Dr Andromachi Athanasopoulou

Profile

Biography:

Andromachi Athanasopoulou is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Organisational Behaviour. She has previously served for 3 years as the Head of the People & Organisations Department at the School of Business and Management. Andromachi is also an Associate Fellow - Executive Education at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Her prior appointments include: visiting associate professor appointment at the London Business School, a Research Fellowship at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University (Harvard Law School) and a Junior Research Fellowship at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. Andromachi has expertise in leadership and leadership development (particularly gender & leadership, CEO careers and executive coaching) as well as business ethics and corporate social responsibility. She specialises in qualitative research.

Andromachi has published an Oxford University Press book, book chapters and peer-reviewed articles at leading international journals, including Human Resource Management, Leadership Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Business Research and Business & Society. With colleagues from the Saïd Business School, she co-authored a practitioner report on how CEOs develop the competence to lead in highly uncertain environments, which was presented at the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos and covered by international media.

Andromachi has received several grants and scholarships. She has also received several awards for her research including awards from the Academy of Management in the US and the British Academy of Management. She is a regular reviewer at top peer-reviewed journals and a member of the editorial review board of the Academy of Management Learning & Education, where she has received the best reviewer award in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2023. She is a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and has teaching experience at undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education level as well as experience as an executive coach. Her research is frequently mentioned in international media and she has provided interviews to a number of global media outlets including CNN and the BBC.

Andromachi holds an MBA, MSc in Management Research and DPhil in Management Studies, all from the University of Oxford, and an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from the Athens University of Economics and Business. Andromachi had previously worked in banking. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Teaching

Undergraduate:

• BUS141: Fundamentals of Management Studies and Skills

Andromachi has teaching experience at undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education level. 

She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Research

Research Interests:

In her research, Andromachi explores how leaders’ behaviour affects and is affected by the social context within which they operate, with emphasis on issues relating to two areas: leadership and leadership development [CEO careers, gender & leadership and executive coaching] as well as ethical/responsible leadership. Her expertise is primarily in qualitative research.

Leadership and Leadership Development 

Andromachi’s expertise in leadership research consists of two streams: The first focuses on executive coaching practices and their outcomes, which has led among others to the publication of an Oxford University Press book (with S. Dopson). 

The second major stream of Andromachi’s leadership development research stems from her collaboration on a joint research project with Saïd Business School faculty and a leading global executive search and leadership consulting firm, Heidrick & Struggles. The project explores how CEOs develop the competence to lead in highly uncertain environments. This project was global in scale and involved in-depth qualitative interviews with more than 150 CEOs from around the world and from a very broad range of sectors and industries. It is one of the largest in-depth qualitative studies of its kind. The key findings can be found in the CEO Report, which received extensive media attention at its launch. A line of research from this project has focused on female CEOs and how they manage their careers. Her more recent work focuses on emerging female leaders and how they develop themselves as well as on a project focusing on executive coaching practices within the context of professional service firms.

Overall, from the breadth of projects she has been involved in, Andromachi has obtained extensive research experience within the context of a variety of industries, both in the private and the public sector, as well as experience in collaboration between academics and practitioners. She has received awards and research funding both individually and as part of team-submissions.

Ethical/Responsible Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility 

One stream of research is focused on how managers in large multinationals make sense of the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, looking into the social contextual and processual drivers of this sensemaking. Andromachi’s second line of research within the field of ethical leadership started when she was a Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. It involves a study of how different groups of professionals (managers and business school academics in particular) make decisions that involve moral dilemmas. This project includes multiple research methods (qualitative interviews, photo elicitation, surveys and experiments). 

