Dr Michal Izak | University of Chester

Professor in Organisation Studies

Michal Izak is a Professor in Organisation Studies at the Chester Business School, University of Chester. He is an active researcher and has published in international scholarly journals such as Organization Studies; Human Relations; Work, Employment and Society, and many other. He is an Associate Editor of Management Learning journal, as well as an editorial board member of Organisation Studies, and acts as a regular reviewer to over thirty academic journals. He is the Business School Research Lead and REF 29 Unit of Assessment coordinator (UoA 17). He also conducts research outreach activities (recently: TEDx), and writes for practitioner outlets. Prior to joining the University of Chester he worked at the University of Essex, Lincoln and Roehampton, as well as had a brief career in consulting before joining the academia.

Michal strongly believes that teaching at the university level should be research-informed. Consequently, his main areas of teaching correspond to his research areas (e.g. the recent re-shaping of the work and employment patters, flexible, mobile and hybrid work), as well as methodological expertise (qualitative research methods and research philosophy). He convened, taught and coordinated twenty research-informed courses in the areas of Organisation Studies, Human Relations and Organisational Behaviour at all levels of UG and PGT/PGR provision, led a PhD program and successfully supervised doctoral projects to a completion.

His research interests include flexible working discourses and their ideological underpinnings, ethnographic and narrative approaches to organisational analysis, as well as critical management studies. His main research focus is on critically exploring opportunities and contradictions embedded in the New World of Work (NWOW) in the context of its impact on the future of work. He also researches organizational communication and especially those organizational contexts in which dialogic perspective on communication is ill-suited.

Journal Articles

Izak, Michal; Case, Peter and Ybema, Sierk (2022) ‘Monologue and Organization Studies’, Organization Studies (earlycite).
Izak, Michal; Shortt, Harriet; and Case, Peter (2022) ‘Learning to inhabit the liquid liminal world of work: an auto-photographic account of work-life boundary transitions’, Management Learning.
Reissner, Stefanie; Izak, Michal and Hislop, Donald (2021) ‘Configurations of Boundary Management Practices Among Flexible Workers’, Work, Employment and Society, 35(2): 296-315.
Bal, Matthijs and Izak, Michal (2021) ‘The flexibility paradox: an integrative review of research on workplace flexibility’, European Management Review, (18): 37-50. – Top-cited paper in 2021 award
Shortt, Harriet and Izak, Michal (2021) ‘Scarred objects and time marks as memory anchors: the significance of scuffs and stains in organisational life’, Human Relations, 74(10): 1688-1715.
Hagos, Sirak, Izak, Michal and Scott, Jonathan. (2019) ‘Objective institutionalized barriers and subjective performance factors of new migrant entrepreneurs’, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 25(5): 842-858.
Izak, Michal (2016) ‘Nothing left to learn: translation and the Groundhog Day of bureaucracy’, Management Learning, 47(5): 543-562.
Izak, Michal (2015) ‘Situational liminality: mis-managed consumer experience in liquid modernity’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31: 178-191.
Izak, Michal; Mansell, S. and Fuller, T. (2015) ‘Between No Future and Business-As-Usual: Exploring Futures of Capitalism’, Futures (68): 1-4.
Izak, Michal (2013) ‘Learning from a Fool: Searching for the ‘unmanaged’ context for radical learning’, Management Learning, 46(1): 87-104.
Izak, Michal (2014) ‘Translucent Society and its Non-fortuitous Design: Producing and Consuming Reality through Images’, Culture and Organization, 20(5): 359-376.
Izak, Michal (2014) ‘A Story-in-the-making: An Intertextual Exploration of a Multivoiced Narrative’, TAMARA Journal for Critical Organizational Inquiry, 12(1): 41-57.
Izak, M., Kostera, M and Zawadzki, M. (Eds.) (2017) The Future of University Education. London: Pelgrave.
Izak, M; Hitchin, L. and Anderson D. (Eds.) (2015) Untold Stories in Organizations. London: Routledge.
Izak, Michal (2022) ‘Reducing reductionism, halting holism – some reflections on writing for humans’, in: Kostera, Monika (Ed.) Writing Differently. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 127-135.
Shortt, Harriet and Izak, Michal (2020) ‘The contested home’, in: Martin Parker (ed) Life after Covid-19: The other side of crisis. Bristol University Press: Bristol, pp. 43-52.
Izak, Michal and Kostera, Monika (2020) ‘King Popiel, the killer mice and the story of the post-lie leadership’, in: Matt Statler and Wendelin Küpers (eds) Leadership and Wisdom Lessons from folklore. London: Routledge.
Izak, Michal and Kostera, Monika (2019) ‘There is hope in organizing: Dialogic imagination against linearity’, in: Daniel Ericsson and Monika Kostera (eds) Organizing Hope: Narratives for a better future. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 176-187.
Izak, Michal (2015) ‘Analiza fikcji literackich i filmowych’ (‘Analyzing Fiction’), in: Zarządzanie humanistyczne: Metody i inspiracje badawcze. (Humanistic Management: Methods and Inspirations) (ed. Kostera, M.), Warsaw: Sedno.
Izak, Michal (2014) ‘Transcending liquidity: Towards a new embeddedness’ - in: Liquid Organization’ (eds. Kostera, M. and Kociatkiewicz, J.), Routledge: London, pp. 153-169.
Izak, Michal (2014) ‘The critical approach to Critical Management Studies’, in: Zawadzki, M. and Sulkowski, L. (Eds) The Handbook of Critical Organization Studies. Warsaw: Difin.
Izak, Michal and Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy (2014) ‘Zespół w Kryzysie: Rozpad Organizacji w Filmie Obcy Ridleya Scotta’ (‘A team’s crisis: The organizational collapse in Ridley Scott’s Alien’, in: Kostera, M. (Ed.) O zarzadzaniu historie niezwykle: Studia przypadku z zarzadzania humanistycznego, (Amazing Stories in Management: Case Studies in Humanistic Management). Warsaw: Poltext.

