Dr Adam Nix

• PhD in Management, 2019
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2016
• MSc in International Business, 2012
• BA (Hons) in Business and Law, 2011

Adam joined the University of Birmingham in 2021. He holds a PhD in Management from Aston Business School. His research interests include issues of corruption and misconduct within organisational contexts, focusing particularly on their use in evolving market environments. Recent and ongoing projects include research on organisational responses to EDI-related abuse, the role of linguistic trust in professional misconduct, and the use of historical approaches in researching wrongdoing and irresponsibility. 

Adam’s research on manipulation of deregulated electricity markets has received international recognition, winning the Henrietta Lawson Award for the Best Article in Business History Review in 2021 and the British Academy of Management’s Best Full Paper Award in Organisational Studies in 2023. He also received the Birmingham Business School’s award for Outstanding Research in 2023. 

Passionate about preserving digital-era company records, Adam has collaborated internationally on Arts and Humanities Research Council and Mellon Foundation-funded projects to develop AI-based tools for searching email archives. He has worked with and presented research to various government and organisational stakeholders, including the Cabinet Office’s Central Digital and Data Office, National Archives UK, and Hagley Museums and Libraries.

Adam’s teaching focuses on themes of business ethics, sustainability, and corporate responsibility, and his pedagogical research focuses on responsible business learning and teaching.

Adam’s teaching is focused on Responsible Business, which he delivers at both an undergraduate and postgraduate level:

• Responsible Business: Theory and Practice (UG)

• Sustainable and Responsible Practices (PG)

• Sustainability and Responsible Business (PG)

Guting Shen, PhD Management, ‘The Business Models of Department Stores in Modern Shanghai, 1880s-1940s’

Current research interests 

• Markets and deregulation within the energy supply industry 
• Organisational responses to interpersonal EDI-related misconduct
• Preservation and access to organisational email archives archives
• Corporate corruption as an illicit organisational practice
• Linguistic trust mechanisms in cases of professional misconduct

Funded projects 

Co-investigator, Email Contextualisation Discovery (EMCODIST). Full title “Discovery environments for using email archives: Evaluating user needs with prototype version of EMail COntextualisation DIScovery Tool”. (January 2022 - December 2023). Award $57,000 (US), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation via the Email Archives: Building Capacity and Community (EA:BCC) re-grant programme. 

Co-investigator, Contextualising Email Archives (CEA). Full title: “Historicising the dot.com bubble and contextualising email archives”. (February 2020 - February 2022). Award: £100,000, Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Editorial Team (Book Reviews Editor), Business History (Journal).