Centre and Group Membership:

• Member of the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED)

Publications

Books

• Athanasopoulou, A. & Dopson, S. 2015. Developing Leaders by Executive Coaching: Practice and Evidence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.(This book is a systematic review of the executive coaching field and its links to leadership theory, leadership development and management education - it is not a collection of edited chapters)

Journal articles

• Athanasopoulou, A., Marti, E., Risi, D., & Schlindwein, E. (2024). How Companies Restrain Means–Ends Decoupling: A Comparative Case Study of CSR Implementation. Journal of Management Studies, 1. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/10.1111/joms.13043
• Marti, E., Risi, D. & Schlindwein, E. & Athanasopoulou. A., (2024) Creating a Corporate Social Responsibility Program with Real Impact. Harvard Business Review. [hbr.org]  https://hbr.org/2024/03/creating-a-corporate-social-responsibility-program-with-real-impact
• Bhatti, Y., Ramirez, R. & Athanasopoulou, A.  (2023). The value produced in lending strategic problems as live cases in futures education. Futures, vol. 148.
• Yang, L., Manika, M. & Athanasopoulou, A. 2019. A multi-level perspective on symbolic pro-environmental behaviour. Journal of Business Research.
• Athanasopoulou, A., Moss Cowan, A., Smets, M. & Morris, T. 2018. In interviews, female CEOs say they don’t expect much support — at home or at work. Harvard Business Review [hbr.org]
• Athanasopoulou. A. & Dopson, S. 2018. A systematic review of executive coaching outcomes: Is it the journey or the destination that matters the most? Leadership Quarterly, 29(1): 70-88.
• Athanasopoulou, A., Moss Cowan, A., Smets, M. & Morris, T. 2018. Claiming the corner office: female CEO careers and implications for leadership development, Human Resource Management, 57(2): 617-639.
• Athanasopoulou, A. & Selsky, J. 2015. The social context of corporate social responsibility: Assessing competing perspectives to enrich research and practice, Business & Society, 54(3) 322–364.
• Athanasopoulou, A. Managers’ Corporate Social Responsibility perceptions and attitudes across different organizational contexts within the non-profit – for-profit organizational continuum. Journal of Change Management, 12(4): 467-494.

Other peer-reviewed publications

• Smets, M., Moss Cowan, A., Athanasopoulou, A., Moos, C. & Morris, T. 2019. From taking to making paradox: A multi-level perspective on how CEOs balance nested paradoxes. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Best Paper Proceedings. (2019 Academy of Management Best Paper Award Finalist, Organization and Management Theory Division.)
• Passarelli, A. M., Van Oosten, E. B., Good, D., Jules, C., Athanasopoulou, A., Boyatzis, R. E., Dopson, S. & Taylor, S. N. 2016. New frontiers in coaching research. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2016(1), 1. (Submission to AOM symposium; received the 2016 Management Education and Development Division’s Best Symposium in Management Education and Development Award)

Book chapters

• Mitra, M., Athanasopoulou, A., Dopson, S., Smets, M. 2022. Responsible Leadership Development: Gender, Diversity and the Route to the Top. In Saks, M. (ed.) Responsible Leadership: Essential to the Attainment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, Routledge.
• Athanasopoulou, A. & Selsky, J. 2016. The role of social context in Corporate Social Responsibility research. In Örtenblad, A.. Research Handbook on Corporate Social Responsibility in Context. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
• Athanasopoulou, A. 2008. Turbulence and Corporate Social Responsibility: Is there a role for scenarios?” ­ In Ramirez, R., Selsky, J. and van der Heijden, K. (eds.), pp. 243-258, Business Planning for Turbulent Environments: New Methods for Applying Scenarios (1^st ed.), London: Earthscan (2^nd ed. in 2010) (chapter selection based on peer-review)

Reports and other publications

• Saïd Business School and Heidrick & Struggles - The CEO Report: Embracing the Paradoxes of Leadership and the Power of Doubt (World Economic Forum, Davos, January 2015) [T. Morris, A. White, M. Smets, A. Moss Cowan, A. Athanasopoulou, T. Malloch, V. Germain, K. West, D. Tullett]
• Athanasopoulou, A. 2008. Introducing Corporate Social Responsibility. Templeton College Review 2006-2008, p. 12.
• Athanasopoulou, A. 2007. CSR: Is doing good by doing well enough?. Templeton Views, Vol. Summer 2007, pp. 8-9.

