Kim Mather

Biography

I joined Keele Business School in September 2011, having previously worked as a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England and prior to that, the University of Wolverhampton.  I completed my first degree on a part-time basis at the University of Wolverhampton before gaining my MA in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management, and then a PhD, both at Keele.  I worked in the financial services sector before commencing my career in higher education, as well as working for a number of years at a further education college.

My research interests are broadly concerned with labour management and labour process changes in the UK public sector, and with public sector industrial relations.

Academic Assoc. CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development).

Research and scholarship

My research focuses on changes in the labour management and labour processes of front-line public sector workers, and their resistance to these changes.  My current research activity is concerned with discrete parts of the public sector including education (schools; further education; higher education) and the emergency services (fire; police; ambulance).

I am interested in supervising research in the broad areas of HRM practices and workers' responses to the management of their labour; the changing nature of professional and/or public sector labour processes; and public sector employment relations

Current PhD students:

• Bryn Evans - An examination of the determinants and experiences of performance management policies in the retail supply chain.
• Mouza Hamad Sultan Al Darmaki - To stay or leave, investigating domestic employee turnover in UAE Organizations.
• Chris Whitmore - Repertoires of collective action in the age of individual employment rights. A case study in a multi-union professional environment: England’s teacher trades unions.