Contact Professor David Buchanan

Background

David is Emeritus Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cranfield University School of Management, and Visiting Professor at Nottingham Business School. He works freelance as a consultant, speaker, and author, specializing in change management and organization politics. He has a Doctorate in Organizational Behaviour from Edinburgh University, was Director of Loughborough University Business School from 1992 to 1995, has held visiting posts in Australian and Canadian management schools, and has worked often in Australia and Sweden. He is author/co-author of over two dozen books, including the best-seller, Organizational Behaviour (with Andrzej Huczynski; ninth edition 2017, tenth edition 2020). He has co-authored several books on change management, including: The Sustainability and Spread of Organizational Change (with Louise Fitzgerald and Diane Ketley), Power, Politics and Organizational Change: Winning the Turf Game (with Richard Badham), and Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach (with Ian Palmer and Richard Dunford). He has also written numerous book chapters, papers, and articles on organizational behaviour and change, and organizational research methods.

Current activities

As Emeritus Professor, David has occasional teaching commitments at Cranfield School of Management, on the MBA and Executive DBA programmes. As a visiting professor at Nottingham Business School, he teaches on MBA, MSc and Doctoral programmes. He is also a member of the School's Healthcare Management Research Group, working on a case study of the Greater Nottingham Transformation Programme, which is a national leader in developing an Accountable Care System. Most of David's research has taken place in healthcare settings. He is currently a member of the Steering Group for a study of Healthcare Leadership with Political Astuteness (HeLPA) funded by the National Institute for Health Research, and conducted by University of Nottingham, 2017-2020. He recently completed a major study of the changing roles of middle managers in acute care settings, funded by the National Institute for Health Research. The report of that study can be found here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK259397/

One puzzle with organizational change concerns the lack of change following accidents, crises, and other extreme events. One would expect change to be rapid in such situations, to prevent further incidents. This is rarely the case, and explanations can be found in this recent publication:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14697017.2015.1120766?journalCode=rjcm20

David is currently working with a Swedish collaborator, Markus Hällgren (Umeå University), exploring the use of feature films to study and also to teach crisis and extreme context leadership:

http://extremecontexts.com/episodes/episode-19-professor-david-buchanan-using-zombie-movies-research/

David's most recent book, Unconventional Methodology in Organization and Management Research, co-edited with Alan Bryman, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2018.

Clients

David has over thirty years' experience on management development and consulting assignments for clients in Britain and overseas, including United Distillers, Digital Equipment, Polaroid, Leicester Royal Infirmary, HM Prison Service, Chelmsford Borough Council, Leicester Mercury, The Children's Society, Northampton Hospital, Provide Healthcare, Volvo Car Corporation, Alfa Laval, SKF, and in Australia Faulding Chemicals, the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment in Darwin, Australia Post, Motorola, The South Australian Justice Portfolio, and the State Government departments DECS and DAIS. Assignments have included change planning and implementation workshops, employee surveys, organization audits, management briefings and conferences, and the design of management development programmes in change implementation and organization politics. He also works regularly with Chalmers Professional Education, in Gothenburg, Sweden, running management workshops on the constructive use of organization politics.

Publications

Articles In Journals