Dr Robin Burrow
Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies
- burrowr1@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2251 0003
- D26, Aberconway Building, Colum Road, Cathays, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
Robin completed his PhD at the University of Warwick, where he also gained an MSc in Organization Studies. His thesis examined the practiced realities of (medical) work, and was partly completed during a visiting fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of California (Los Angeles).
Since joining Cardiff University, Robin has taught organization studies extensively on a range of different academic programmes. He has also researched and published widely on the lived realities of extreme forms of work, developing specific expertise in relation to the connection between emotions and organizational behaviour.
Notable examples of Robin’s research include analysis of the role of fear in sustaining extreme institutional regimes [accessible here]; how identities are constructed through suffering [accessible here]; and how socio-spatial relations can facilitate the proliferation and entrenchment of non-reality based beliefs in organizations (e.g. the belief in being ‘free from’ moral and legal constraint) [accessible here].
Outside of the University, Robin consults widely for a range of large, high profile public, private and charitable organizations in the UK and abroad.
Biography
Qualifications
- BA (Hons) – Business Administration with Information Systems
- MA – Organisation Studies
- PhD – Organisation Studies
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Teaching
Teaching commitments
- Work and Employment
- People in Organisations
Robin completed his PhD at the University of Warwick, under the supervision of Professors Nick Llewellyn and Davide Nicolini. His thesis drew heavily on ethnomethodology and practice theory, and was partly completed during a visiting fellowship at the Department of Sociology at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
Since joining Cardiff University, Robin’s research has primarily concentrated on understanding the lived realities of work in extreme(ly challenging) organizational contexts. His work in this area has four main elements:
(1) The relationship between emotions (e.g. fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, pride, euphoria and enrapture) and organizational behaviour, particularly in highly pressurised, safety critical environments.
(2) The emergence, transmission and management of ‘emotional climates’ – e.g. shared feelings of pride and climates of fear – and their impact on human performance.
(3) The lived, practiced realities of morally reprehensible forms of labour at the extreme peripheries of society.
(4) The spread and entrenchment of non-reality based beliefs in organizations and society.
Robin is also finalizing a new book (commissioned by Oxford University Press) in which he retracing the origins and evolution of contemporary thinking in management and organization studies. Primarily targeting university educators, he is attempting to revision the (taught) field of organization studies.
Supervision
I am presently accepting PhD students wanting to do qualitative projects centred on extreme contexts and allied phenomena. Specific interests include atmosphere, intuition and the operationalization of the rules of engagement in military teams; the role and integration of performance enhancing technology in professional sport [and elsewhere]; the care and cultivation of ‘human capital’ in contemporary education; and, normalized extremity in organizations, including the perpetuation and durability of cult-like cultures and practices.
