Overview

Michael Smets completed his doctorate entitled "Doing Deals in a Global Law Firm: The Reciprocity of Institutions and Work" at the Saïd Business School in 2009.  He went on to Aston Business School where he is Lecturer in Strategy. 

He is interested in understanding the interplay between organizational structures and practices with the institutional environments in which they are embedded. Specifically, he looks into questions of internationalisation, decision-making and technology usage, innovation and cross-border work, which he investigates in professional service firms in the law, consulting, and insurance sectors.

Michael's web page at Aston can be found here.

Research interests

Smets’ research focuses on the internationalisation of PSFs and its effects on local work-practices. In particular, Smets explores the impacts of work in cross-national project-teams on the routines of their geographically diversified members. He is interested to understand how professionals who come into contact with foreign work-practices that contradict their own taken-for-granted routines manage this incompatibility; and to examine the role of the larger normative structures that shape work practices.