Books

Izak, M., Kostera, M and Zawadzki, M. (Eds.) (2017) The Future of University Education. London: Pelgrave.
Izak, M; Hitchin, L. and Anderson D. (Eds.) (2015) Untold Stories in Organizations. London: Routledge.

Book Chapters

Izak, Michal (2022) ‘Reducing reductionism, halting holism – some reflections on writing for humans’, in: Kostera, Monika (Ed.) Writing Differently. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 127-135.
Shortt, Harriet and Izak, Michal (2020) ‘The contested home’, in: Martin Parker (ed) Life after Covid-19: The other side of crisis. Bristol University Press: Bristol, pp. 43-52.
Izak, Michal and Kostera, Monika (2020) ‘King Popiel, the killer mice and the story of the post-lie leadership’, in: Matt Statler and Wendelin Küpers (eds) Leadership and Wisdom Lessons from folklore. London: Routledge.
Izak, Michal and Kostera, Monika (2019) ‘There is hope in organizing: Dialogic imagination against linearity’, in: Daniel Ericsson and Monika Kostera (eds) Organizing Hope: Narratives for a better future. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 176-187.
Izak, Michal (2015) ‘Analiza fikcji literackich i filmowych’ (‘Analyzing Fiction’), in: Zarządzanie humanistyczne: Metody i inspiracje badawcze. (Humanistic Management: Methods and Inspirations) (ed. Kostera, M.), Warsaw: Sedno.
Izak, Michal (2014) ‘Transcending liquidity: Towards a new embeddedness’ - in: Liquid Organization’ (eds. Kostera, M. and Kociatkiewicz, J.), Routledge: London, pp. 153-169.
Izak, Michal (2014) ‘The critical approach to Critical Management Studies’, in: Zawadzki, M. and Sulkowski, L. (Eds) The Handbook of Critical Organization Studies. Warsaw: Difin.
Izak, Michal and Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy (2014) ‘Zespół w Kryzysie: Rozpad Organizacji w Filmie Obcy Ridleya Scotta’ (‘A team’s crisis: The organizational collapse in Ridley Scott’s Alien’, in: Kostera, M. (Ed.) O zarzadzaniu historie niezwykle: Studia przypadku z zarzadzania humanistycznego, (Amazing Stories in Management: Case Studies in Humanistic Management). Warsaw: Poltext.

PhD in Management Studies