Professor Stephanie Decker FAcSS, FHEA, MA, PG Cert

Professor of Strategy:

• Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, 2024
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) – PR057259, 2013
• PG Cert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, University of Liverpool, 2010
• PhD, University of Liverpool, School of History, 2006
• MA in 20^th History, University of Liverpool, School of History, 2001
• Magistra Artium, intermediate examination (equivalent to BA),University of Cologne, Economic & Social History, International Law, Social Anthropology, 2002

Stephanie is Professor of Strategy and one of two Deputy Deans for Birmingham Business School (2023-26). She is also Co-Vice Chair Research & Publications at the British Academy of Management (2022-25) and joint Editor-in-Chief of Business History (2019-24).

As a historian working at a business school, her work is concerned with the connection between the social sciences and history, specifically organization studies, strategy, international business and (business) history. She is interested in how to theorise from historical research and in developing archival and historical methods to study organizations. Her historical research focuses on the history of organizations, entrepreneurs and the wider political economy in Africa. 

Book in for Office Hours with Prof Stephanie Decker

Due to her leadership role, Stephanie is currently not actively teaching.

Stephanie has supervised and examined several doctoral students in business and management and is interested in supervising students on subjects such as:
- International strategy.
- Historical research in the study of organizations and management.
- Business and development in Africa.

She is currently lead supervisor of two doctoral students at Birmingham, and co-supervising a student at the University of Bristol, Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

• Omeghie Okoyomoh
• Guting Sheng
• Jennifer Dumle Daniels (University of Bristol)

Stephanie's work has been published in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Business & Society and Business History. She has received research funding from the Economic & Social Science Research Council, the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Newton Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (US) and the British Academy. She has held visiting appointments at the University of Cagliari (Italy) Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) and Humboldt University Berlin (Germany).

Her work has been widely recognized in business and management, and business history, and won several prizes, including:

• The Emerald Citations of Excellence 2017 for her co-authored AMR article;
• The Henrietta Lawson Prize (twice), the first time for the best article in Business History Review in 2018, for her single-authored article on multinational legitimization strategies in Ghana and Nigeria; and the second time for her co-authored article on Enron with Adam Nix and Carola Wolf in 2021;
• The Best Full Paper Award in the African Studies Track at British Academy of Management 2020 for her co-authored paper with George Obeng on base-of-pyramid approaches in Ghana.

Stephanie’s current research spans the three distinct areas. She continued to develop historical methods and approaches to organizational memory in strategy, international business and organization studies. As a co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Historical Methods in Management (Edward Elgar, 2023), she continues to support greater diversity and accessibility of historical approaches in business and management.

Her business historical research focuses on the interaction of multinationals and international organizations with non-Western societies, with a focus on West Africa. She has recently published a book on Postcolonial Transitions and Global Business History (Routledge, 2023) and she continues to promote more diverse, interdisciplinary and international research in the field in her role as joint editor-in-chief for Business History (since 2019). During her tenure she has expanded the size of the editorial team and the editorial board, and developed the social media presence of the journal to make the editorial process more accessible to authors and reviewers.

In collaboration with the archival sector, she has conducted several research projects on digital archives, computational archival science and approaches to big qualitative datasets, with a particular focus on email archives. This research has been supported by the AHRC and is currently funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. 

Stephanie is a member of Unilever’s Independent Research Panel which oversees research into the organization’s use of unfree labour in the Congo and the Solomon Islands. She has presented research to Lloyds Banking Group and BEIS on responsible uses of the past. 

As part of her research into digital archival practice, she has presented at several professional development events for archivists, record and knowledge managers, including the Government Knowledge Information Management Profession and the Digital Archives Learning Exchange. She was part of the committee that evaluated applications by UK archives to managed to the rescued Thomas Cook archive in 2019.

Stephanie’s research on Africa has been cited in the Sunday Times, and she has given interviews to BBC Radio 4 and Swiss Radio about the importance of saving the Thomas Cook Archive.

Scientific advisory roles:

• Member of the Scientific Committee of the Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide since 2022
• International Scientific Advisory Board for the Austrian Society of Business History, University of Graz, Austria [Internationaler Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte (ÖGU)] since 2022
• Scientific Advisory Board for the Bochum Series in Business and Industrial History at Brill Publishing, Germany [Wissenschaftlichen Beirat der Bochumer Schriften zur Unternehmens- und Industriegeschichte] since 2021
• Member of Advisory Committee for postdoctoral project on “History, Nationalism, and Business”, Dr Christian Stutz, University of Jyvaeskylae, Finland (Academy of Finland), 2021-24