Associate Professor of Organization Studies · Warwick Business School
Omid Omidvar
I study how organizations keep time: the routines, rhythms and algorithms through which they persist, adapt, and sometimes fail to notice that the world has changed.
With Demetris Hadjimichael, Gary Burke, Igor Pyrko and Robert Chia.
About
I am an Associate Professor of Organization Studies in the Organisation and Work group at Warwick Business School. My research sits where sociological and process theories meet the everyday machinery of organizations: routines, strategy work, and increasingly the algorithms and predictive models that organizations rely on to read a changing environment.
A recurring question in my work is how organizations handle time. Routines are meant to help organizations adapt, yet my study of Moody's credit rating routine before the 2008 financial crisis shows how reliance on algorithmic models can produce a dynamic form of inertia: the model keeps updating while its assumptions quietly settle. With colleagues I have also traced how temporal patterns organize work and strategy, how emergent groups orchestrated help on social media during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how the idea of communities of practice has developed over three decades.
I work mainly with in-depth qualitative and longitudinal case studies, in settings that have included financial institutions, R&D consortia, mergers, festivals, family firms and open collaboration initiatives.
Before joining Warwick in 2023 I held posts at Aston Business School and Coventry University, and was a research fellow at the Innogen Centre at the University of Edinburgh. I completed my PhD at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Alliance Manchester Business School, after degrees in electrical engineering and information technology management in Iran.
Research
Algorithms
Algorithms and organizational inertia
Organizations adopt predictive models and algorithmic routines to keep pace with a dynamic environment. Studying Moody's rating routine in the run-up to 2008, my co-authors and I show how those same models can produce dynamic inertia: constant updating at the surface while assumptions about inputs sediment and the unknown future is simulated rather than confronted. Current work follows algorithmic coordination as organizations scale.
Work has a beat. Recurring sequences of activity, from daily routines to annual festivals, shape how time is organized and experienced in organizations. Our review in the Academy of Management Annals integrates research on temporal patterns across management, and related studies examine the rhythms of strategy work and the cyclic organization of temporary events.
Drawing on practice theory and process philosophy, I study how knowing travels: across the boundaries of R&D consortia, through the routines that collide in a merger, and within communities of practice, a concept whose development I have followed from an interview with Etienne Wenger-Trayner to a comprehensive review of the field.
How do people organize when the usual arrangements are absent or unsettled? Projects here include volunteers who orchestrated help on social media during Covid-19, play in strategy-making workshops, the life course of ownership transfer in business-owning families, and the strategy work of sustainability professionals.
Ahmad Beltagui, Andreas Schroeder and Omid Omidvar
The Conversation, 24 June 2021
innovation
Conference papers, reports and other writing
Peer-reviewed conference papers
Omidvar, O., Burke, G. T. and Pyrko, I. (2022). Rhythms of strategy. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2022(1). Pushing the Boundary Award, Strategizing Activities and Practices division.
Schroeder, A., Beltagui, A., Shi, V. G., Kandemir, C., Omidvar, O. and Yang, M. (2020). Digital twin for advanced service delivery systems. EurOMA Conference.
Omidvar, O. (2013). Revisiting absorptive capacity: Literature review and a practice-based extension of the concept. 35th DRUID Celebration Conference, Barcelona.
Reports
Omidvar, O., De Grijs, M., Castle, D., Mittra, J., Rosiello, A. and Tait, J. (2014). Regenerative medicine: Business models, venture capital and the funding gap. Innogen Centre, University of Edinburgh.
Omidvar, O., Wield, D. and Tait, J. (2014). Science and industrial dynamics in Scotland. Innogen working paper, University of Edinburgh.
Allman, K., Edler, J., Georghiou, L., Jones, B., Miles, I., Omidvar, O., Ramlogan, R. and Rigby, J. (2011). Measuring wider framework conditions for successful innovation: A system's review of UK and international innovation data. NESTA.
Teaching
Current modules
IB9070
Organisational BehaviourFull-time MBA, Warwick Business School
IB9PVD
Organisational BehaviourPart-time MBA (London Accelerator) and Global Online MBA
IB3N90
Managing People in a Complex WorldBSc Management, International Management, Accounting and Finance, joint degrees and exchange students
My teaching asks students to reframe. The same organizational situation looks different through structural, human, political and symbolic lenses, and much of the work in the room is learning to switch between them deliberately. MBA sessions run on live cases, debates, simulations and polling rather than lectures alone.
Before Warwick I taught strategic management and strategic decision-making at Aston Business School, including on the Executive MBA, along with research methods for postgraduate students. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I supervise doctoral research on routines, algorithms, temporality and practice-based approaches to organizing. Prospective PhD students working in these areas are welcome to get in touch.
Recognition & service
Awards
2022Pushing the Boundary Award, Strategizing Activities and Practices division, Academy of Management, for Rhythms of strategy
2022Best Reviewer Award, Strategizing Activities and Practices division, Academy of Management
2022Research Excellence Award, College of Business and Social Sciences, Aston University
2021Best Paper Proceedings, Operations and Supply Chain Management division, Academy of Management
2021Runner-up, best paper, Corporate Social Responsibility conference
2014Best Developmental Paper, Strategy-as-Practice track, British Academy of Management
Service and engagement
I review for the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Management Learning, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of Management Inquiry and R&D Management.
I chaired the Research Ethics Committee at Aston Business School from 2019 to 2022, organised the Strategy Practices and Processes track at EURAM 2017, and co-organised the Strategizing Activities and Practices workshop at Aston in 2020.
I was a co-investigator on the EPSRC-funded Digitally Advanced Services project, and have run strategy workshops with the NHS West Midlands strategy unit and with councillors and local-authority executives on financial inclusion.
Contact
Email
omid.omidvar@wbs.ac.uk
Office
Room 2.133
Warwick Business School
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom