School of Business

Technology, Operations, People and Strategy

Lead: Professor Maggie Zeng and Meng Jia

The Technology, Operations, People and Strategy (TOPS) research group examines how technological, operational, organisational and strategic developments shape organisations, supply chains and the people within them. Our research brings together perspectives from technology and data analytics, operations and supply chain management, organisational behaviour and strategy, with particular attention to the social, ethical and sustainability implications of changing technologies and business practices. Our aims are to:

  • enhance critical knowledge and theory on how technology, operations, people and strategy interact to shape organisational behaviour, decision-making and performance;
  • examine the role of digital technologies, data analytics and AI, including human–AI and multi-agent interactions, in transforming organisational processes, coordination, expertise and strategic decision-making;
  • advance research on operations and supply chains, including ethical and sustainable supply chains, supplier development, logistics, food security, operational performance, and visibility and transparency in multi-tier supply chains;
  • explore how organisations respond to social, ethical and sustainability challenges, across both developed and developing economy contexts;
  • create a supportive and collaborative research environment that develops members’ research capabilities, encourages interdisciplinary research and enables high-quality and impactful research outcomes.

People

Grants

  • UK-Ukraine R&I twinning grants scheme - underspend project -"Traceability in food supply chains for improved global and national competitiveness" 2024, £6,387.
  • Wrexham University "An investigation on traceability in the dairy supply chain in war-affected regions: comparative case studies in Iraq and Ukraine" 2024, £2,000.
  • Universities UK on behalf of UKRI project "Traceability in food supply chains for improved global and national competitiveness" 2023, £130,401.60
  • College Participatory Research/Impact Fund Project "Less Waste and Healthier People: Adopting Artificial Intelligence to Improve National Food Consumption" 2023, £2,175
  • THIS. Institute “The role of visual management tools for the coordination of teams in healthcare “ PHD-2018-01-008 1.9.19 – 30.9.23 £150,216.
  • British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants, “Building Resilience in the UK’s Food Supply Chain System”, SAPGM no. RS101G0418, 2023.09 – 2025.03, £9,460.30.
  • College Research Development Funding, “Achieving socially sustainable supply chain via scaling up sustainability-oriented supplier development initiatives”, S11RS621, 2022.08 – 2023.07, £2,830.
  • ULSB Seedcorn Funding, ‘‘The path to greater resilience and food security in Africa's agricultural supply chains’’, 2023.07 – 2023.09, £2,500.

Consultancy

  • OEE/Gobeyond partners
  • East Midlands Chamber

Selected publications

Molesworth, M., Grigore, G., Miles, C., & Charitsis, V. (2026). Metaphors of symbiosis: What science fiction movies reveal about human-AI imaginaries. Management Learning, 57(1), 92–119.

Chan, T. K. H., Lee, Z. W. Y., Skoumpopoulou, D., & Situmeang, F. (forthcoming). Judging the Wrongness of Firms in Social Media Firestorms: The Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing Perspective. Journal of the Association for Information Systems. https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais_preprints/109.

Rossi, F., Baines, N., & Wilson, E. (2025). Generating societal impact from collaborations between universities and arts and culture organisations (ACOs): Evidence from a survey of arts and culture professionals in the UK. Technovation, 140, 103158.

Jabbar, A., Akhtar, P., & Ali, S. I. (2025). The interplay between blockchain and big data analytics for enhancing supply chain value creation in micro, small, and medium enterprises. Annals of Operations Research, 350(2), 649–671.

Hoang, Q., & Lascaux, A. (2025). ‘It’s So Hard to Control It’: Navigating Responsible Digital Consumption in an Age of Individualisation. Sociology, 00380385251388548.

Bateman, N., (2024).  Effective use of interdisciplinary approaches in healthcare quality: drawing on operations and visual management. BMJ Quality and Safety, 33(4), pp.216-219.

Zeng, J., Yang, Y., & Lee, S. H. (2023). Resource orchestration and scaling-up of platform-based entrepreneurial firms: the logic of dialectic tuning. Journal of Management Studies, 60(3), 605–638.

Branicki, L., Brammer, S., Linnenluecke, M., & Houghton, D. (2023). Accounting for resilience: the role of the accounting professions in promoting resilience. Accounting and Business Research, 53(5), 508-536. https://doi.org/10.1080/00014788.2023.2219148.

Denegri-Knott, J., Jenkins, R., Molesworth, M., and Grigore, G. (2023). Platformised Possessions and Relational Labour, Marketing Theory. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14705931231201783.

Jabbar, A., Geebren, A., Hussain, Z., Dani, S., & Ul-Durar, S. (2023). Investigating individual privacy within CBDC: A privacy calculus perspective. Research in International Business and Finance, 64, 101826. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101826.

