Doctoral Dissertation/Thesis Award

Each year the Division presents an award for the most outstanding doctoral dissertation in Critical Management Studies (CMS). Scholars who have recently completed a PhD in an area connected to CMS may submit their dissertation for consideration.

All submissions undergo anonymous review by two CMS scholars with relevant expertise. Reviewers provide constructive, developmental feedback alongside their evaluation.

----> The call for the most recent competition (2026) is available for download here.

Winners List

2025: Kathleen Hughes (Anglia Ruskin University) "Imagining the future of work: Themes in managerial and science fictions"
2024: (Joint-winner) Mary Beth Doucette (Cape Breton University) "Two-Eyed Critical Sensemaking: An integrative approach for studying post TCR-organizational change" and Anne Steinhoff (Essex Business School) "Performance-based practices and coeliac disease: an analysis of the lived experiences of employees in intellectual labour in the UK
2023 Belinda Zakrzewska (University of Sussex), Anti-Manual for the Organizational Construction of Authenticity in Postcolonial Contexts
2022 (Joint-winner) Genevieve Shanahan (Grenoble Ecole de Management), The Local Prefiguration of a Global Sustainable Food System: Reconciling Radical Democracy and Scale Through Technology
2022 (Joint-winner) Gaurish Chawla (University of Durham), The stories that I wrote/ The I that Stories wrote
2021 Yashar Mahmud (Stockholm University), Organizing Refugees
2020 Karel Musílek (Durham University), Making Life Work: Work and Life in Coliving
2019 Paulina Segarra (EGADE Business School), Neither Free Nor a Slave: Three Essays on Subjectivity, Organization, and the Making of Exile
2018 Stefanie Ruel (Athabasca University, Canada), Multiplicities of “I'” in Intersectionality: Women’s Exclusion from STEM Management in the Canadian Space Industry
2017Jennifer Manning (Dublin Institute of Technology), Maya Women Organising in the Margins: A Post/Decolonial Feminist Approach
2016 Saima Rifet (University of Bradford, UK), Exploring Hybridity in the 21st Century: The Working Lives of South Asian Ethnic Minorities from a British Born Generation in Bradford
2015 Hamid Foroughi (Henley Business School, UK)
Remembering and Forgetting in Organizations: A Study of Mnemonic Politics and Collective Memories in a British Charity
2014 Fahreen Alamgir (RMIT University, Australia) and Suze Wilson (Massey University, New Zealand)
A People's Perspective on Rights-Centric Industrial Restructuring and Sustainability: A Case Study of State-Owned Jute Mills of Bangladesh. (Fahreen)
Thinking Differently about Leadership: A Critical History of the Form and Formation of Leadership Studies. (Suze)
2013 (Joint-winner) Rosalie Hilde (Athabasca University, Canada)
Workplace (In)Equality: Making Critical Sense of Hong Kong Chinese Immigrant Experiences in the Canadian Workplace
2013 (Joint-winner) Vanessa Iwowo (London School of Economics, UK) Knowing in Context: A Postcolonial Analysis of Contemporary
Leadership Development and Leadership Education
2012 Leonidas Efthymiou (Intercollege Larnaca, Cyprus)
Workplace Control and Resistance from Below: An Ethnographic Study in a Cypriot Luxury Hotel
2011 (Joint-winner) Adam Rostis (Saint Mary's University, Canada)
Problematizing Crisis: Re-Reading Humanitarianism as Postcolonial Organizing
2011 (Joint-winner) Alexandra Bristow (University of Surrey, UK)
The Production of Objectivity in Organization Studies: An Analysis of Some of the Field's leading Journals
2010 (Joint winner) Gabrielle Durepos (St. Francis Xavier University, Canada)
ANTi-History: Towards an Historiographical Approach to (Re)Assembling Knowledge of the Past
2010 (Joint winner) Sarah Hurlow (Cardiff University, Wales)
The Language of Leadership
2009 Vijayan Munusamy (Center for Creative Leadership)
Decoding the meaning of multiculturalism: An international study of Malaysia, Singapore, and Hawaii.
2008 Lisa Calvano (Temple University)
Stakeholder Conflict in Philadelphia's Casino Controversy
2007 Patrizia Zanoni (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Beyond Demography: Essays on Diversity in Organizations
2006 Alison Henderson (University of Waikato)
Organisational identities and rationalities: a rhetorical and discourse analysis of organisational communication about genetic modification in the New Zealand kiwifruit and dairy industries
2005 Todd Bridgman (Cambridge University)
Commercialising the Academic’s Public Role: Theorising the politics of Identity Constitution and Practice in UK Research-led Business Schools.