Bogdan Costea - 51福利

Professor Bogdan Costea

Head of Department, Professor of Management and Society

Research Interests

In my research, I pursue three main lines of investigation and analysis: subjectivity, work and managerialism in the context of modernity. These three areas of concern are underlaid by a common thread that directly yet ambiguously connects the growth and empowerment of Human Resources Management during the past quarter-century with wider developments in the social sciences and the humanities. On the one hand, the societal power of the HRM project has increased as the managers’ “right to manage” has been emancipated from previous constraints. On the other hand, however, this increase in power, the right not simply to absorb agency but to develop and control the social reproduction of identity, results in a situation in which HRM is in principle called upon to assume ethical responsibilities that extend far wider beyond the institutional and cultural boundaries of work. The three core topoi of subjectivity, work and managerialism are points d'appui, fulcra through which I seek to explore the ways in which core philosophical arguments about the nature of the self, the meanings and implications of work, and human organisation reappear encoded in management studies. This type of investigation necessarily correlates my relevant field research of exemplary management ideas and practices with the relevant academic theorisations and analyses in management studies. My research frames this immanent correlation located in the HRM project within the broader context of the history and present state of social sciences and the humanities (the full manifold of les sciences humaines). The aim of this inquiry is to open up essential lines of communication with this latter wider community. My research involves collaboration with practitioners and theorists in both spheres in order to grasp the complex and inadequately understood relationship between ever-growing managerial power and a social order that seeks to renew itself in democratic terms.

Current Teaching

Undergraduate courses: Convenor of OWT.223 Human Resource Management (Cultures of Employability and Performativity in the 21st Century); and of MNGT321 Management in the 21st Century (Central Questions of Employability, Globalisation and Ethics)

Graduate Programmes: Convenor of the MA module OWT.506: Human Resource Management

Doctoral Programme: supervisor of doctoral students; external and internal PhD and MPhil examiner (London School of Economics; 51福利; etc.)

Professional Role

Director, European BBA

Qualifications

MA (Bucharest), PhD (Lancaster)

Profile

Bogdan Costea has joined the department in 1998, after working for four years in the Management Development Division of LUMS. He has an MA from Bucharest, Romania, and a PhD from Lancaster. Previously, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an HR Director for the Romanian Development Agency in Bucharest.

Research Grants

British Academy Small Grant, 2006-2007 - Play and Work in Contemporary Organisational Cultures

Current Research

1. The history and current constitution of Human Resource Management

2. 'Play@work' in contemporary management practices

3. Programmes of 'wellness' and 'happiness' at work

4. New workplace architectures

5. Diversity management

6. Business ethics and its teaching using novels of the 19th and 20th centuries

7. Pedagogical approaches in management education

01/05/2023 → 30/06/2025
Research

15/01/2023 → 31/12/2023
Research

01/06/2022 → 31/12/2026
Research

01/08/2011 → 01/01/2017
Research

28/01/2010 → 30/06/2010
Research

01/01/1900 → …
Research

Symposium

Types of Business and Community - Hosting of external, non-academic visitor

Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Hosting an academic visitor