Conferences

• Athanasopoulou. A., Bao, L., Pasumarthy, A. & Stitilyte, G. (2023) Moral-dilemmas-as-practice: Delineating the linkages between context, emotions, and cognitive processes. 38^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (sub-theme 68) (July 2023 – Cagliari, Italy)
• Marks, S., Athanasopoulou, A., & Cornelius, N. (2023) What would people think if I am purely profiteering woman? Exploring the dark side of the “doing good” discourse in women’s entrepreneurship. 38^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (sub-theme 23) (July 2023 – Cagliari, Italy)
• Pasumarthy, A., Kirton, G. & Athanasopoulou. A., (2023) Striving to thrive? A qualitative study exploring success, sustainable careers and navigation strategies of Indian professional/managerial women in pursuit of the good life. 38^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (sub-theme 21)  (July 2023 – Cagliari, Italy)
• Athanasopoulou. A., Marti, E. & Risi, D. (2022) Why companies engage in policy-practice or means-ends decoupling: A comparative case study of CSR implementation. 37^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2022 – Vienna, Austria) (sub-theme 2)
• Probert, J., Athanasopoulou, A., Dopson, S. & Smets, M.  (2021) When life gives you lemons: Female leaders and the transformation of negative emotions. 37^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2021– Amsterdam, Holland - virtual) (sub-theme 13)
• Probert, J., Athanasopoulou, A., Dopson, S. & Smets, M. (2020) When life gives you lemons: Emotion regulation of negative emotions in female leaders. 35^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2020– Hamburg, Germany) (sub-theme 13)
• Athanasopoulou, A., Smets, M., Risi, D. & Morris, T. (2020) Lonely At The Top? CEO Sensemaking In The Boardroom. Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2020 – Vancouver, Canada)
• Smets, M., Cowan, A., Athanasopoulou, A., Moos, C. & Morris, T. (2019) From taking to making paradox: A multi-level perspective on how CEOs balance nested paradoxes. Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2019 – Boston, MA, USA) [Included in best paper proceedings, Best Paper Award Finalist, Organization and Management Theory Division]
• Bhatti, Y., Athanasopoulou, A., & Ramirez, R. (2019) New Life for an Old Trick: Re-conceptualizing the live case method for impact. Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2019 – Boston, MA, USA)
• Smets, M., Athanasopoulou, A., Dopson, S., Probert, J. & Lavelle, S. (2019) ‘I dreamed a dream…’: Imagined futures as catalysts of female leadership journeys. 35^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2019 – Edinburgh, UK) (sub-theme 49).
• Selsky, J. W., Athanasopoulou, A. & Seitanidi, M. M. (2019) Making sense of tensions in CSR implementation: Response repertoires for social value creation. 35^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2019 – Edinburgh, UK) (sub-theme 02)
• Smets, M., Cowan, A., Athanasopoulou, A., Moos, C. & Morris, T. (2019) From taking to making paradox: A multi-level perspective on how CEOs balance nested paradoxes. 35^th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium Pre-Colloquium Development Workshop (July 2019 – Edinburgh, UK)
• Moss Cowan, A., Athanasopoulou, A., Smets, M. & Morris, T. (2017) Seeing is believing is seeing: A new form of corporate-academic partnership as an opportunity for making sense of logics. Academy of Management Journal Workshop on “New Ways of Seeing” (June 2017 – Ivey School of business, Canada)
• Athanasopoulou, A. & Dopson, S., (2016) Executive Coaching Outcomes & How Organizations Can Capitalize on Them (Submission for Symposium: New Frontiers in Coaching Research, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2016 –        Anaheim,      CA, USA) (2016 MED Best Symposium in Management Education and Development Award)
• Smets, M., Cowan, A., Athanasopoulou, A. & Morris, T. (2016) From Paradox to Purpose: A Multi-level Perspective on how CEOs Balance Paradoxical Demands (Submission for   Symposium: Navigating Paradoxes In Organizations: Embracing, Meaning-Making     And           Managing Tensions), Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2016 –       Anaheim, CA, USA)
• Athanasopoulou, A., Cowan, A., Smets, M. & Morris, T. (2016) The king is dead, long live the king! CEOs and the politics of sensemaking,32nd European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2016 – Naples, Italy)
