Dr Andrew Smith

• PG Cert, University of Liverpool 2016
• PhD, University of Western Ontario 2005
• MA, University of Western Ontario 2000
• BA Hons, Queen’s University 1999

Joined the University of Birmingham in 2023. Previously, he worked at other universities in the UK and Canada. He has held a wide range of administrative roles in different institutions, including programme leadership positions, research management roles, and extensive engagement in student recruitment. He has also done extensive Impact and consultancy work. 

Andrew teaches responsible management at a variety of levels. From 2023-24, he will be teaching the MBA course on Responsible Business and will be contributing to the teaching of other responsible business modules, such as Principles of Responsible Business.

Currently supervising a PhD student named Diana Madibekova. She is doing research on the business-peace relationship that has involved interviews with business people in Istanbul.   

What makes societies free, prosperous, and just? Much of his research revolves around that macro-level question, although he also do meso-level research on firms (as a good business historian should) and on the individual level micro-foundations of everything that is going on. Andrew has drawn on the ideas of what he regards as great theorists from across the social sciences. In his publications, he has applied, adapted, and extended the theories produced by scholars ranges from Elinor Ostrom to Oliver Williamson to Michel Foucault to Gordon Tullock. In the past, his research focused on constitutional political economy questions and the making of what Oliver Williamson called Level Two institutions, such as the written constitutions that set the rules of the political game. He is increasing interested in informal norms and institutions, recognising their importance of causal drivers to a degree previously ignored. He is now doing research on how culture influences the incidence of rent-seeking entrepreneurship, the wicked problem of modern slavery in a world of heterogenous national political institutions and global supply chains, and the legacies of Black slavery.

Andrew’s impact work involves helping managers and others to think about the legacies of slavery. In the past, he has undertaken consultancy work.