website and social media, featuring conversations with scholars and practitioners from Harvard Business School, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, UCL, Boston Consulting Group, Gartner, and other organizations.

Clients

As an advisor, Andrey helps managers and executives think through critical issues that shape organizational performance and strategic change. This work includes leading in-depth conversations on identifying entry points to complex business problems and facilitating workshops on strategy execution and performance management in multi-stakeholder environments.

Andrey has worked with a wide range of public and private sector organizations, including HSBC, Sport England, Aer Rianta International, Barratt Developments, South African Airways, Jaguar Land Rover, NHS, and two UK Police Forces.

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Conference papers
• Books