Daniel Fisher

I am a qualitative researcher. My work draws on a wide variety of theoretical lenses to understand public and private dynamics among and between organizations, as well as within occupations. My main objective is to understand what it is like to be the person I study. What tensions do they encounter? How does their physical environment affect them? Why do they execute their job in a particular way? I'm equally interested in how organizations, hierarchically or collectively, make sense of their public and private responsibilities. My current research program has focused on fronline workers in the UK rail industry as it exemplifies a setting that grapples with both public and private demands. My research explores narrative constructions of efficiency in public organizations, how organizations shape and influence bodywork of an occupational group, moral dynamics linked with drives for efficiency and wrongdoing by public-private partnerships. These projects have maintained my interests in processes of automation, discourses and rhetoric, processes of commensuration, misconduct and wrongdoing as well as identity and temporality in organization studies.

Through this work I continue to consider where public and private boundaries are made sense of and constructed. I joined the University of Sussex Business School as a Lecturer in Management on Sept 1, 2022. I am also a research member in The Centre for Responsible Enterprise (ETHOS). I teach Research Methods and have previously taught Critical Analysis for Business and Change Management at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. I occasionally write for the Conversation, The Financial Times and other news outlets. As a social science scholar, I believe that engaging with the Arts and Humanities can help scholars do social science better. I can be found on Linked In where I regularly highlight articles that can help us think about how we can do social science better but also regularly reflect on how we can have a better relationship between business and society – an intellectual responsibility I believe in.