Laura Claus

Laura Claus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the UCL School of Management.

Her research focuses on social entrepreneurship, social movements, social innovation, impact investing, and new organizational forms for development. Laura has a particular interest to understand how organizations can act as social movement entrepreneurs to facilitate social change. As such, her research is positioned at the intersection of organization theory and social movement theory. Over the past years, she has conducted fieldwork on child marriage in Indonesia, an activist organization in Nigeria, and an impact investing initiative in Tanzania.

Laura has also conducted research on gender equality and sports - amongst other projects, looking at how professional tennis managed to introduce gender equal pay at Grand Slams.

Laura holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a research fellow at Stanford University. She has worked with organizations including UNICEF, Plan International, Amnesty International, and impact investment funds. Her work was awarded the prestigious Carolyn B. Dexter Award in 2017.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Gümüsay, A. A., Claus, L., & Amis, J. (2020). Engaging with Grand Challenges: An Institutional Logics Perspective. Organization Theory, 1, 1-20. doi:10.1177/2631787720960487
• Claus, L., & Tracey, P. (2020). Making Change from Behind a Mask: How Organizations Challenge Guarded Institutions by Sparking Grassroots Activism. Academy of Management Journal, amj.2017.0507. doi:10.5465/amj.2017.0507
• Claus, L., Greenwood, R., & Mgoo, J. (2020). Institutional Translation Gone Wrong: The Case of Villages For Africa in Rural Tanzania. Academy of Management Journal, In Press, amj.2017.1089. doi:10.5465/amj.2017.1089
• Claus, L. J., De Rond, M., Howard-Grenville, J., & Lodge, J. (2018). When fieldwork hurts: on the lived experience of conducting research in unsettling contexts. In J. Mair, J. Amis, T. Zilber (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, on ‘The Production of Managerial Knowledge and Organizational Theory: New Approaches to Writing, Producing and Consuming Theory’. Research in the Sociology of Organizations.
• Claus, L. J., Kroezen, J., & Greenwood, R. (2016). How do Institutional Paradoxes Evolve? The Gender Equality Paradox in Professional Tennis. Presented at: Academy of Management, Anaheim, 2016. doi:10.5465/ambpp.2016.159
• Claus, L. J., & Ansari, S. (2015). Keeping it Weird: How Anchoring Sustains Hybrid Organizing from the Ground. Presented at: Academy of Management, Vancouver, 2015. doi:10.5465/ambpp.2015.15014abstract