معرفی
Profile
Roles and Affiliations: Michael Smets is a Professor of Management at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is also a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College and a member of the Centre for Professional Service Firms. His academic contributions span institutional theory, practice theory, and strategic management.
Education:
- Bachelor’s equivalent in Business and Economics, Cologne University, Germany
- MSc in Management Research, Saïd Business School
- DPhil in Management, Saïd Business School
- Postdoctoral Researcher at Saïd Business School and University of Alberta’s School of Management
Research Interests: Michael’s work examines professional service firms (PSFs) through three core lenses:
- Global Operations: Internationalisation challenges in law, consulting, and reinsurance firms, with a focus on institutional complexity and regulatory systems.
- Innovation & Career Systems: How evolving career structures in PSFs can simultaneously drive innovation and address work-life balance demands. Recent studies highlight ambidextrous career paths and their strategic leverage.
- Methodological Innovation: Pioneering video- and team-ethnography to capture micro-level organisational practices. His ‘fly on the wall’ study at Lloyd’s of London is a landmark in this domain.
Academic & Industry Impact: His research has been translated into industry-relevant outputs, including reports for the reinsurance sector and handbooks for legal firms. The 2013 ESRC Award for Outstanding Impact in Business recognises this translational work. Academically, he has received the 2012 Academy of Management Journal Best Article Award and multiple best paper awards.
Teaching & Executive Education: Michael teaches strategic management, innovation, and business development in executive programmes for Commerzbank, Deloitte, and other global firms. He is Programme Director for the Oxford Leading Professional Service Firms Programme, emphasizing interactive, case-study driven pedagogy. His teaching philosophy prioritises critical thinking over rigid models, as he states: ‘It is critical to understand under which circumstances which models work, and which ones don’t.’
Labs & Collaborations: Affiliated with the Centre for Professional Service Firms and the Oxford Initiative on Rethinking Performance. He collaborates with institutions like Cass Business School and Aston Business School on ethnographic studies. His work also intersects with the Insurance Institute of London and the International Bar Association for practitioner-focused outputs.
