The Transformation Project

Dr Michael Butler

Dr. Michael Butler is Reader in Transformational Change & Founder/Director of The Transformation Project at Aston Business School, UK.

His business engagement research has won awards from the CMI and the ESRC, and has been used by the OECD to plan and evaluate international policy implementation.

He is completing work on ‘Transformation for Growth’ funded by the ERDF, a large project to facilitate growth in SMEs by using his evidence-based management toolsets.

He is passionate about understanding change from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including the institutional, the biological, and the historical.

He consults on organization development and is a Trustee of The Birmingham Civic Society.

I have currently generated £1,326,330 of grant income, mostly as Principal Investigator (PI).

Because of this research success, and how I use my research to underpin my teaching and business engagement, in 2015, I was elected to a Fellowship of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), which enriches society through ideas and action.

Why not collaborate? (m.j.r.butler@aston.ac.uk)

View Michael’s Transformation for Growth Profile
View Michael’s Aston Business School Profile
View Michael’s LinkedIn Profile

Laurie O’Broin – Research Assistant and Corporate Communications Officer

Laurie is a PhD candidate at Aston University. She completed her MSc in Work Psychology and Business at Aston University. She has a MEng in General Engineering from Durham University. She is accredited as a graduate member of the BPS and is an in-training member of the BPS Division of Occupational Psychology. She worked as a senior business and marketing analyst for Eaton Electrical; a global diversified industrial manufacturing company; for more than 5 years, starting out on a graduate training scheme and has spent time working on various integration-focussed projects within lean engineering, operations, customer service, product management and marketing. Her research interest focuses on organisational development, change management and cross-functional and virtual teams. Currently, her PhD research explores the link between the receptivity for change and business transformation for profitability with a focus on top-level teams. She intends to develop the team-level element of the Receptivity for Change Toolset. She will be working closely with Quintin Heath, a member of our Project Advisory Board. She will also assist with The TRANSFORMATION Project’s corporate communications.

Lidia Gheorghiu – Research Assistant

Lidia is a versatile researcher; she has a PhD in Management (Aston Business School, UK), an MSc in Human Rights and Human Values (University of Birmingham, UK), a BA in Sociology (Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania), and Certificates in Teaching in Higher Education, Social Work, and Legal Psychology. Her research interest focuses on managing and facilitating change in complex settings, networks, and organisations. Previous work dealt with sensitive social issues: ‘dark networks’, cliques, alliances, social entrepreneurs, Roma population, discretion at the local level, social marginalisation, policy creation and implementation, HIV+ children, street children, and human trafficking.

She co-wrote with M. Butler in 2010 the articles ‘Exploring the Failure to Protect the Rights of the Roma Child in Romania’ published in Public Administration and Development and ‘Evaluating the Skills Strategy through a Graduate Certificate in Management – An Experiential Learning Theory Approach’ in Education and Training. She presented her work in numerous international conferences.

David Crundwell

David has a track record of project management in Corporate Affairs for international organisations with experience of both business to business, and business to consumer models. His particular interest is around merger, acquisition and disposals – and the ability to increase long term shareholder value as a result using integrated project management teams, alongside clearly defined business plans to build reputation and increase economies.

Quintin Heath

Quintin is the HR Director for the AB Sugar, he has worked in the retail, business to business and consumer goods industries, as well as the public sector. He has been a programme/ project manager, as well as having responsibility for the HR workstream of projects both in the UK and internationally. His interest is in creating tools to increase the effectiveness of project teams and their interaction with stakeholders.

Nick Hodgetts

Nick has a varied work background, having worked at the Home Office, Post Office, HSBC Bank, NHS Direct and Warwickshire Police before joining NHS Warwickshire in May 2010, moving to the amalgamated NHS Arden Cluster in June 2011. His professional background is in Project and Programme Management, originally in IT but spreading to wider business and public sector practice. He has developed a more flexible approach to project and programme management based on “everything we need to do and nothing else”, which has proved very successful in organisations where it was far too easy to become swallowed up in the process at the expense of actually delivering benefits.

A project manager for 10 years, a Programme Manager for 3 years and a Head of Programme Management for (so far) 5 years, he holds an MBA in Leadership (Distinction) and a Diploma in Management. He is keen on travelling and also did a tandem skydive for his 40th birthday.