• Smets, M., Cowan, A., Athanasopoulou, A. & Morris, T. (2016) To solve a problem, make it bigger – Kind of a paradox!32nd European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2016 – Naples, Italy) 
• Athanasopoulou, A. (2015) Coping with Moral Dilemmas at Work: Managers, Business School Academics and the Development of Ethical Leaders,Ending Institutional Corruption Conference, Harvard University (May 2015 – Boston, USA)
• Athanasopoulou, A., Taylor, A., Leaver, L. & Brankin, P. (2014)  A training programme engaging medical trainees in service improvement: How bottom-up change can work in practice,International Forum on Quality and Safety in Health Care (April 2014 – Paris, France)
• Athanasopoulou, A. & Dopson, S. (2013) Assessing the Executive Coaching Research and its Impact on Practice and Executive Education,Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2013 – Orlando,  FL, USA)
• Athanasopoulou, A. (2012) Corporate Social Responsibility Sensemaking and Enactment: The study of a reflective practice.Research Development Workshop by the Academy of Management Journal and the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management (May 2012, SDA Bocconi, Milan, Italy)
• Athanasopoulou, A. (2009) A Critical Appreciation of the CSR Theory and Empirical Studies: Is Something Missing?,Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2009 – Chicago, USA)
• Athanasopoulou, A.(2009) CSR Examined Through the Key Social Context Theories in Organization Studies, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2009 – Chicago, USA)
• Athanasopoulou, A.(2009) Exploring the Social Dynamics of Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility Standards in MNEs, 25th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2009 – Barcelona, Spain)
• Athanasopoulou, A.(2008) Corporate Social Responsibility Sensemaking and Enactment: The study of a reflective practice, 24th European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium (July 2008 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• Athanasopoulou, A. and S. Dopson (2007) Practicing Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing good and doing well, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (August 2007 – Philadelphia, PA, USA)
• Athanasopoulou, A. and S. Dopson (2006) Below the Tip of the Iceberg: Exploring a practice within a practice – an empirical study of the practice of corporate social responsibility,Second Organization Studies Summer Workshop (June 2006 - Mykonos, Greece)
• Athanasopoulou, A., (2005) Making Corporate Social Responsibility Research More Useful: Thinking “outside the box”,British Academy of Management Conference 2005 (September 2005 - Oxford, UK)
• Athanasopoulou, A. (2005) Can Corporate Social Responsibility Help Organizations in Managing Turbulence or Responding to it More Effectively? Some thoughts,Oxford Futures Forum 2005 (October 2005 - Oxford, UK)
• Athanasopoulou, A. (2004) Corporate Social Responsibility: Managers’ views and work implications,European Academy for Business in Society Colloquium (September 2004 - Ghent, Belgium)

Supervision

Areas of Supervision Expertise:

• Leadership / leadership development
• Gender and leadership
• Corporate social responsibility / business ethics

Current Doctoral Students: 

1st Supervisor

• Luayo Bao, 'How do managers who work at western OR Chinese multinational subsidiaries operating in mainland China make sense for CSR and its contextual influences?'

Public Engagement

Andromachi has received several grants and scholarships. She has also received several awards for her research including from the Academy of Management in the US and the British Academy of Management. She is a regular reviewer at top peer-reviewed journals and a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Academy of Management Learning & Education. As a practicing coach, she was selected by the International Coach Federation as one of the Wisdom Weavers in Coaching (a group of pioneering transdisciplinary thinkers) to discuss the future of coaching. Andromachi sits on the External Advisory Board of the Leadership Institute of a leading US Cancer Center. Her research is frequently mentioned in international media and she has provided interviews to a number of global media outlets including CNN and the BBC. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.