Research Interests

For more than twenty (20) years I have explored and intervened  in complex managerial situations.  I have done so with the help of applied systems thinking, a body of knowledge which offers valuable ideas, methodologies and methods, thus facilitating  interdisciplinary and inter-professional work.

My main contribution in this field is and has been the development of frameworks to facilitate ethical understanding of and intervention in different types of VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) situations.  These situations range from information systems planning to creativity and sustainability.  As a result, I have published several research monographs, book chapters and journal articles in specialised systems thinking, management and soft operational research (OR) outlets. 

Professional Career

I gained a computer science and systems engineering degree from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.  During this time and shortly after, I also helped run a family business and worked as a software programmer, business analyst and project administrator for 5 years. 

In 1997, I was awarded a Colfuturo scholarship to study an MA in Management Systems (Systems Thinking) at Hull University's Centre for Systems Studies in the UK.  In 1998, I was  awarded a Hull University full PhD scholarship to carry out my research on systems thinking and ethics applied to information systems. 

At Hull and shortly after finishing my PhD (2002), I was  awarded an ESRC post-doctoral research fellowship to do a post-doctoral consolidation of journal articles, profile networking and guest lecturing on the topics of systems thinking, information systems and ethics. 

In 2003, I became a lecturer in management systems at Hull, gaining a permanent position in 2004. I lectured and researched in Hull until 2008, when I moved to Royal Holloway. 

Leadership

Since then, I have continuously contributed to the shool of management (now business school)'s research, leadership, education and outreach activities on a continuous basis.   My leaderships role have included:

2008-2011:  Co-director of the M.Sc (Master of Science) in Business Information Systems (BIS), a joint programme with the department of computer science.  I facilitated joint work between different departments, also including electives from our college information security (ISG) group.  

2014: Acting co-director of the M.S.c (Master of Science) in Business Information Systems (BIS). I took over for a few months until September 2015, when a new director was appointed.  

2019-2022:  Undergraduate director for the B.Sc (Bachellor of Science) in Business and Management with Digital Innovation. I conducted the first programme evaluation of this B.Sc programme, informing curricula changes, some of which are still relevant today.   

2021-to date: Library representative for the business school, in charge of facilitating efficient use of library physical and electronic resources (including Harvard Business Impact).  The uptake of these resources has increased considerably across all the business school's departments.  

Learning and Teaching

I currently teach a second year undergraduate management course on circular economy and digitalisation (MN2345); and a course on creativity and problem solving (MN2515) that has gained strong popularity since its inception in 2015.  In 2025-2026, we have extended the boundaries of this course to help the college commercial services evaluate their work during summer courses.  

I also teach a postgraduate course titled "digital strategy and business models" (MN5803).  In this course we look at systemic processes and phenomena of digitalisation.  We use systems thinking as a core lens for analysis., in particular the concept of systemic innovations  We complement learning with practical simulations, guest speakers as well as group presentations of carefully curated case studies on successful and not so successful digital innovation. 

PhD Supervision

Between 2004 and now, I have supervised PhD students in areas like organisational communication (Wenxian Sun), electronic government (Endrit Kromidha), online distance education (Sulafah Basahel), crowdsourcing digital platforms (Diego Martinez) and cloud computing (Khalid Al Zadjali, co-supervised).  I also co-supervised Vajihe Javadian in her research in supply chain management (2015-2020). 

Currently (2025 to date), am co-supervising students in the study of ransomware (Faria Pitafi, information security group) as systemic and interpretive phenomena.  

Journal Editorship

I am a member of the editorial board of the journal World Futures