Research associates
Meet the research associates for the Centre for Labour, Employment, and Work.
Lead researchers
Dr Stephen Blumenfeld—Stephen is the director of CLEW and in that capacity, writes the annual review of bargaining trends (wages and conditions) contained in the Centre’s collective agreements database. The results of the review are presented in the annual series of employment agreement seminars, held throughout New Zealand. Stephen’s research interests include the economics of collective bargaining and trade unions; employment law and labour policy; decent work and job quality; and precarious and insecure working arrangements.
Dr Noelle Donnelly—Senior lecturer in human resource management and employment relations. Her research interests include the areas of international human resources management; employee voice; and the experience and nature of work, particularly in relation to gender equity. Noelle’s most recent research looked at the role of middle managers in progressing gender equity in the public service.
Dr Geoff Plimmer—Research interests include career and organisational development; public sector management reform; and bad workplace behaviours. Geoff led or jointly led two major workplace dynamics surveys (2013 and 2016) of NZ Public Service Association members across the New Zealand public sector.
Dr Christian Yao—Senior Lecturer in human resource management. His research interests include careers; expatriation; international human resources management, Chinese multinational corporations; and cross-cultural studies. His research on self-initiated repatriation received the Academy of Management (AOM) Careers Division Best International Paper Award in 2017.
Associate researchers—School of Management
Professor Jane Bryson—Acting Dean of the Wellington School of Business and Government, Jane also teaches in human resource management. Her current research focuses on the investigation of human resource management; organisational and individual capability; employment relations and organisational change; and professionals and managers.
Professor Karin Lasthuizen—Professor at the School of Management and holder of the Brian Picot Chair in Ethical Leadership. Karin’s research and consultancy work focus on ethical leadership and ethics management in public and private sector organisations. She specialises in methodology for research into organisational unethical behaviours (OUB) such as corruption and fraud.
Dr Jesse Pirini—Lecturer in Management. Jesse’s research and teaching focuses on communication and interaction in organisational settings. He takes a multi-modal perspective, exploring how people use their bodies, environments, and objects in interaction. He has in interest in research on knowledge communication; business coaching and mentoring; Māori and indigenous business; and agency and inter-subjectivity in interaction.
Professor Karen Smith—Professor of Tourism Management in the School of Management, and Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) for Wellington School of Business and Government. Much of Karen’s research concerns volunteers and their management in the tourism and events sectors, and more broadly in non-profit organisations in areas as diverse as health, emergency management, and conservation. She is interested in why and how people give time to support a range of causes, and how organisations in the community and voluntary sector (and beyond) respond to and maximise the impact of these donations of time.
Dr Ben Walker—Lecturer in Management. Ben’s research interests lie within the multidisciplinary field of organisational behaviour—the study of the 'people side' of work and organisational life. His particular interests are the formation and outcomes of individual identities in organisational contexts; experts and expertise; talent management and 'star performers'; and the development of entrepreneurship (including accelerators and incubators).
Associate researchers—Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Gordon Anderson—Professor, Faculty of Law. Research interests include labour law, employment law, and international trade law.
Dr Simon Chapple—Director, IGPS School of Government. Research interests in social investment, labour market, welfare system and outcomes for children.
Dr Michael Fletcher—Senior research, Institute of Governance and Policy Studies (IGPS). Research interests include social policy and social assistance/welfare/tax credits; employment relations; employment, unemployment, and public employment services and programmes; child support and family policy; and public policy.
Dr Mary-Ellen Gordon—Senior lecturer, School of Information Management Research. Interests include data capabilities; use of data by organisations; analytics; marketing technology; and survey-based recommendation systems.
Dr Karl Lofgren—Associate Professor, School of Government. Research interests include democratic theory; network governance; science and technology studies; Scandinavian politics; information and communication technology policy; electronic government/democracy; and policy analysis.
Professor Meredith Marra—Head of School, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. Meredith supervises students working in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. She is currently supervising PhD students investigating language maintenance, shift, and change as well as intercultural workplace talk, call centre discourse, multimodal aspects of job interviews, and the discourse of resistance and appropriation.
Dr Kate Prickett—Director of Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children. Research interests include children's health and wellbeing, and intergenerational inequality.
Dr Amanda Reilly—Senior lecturer in commercial law, researches in the area of labour and employment law (broadly defined). Her current research projects centre on two areas: 1) an exploration of the implications of surveillance capitalism for workers’ human rights, in particular the rights to freedom of speech and to privacy, and 2) an exploration of how dialogic accounting can be used to further freedom of association.
Associate researchers—other institutions
Dr Charlotte Chambers—In her role at Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), Charlotte has published research on the experiences of women in New Zealand’s senior medical workforce and also on the prevalence of bullying in this workforce—both of which are areas of focus in CLEW’s research.
Dr Bill Rosenberg—Bill regularly publishes economic analysis of major work and employment data as well as on union membership and the impact of collective bargaining. He has collaborated with Stephen Blumenfeld on a project looking at precarious work in New Zealand through New Zealand’s official statistical databases.
Andrea Fromm - Andrea is a policy analyst and researcher at the Public Service Association - Te Pῡkenga Here Tikanga Mahi. She has worked on the 2021 'Workplace Dynamics' survey of PSA members in partnership with CLEW. Andrea has previously worked for EUROFOUND where she was involved with a range of their surveys across the European Union.