Pressey, A., Houghton, D., & Istanbulluoglu, D. (2023). The problematic use of smartphones in public: the development and validation of a measure of smartphone “zombie” behaviour. Information Technology & People. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-06-2022-0472

Moradeyo, A.A., Oyedijo, A. and Trollman, H., (2023). Addressing Unfairness in Fresh Fruit Supply Chains in the United Kingdom with Technology Adoption for Improved Supply Chain Resilience. Engineering Proceedings, 40(1), p.18.

Oyedijo, A., and Akenroye, T. (2023), ‘‘5 ways to make food supply chains fairer’’, World Economic Forum.  

Oyedijo, A., Kusi-Sarpong, S., Mubarik, M.S., Khan, S.A. and Utulu, K. (2023), ‘‘Multi-tier sustainable supply chain management: a case study of a global food retailer’’, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. 

Trollman, H., Jagtap, S., & Trollman, F. (2023). Crowdsourcing food security: introducing food choice derivatives for sustainability. Food Security, 1-13.

Apostolidis, C., Devine, A., & Jabbar, A. (2022). From chalk to clicks–The impact of (rapid) technology adoption on employee emotions in the higher education sector. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 182, 121860. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121860.

Chan, T. K. H., Cheung, C. M. K., Benbasat, I., Xiao, B. & Lee, Z. W. Y. (2022). Bystanders Join in Cyberbullying on Social Networking Sites: Deindividuation and Moral Disengagement Perspectives. Information Systems Research, 34(3), 828-846. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1161.

Venkatesh, V., Cheung, C. M. K., Davis, F. D., & Lee, Z. W. Y. (2022). Cyberslacking in the Workplace: Antecedents and Effects on Job Performance. MIS Quarterly, 47(1), 281-316. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2022/14985.

Jia, M., Hendry, L. and Stevenson, M. (2022), “Supplier absorptive capacity: Learning via boundary objects in sustainability-oriented supplier development initiatives”, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Vol. 42 No. 8, pp. 1173-1199.

Grigore, G., Molesworth, M., Miles, C. and Glozer, S. (2021). (Un) Resolving the dark side of digital technologies through the rhetoric of balance. Organization, 28(1), 186-207. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508420968196.

Houghton, D. J., & Hodder, A. (2021). Understanding trade union usage of social media: a case study of the public and commercial services union on Facebook and Twitter. New Technology, Work and Employment, 36(2), 219-239. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12209.

Hsu, J-H and Omar, S. (2021) "To Give Or Not to Give: the Roles of Narcissistic Grandiosity and Vulnerability in Gift-Giving", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 48, eds. Jennifer Argo, Tina M. Lowrey, and Hope Jensen Schau, Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 77-80.

Lee, Z. W. Y., Cheung, C. M. K., & Chan, T. K. H. (2021). Understanding Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Addiction: A Hedonic Management Perspective. Information Systems Journal, 31, 33-61. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12292.

Omar, S., Mohsen, K., Tsimonis, G., Oozeerally, A., & Hsu, J.-H. (2021). M-commerce: The nexus between mobile shopping service quality and loyalty. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 60, 102468. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102468.

Cluley, V., Bateman, N. and Radnor, Z., (2021). The use of visual images to convey complex messages in health settings: Stakeholder perspectives. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 14(4), pp.1098-1106.

Jia, M., Stevenson, M. and Hendry, L. C. (2021), “The boundary-spanning role of first-tier suppliers in sustainability-oriented supplier development initiatives”, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Vol. 41 No. 11, pp. 1633-1659.

Bateman, N., Philp, L. and Warrender, H., (2016). Visual management and shop floor teams–development, implementation and use. International Journal of Production Research, 54(24), pp.7345-7358.

Funding

Darler, W. in partnership with The Audience Agency and the Institute of Digital Culture, “Develop a wholly owned automated, adaptive framework for optimising audience segmentation in culturally diverse communities in the UK and internationally based on the application of Machine Learning algorithms”, Innovate UK KTP, £180,000.

Events

We meet twice in a term and twice during the summer period. Our meetings are comprised of research seminars, workshops and journal club with current PhD candidates, academics, and scholars within the University, as well as external speakers.

Research Seminar with Dr Chrysostomos Apostolidis, Durham University (TBC)

Research Seminar with Dr Tommy Chan, The University of Manchester (TBC)

Past events

  • Quality of Care: A detailed study of the transgender diagnosis pathway, Dr Paul Wallet, The Open University (26 February 2025)
  • Journal Club (19 January 2025)
  • Exploring the Role of Visual Data in Enhancing Supply Chain Resilience During War-induced Disruptions, Dr Osman Osman, (7 November 2024)
  • Research Methods: Using Visualisations in your Research, Professor Nicola Bateman (16 October 2024)
  • Journal Club (18 September 2024)
  • Pre-BAM Research Presentations (28 August 2024)
  • From Sustainable SCM to Supply Chains for Sustainability: An ecologically-dominant research agenda, Dr Anne Touboulic, University of Nottingham
  • Supply Chain Collaboration with Game Theory (22 March 2023)
  • Blood Supply Chain Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa (30 March 2023)
  • Decisions and use of Visual Communication Boards (7 June 2023)
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