Professor Nigel Nicholson's Biography

Current position:

I am a Professor of Organisational Behaviour (OB) at London Business School, where I have a broad portfolio of interests in research, executive education and collaborations with businesses. The focus of my work is diverse, but currently primarily in the areas of leadership, family business, executive development, risk and decision-making, and interpersonal skills. I direct two of the School's major open enrolment programmes (Proteus and High Performance People Skills), and I am currently the faculty coordinator for the School's Africa Regional Advisory Board.

Brief biography:

I left school at the age of 16 to become a journalist, and only resumed my education later, having worked for two years as a reporter on local newspapers, done some global wandering and been employed in various strange jobs. I read Psychology at university, followed by a PhD in Work and Organisational Psychology, via a huge research project on absence from work, a topic that occupied much of my early research writing and thought. I joined the Social and Applied Psychology Unit at the University of Sheffield where I worked on issues of labour-management relations, industrial conflict, organisational change, innovation, and management career mobility. I moved to London Business School in 1990, where in addition to two periods as OB Chairman I have been Research Dean, a Deputy Dean and member of the Governing Body. I have had spells as a distinguished visitor at universities in the USA, Germany, Canada and Australia, and I am a Fellow of the British Academy of Management and the British Psychological Society. I have been honoured for my contribution to theory and method by an award from the Academy of Management in the USA.

Thematic interests:

I have worked in and continue to maintain an interest in a wide variety of fields. My guiding principle throughout has been to find creative approaches to solving problems and advancing knowledge. My aim has been new theoretical syntheses, original empirical approaches, truthful data, and practical applications that directly relate to the experience of people in organisations. Relevance and the link with practice are key values for me, and it has been to bring the academic and user worlds together through multiple forms of dissemination, including executive presentations, media appearances, and varied kinds of writing.
Since joining London Business School a key mission has been to pioneer the introduction of the powerful and radical ideas of evolutionary psychology to the world of business, through a stream of publications and presentations, including most notably my Harvard Business Review articles in 1998 and 2003, and book in 2000. Areas of recent research and writing include personality and executive development, risk and decision-making in finance, careers, organisational change, expatriate adjustment, and leadership skills (these are described on the Research Interests page). Most recently I have commenced a new stream of research and writing on family business.

Teaching & Advisory

I teach a wide range of students and executives on a broad array of issues and have created a number of new initiatives. These include the Proteus Programme, and extensive redevelopment of the School's longest running open enrolment programme, High Performance People Skills. In London Business School's degree programmes I have a Biography programme for the Sloan Fellowship programme, and developed a "Communications Audit" model for the overseas fieldtrip of our Executive MBA students. Outside the School I am a sought-after executive public speaker, and additionally give advice to firms about various aspects of executive development and organisational change.