Welcome to the Centre for People and Organisation (C4PO), where we are a diverse community of scholars committed to critically engaging with the challenges and complexities of the modern world of work.

At C4PO, we engage with contemporary debates and challenge conventional wisdom surrounding work and working lives. Through innovative research methodologies and robust evidence, we generate insights to inform policymakers and engage practitioners.

Fundamentally, we believe our research should enhance employment practices to foster safer, accessible, and equitable work environments for all. We are committed to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and contributing to meaningful change in the world of work.  Our research covers work and workers in all sectors, often extending beyond our local Welsh context to consider global issues.  We also study small firms and the self-employed to consider how issues of work are experienced in these micro-contexts.  Our work also looks beyond traditional paid employment to understand diverse forms of labour including volunteering and cooperatives.  Across this activity our attention is drawn to work and workers at the margins of contemporary neoliberal economies and to the intersectional challenges facing the disadvantaged.

Our work has been published in esteemed academic journals such as Human Relations, Work, Employment and Society, Human Resource Management Journal and Management Learning. We work closely with industry and service partners and nurture the next generation of research leaders through our doctoral supervision programme.

Current Research Themes include:

  • What does good work look like?  Examining worker experience in contemporary neoliberal economies.
  • Are leaders necessary? When do leadership, management and organisational policy impact and enhance worker wellbeing.
  • Loving work? Identifying the impact of changing, unconventional, voluntary, collective, hybrid  or unpaid forms of work on individuals, households and communities.
  • Are workers doing more for less? How the material and psychological rewards of sustaining and fulfilling work are constructed and distributed across society.
  • Is who you are still an issue? How do diverse and intersectional identities in the workplace shape mobility and equality.
  • Who’s going to be out of a job soon? The asymmetrical impact of knowledge generation, technology, culture, time and space in the global workplace

Professor Katrina Pritchard

- Director

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