Selen Kars

My teaching activities include undergraduate and executive courses in the areas of sociology of organisation, leadership studies, high performing teams, interventions for change and innovation. I have specific leadership responsibilities for a first-year module in Understanding Organisations and People and in a suite of work-based projects for the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship programmes.

I play an active role in the design and delivery of leadership development and executive education programmes. I am the Programme Leader for the Advanced Leaders Programme (an executive education course accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management).

In 2020, I achieved the status of Senior Fellow of The Higher Education Academy. My pedagogical approach encompasses reflective practice and the use of artefacts and creative / arts-based methods and online technologies. I am currently the principal investigator on a research project funded by ALDinHe exploring how to translate arts-based pedagogies to the virtual world of teaching.

Area of expertise

As a researcher, I am passionate about understanding the ways organisations and entrepreneurs develop and deploy their intangible resources, such as knowledge, capabilities, and networks to generate growth and achieve learning. From this respect, my research interests lie on the crossroads of several fields including organisational learning, knowledge management, dynamic capabilities and innovation. These areas are connected by my interest in the micro-level aspects and practices of organisational development.

My attention to the micro-level recently has given rise to a new line of practice-informed inquiry to explore the everyday, mundane leaderly practices of ordinary people that redraw the leader-follower relations for the (post)pandemic organising. You can follow this work, The Unleadership Movement, with Dr Hugo Gaggiotti and Prof Carol Jarvis on social media.

Publications

• Jarvis, C., Gaggiotti, H., & Kars-Unluoglu, S. (in press). Unleadership. In Life after COVID-19. The other side of crisis. Bristol: University of Bristol Press.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S., Jarvis, C., & Sheffield, R. (2019, April). Escaping silence: A communities of practice view on learning from innovation in the health sector. Paper presented at OLKC 2019, Brighton, England.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S., & Shortt, H. (2019). Functional spaces for team working.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S. (2019). Ryan E. Smerek, Organizational learning and performance: The science and practice of building a learning culture. Management Learning, 50(5), 632-635.

• Jarvis, C., Kars-Unluoglu, S., & Sheffield, R. (2017). Healthy returns: Leadership learning and innovation climate in the UK health sector.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S., Jarvis, C., & Sheffield, R. (2017, July). Kafka and the experience of innovation in bureaucratic organisations. Presented at 35th Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism, Rome, Italy.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S., & Kevill, A. (2017, July). Affective foundations of capability development: An exploration in an SME context. Paper presented at 33rd EGOS Colloquium, Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S. (2016). How do we educate future innovation managers? Insights on innovation education in MBA syllabi. Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice, 18(1), 74-98.

• Kars-Unluoglu, S. (2015, July). Dynamic capabilities as ‘becoming’: Implications from learning theories. Paper presented at EGOS 2015 Conference, Athens, Greece.