Alice Lam

Alice Lam is Professor of Organization Studies at the School of Business and Management. She joined Royal Holloway in 2005 and served as the School’s Director of Research from 2007 to 2011. Additionally, she led the Research Theme Group ‘Knowledge and Organizational Learning’ from 2012 to 2021. Previously, she held academic positions as a Research Professor at Brunel University, a Reader at the University of Kent, and a Lecturer at Manchester Business School. Alice holds a PhD in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). During her time at LSE, she was also a research fellow at the Suntory-Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD). Prior to working at LSE, she was a Monbusho scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo, where she obtained an MA in Industrial Sociology.

Alice has served as a Senior Editor of Organization Studies and remains a member of its Editorial Board.

Research interests

Alice’s research is at the intersection of sociology, management, and organization studies. She focuses on the organization and management of knowledge work and the careers of creative knowledge workers, including scientists, engineers, and artists. Her current research examines career mobility, identity transitions and hybridity as mechanisms for knowledge transfer and recombination across organizational and institutional boundaries. This ongoing work builds on her earlier comparative studies on work organization and knowledge practices, particulary across different countries and cultural contexts, to understand how institutional and organizational differences influence work practices, learning and innovation.

Her research has received funding from various prestigious organizations, including the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC), the EU Targeted Socio-Economic Research (TSER) Programme and Networks of Excellence, the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, the Suntory-Toyota Foundation, and the Fuji-Xerox Foundation. Alice’s work has been published in leading journals such as Human Relations, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Research Policy, Human Resource Management Journal, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and Industrial Relations (Berkeley).

• Careers
• Creative Knowledge Work
• Work Role and Identity Transitions
• Hybridity
• Knowledge Transfer Across Boundaries

Teaching

Professor Lam has extensive teaching experience at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.  She currently teaches on the following courses:

Undergraduate (Third Year):

• MN3271  International Human Resource Management

Postgraduate MSc Programmes:

• MN5702 Organisational Learning, Knowledge and Work
• MN5443 International Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour

PhD Supervision

She welcomes PhD students in the broad areas of human resource management and career studies, creative knowledge work, organisational change and innovation, and knowledge sharing/transfer across boundaries.