Key details
Dr Scott Tindal
Senior Lecturer in Human Resources & Organisational Behaviour
Dr Scott Tindal is the Programme Leader for BA (Hons) in Business Management, and a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour.
Scott leads the BA (hons) Business Management programme, one of the largest undergraduate programmes at the University of Greenwich. Working as part of a programme team comprised of a deputy, year leads, quality assurance leads, academic leads, and module leaders we are collectively responsible for creating and sustaining a dynamic, relevant, and progressive curriculum that equips students with the knowledge, perspectives, skills, and competencies demanded by contemporary industries and organisations.
Scott is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, with a particular interest in the sociology of work and organisations, and holds a PhD in Sociology (Edinburgh). He is the Module Leader for Negotiations and Business Research Methods, and teaches on the Dissertation and Public Sector Management modules. He supervises dissertations from undergraduate to PhD levels, particularly research related to organisational change and work. He is open to supervision of PhD research in this area.
Scott is a member of the Centre for Research on Employment & Work (CREW) hosted at the University of Greenwich. His research typically covers organisational change within the public sector, and has worked on projects focused on the civil service, local authorities, the higher education sector, and the Ministry of Defence. However, over the last few years, he has researched how Covid-19 is (re-)shaping experiences and practices of work within the retail sector. This research is supposed by CREW, the British Academy/Leverhulme, and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
Scott started working at the University of Greenwich in 2019. Prior to this (2016 and 2018) he was a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh where he worked on the Future Reserves Research Programme (FRRP), which was a mixed-methods study examining how military reservices and their families experience the intersecting life domains of military service, civilian work, and family life. Prior to this appointment (2013-2014) Scott worked as a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews as part of the Centre for Population Change (CPC) where he worked on several projects examining the perceptions, patterns, and drivers of student and labour migration to and within Scotland, and its intersection with constitutional and labour market changes.
Recognition
Member of the British Sociological Association (BSA)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Research / Scholarly interests
Substantively, Dr Scott Tindal is interested in the sociology of organisations and work. He is specifically interested in Covid-19 and changing work; migration and work; education and work; family life and work.
Methodologically, Scott has experience in qualitative and quantitative research methods, and conducting primarily and secondary analysis in each. He has experience of conducting social network analyses.
Scott is currently researching how Covid-19 is reshaping experiences and practice of work within the research sector. This research is funded by the Centre for Research on Employment & Work (CREW), British Academy/Leverhulme, and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
Scott is also continuing to publish on the experience of work by military reservists.
His completed research on migration and constitutional change in Scotland had made considerable non-academic impact. It was conducted as part of a wider programme of work commissioned by the ESRC to examine the issues around the establishment of a new Scottish state, or further devolution of powers within the United Kingdom.
Key funded projects
Covid-19 and changing fashion retail work (2021-2022)Funded by the Trade Union Congress (TUC)
Covid-19 has intensified pre-existing trends in the growth of e-commerce, online shopping and fast fashion, resulting in serious challenge for high street fashion retail shops. Thousands of jobs have been lost in fashion retail with the collapse of companies such as Debenhams, and takeovers of others by online fashion brands such as Boohoo and Asos. This loss of jobs in high street stores has been mirrored with an increase in warehouse and ‘self-employed’ delivery driver work.
This research is a mixed methods project; examining ONS Labour Force Survey data couple with one-on-one interviews with staff in retail stores, warehouses, and delivery drivers to examine the macro and micro experiences of changing work within the fashion retail sector.
Covid-19 and supermarket retail work (2020-2021)
Funded by the Centre for Research on Employment & Work and the British Academy of Management/Leverhulme.
In response to the Covid-19 crisis, the UK Government named food retail employees as ‘key workers’ who work was ‘critical’ in dealing with the crisis. This research examines the experiences of work and employment relations of UK supermarket frontline workers during the initial Covid-19 crisis, and beyond. This research is a qualitative project, based on one-to-one interviews with supermarket workers, and those with supervisory roles (including store managers).
Future reserves research programme (2016-2019)
Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
The UK Armed Forces have experienced significant organisational change in recent years. One of the key pillars of this organisational reforms is an increase in the number of, and reliance on, reservists. This brings a range of challenges and opportunities for individual reservists, their civilian employers, and their families. Understanding the everyday experiences of reservists as they pursue their military service is crucial so that the armed forces can maximise their defence capacity by better supporting reservists, their families, and civilian employers.
This was a large mixed-methods study. The quantitative element was based on secondary data analysis of existing MoD datasets and a large online survey of currently-serving reservists. The qualitative element was based on longitudinal interviews with reservists, conducted multiple times over several years.
Media activity
The job is not human' UK retail warehouse staff describe gruelling work, by Heather Stewart, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/25/the-job-is-not-human-uk-retail-warehouse-staff-describe-gruelling-work
Scottish Independence and its impact on higher education - live chat panelist. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2013/nov/26/scottish-independence-future-higher-education
Recent publications
Cai, M., Tartanuglu Bannett, S., Stroleny, A and Tindal,S. (2023) Between mundane and extreme: the nature of work on the UK supermarket frontline during a public health crisis. Journal of International Human Resource Management, early access
Cai, M., Tindal, S. and Tartanoglu Bennett, S. (2021) ‘It’s like a warzone’: Jay’s liminal experience of normal and extreme work in a UK supermarket during the Coronavirus Outbreak. (One the Frontline series). Work, Employment & Society 35 (2): 386-395.
Tindal, S. (2019) Why do social scientist organise knowledge exchange events? A qualitative interview study. Evidence & Policy 16 (4): 541-558.
Findlay, A, Packwood, H., McCollum, D., Nightingale, G. and Tindal, S. (2018) Fees, flows and imaginaries: exploring the destination choices arising from intra-national student mobility. Globalisation, Societies and Education 16 (2): 162-175.
McCollum, D., Tindal, S., Findlay, A.M. (2016) The political economy of immigration policy. The example of Scotland. Scottish Affairs 25 (4): 506-529.
Tindal, S., Packwood, H., Findlay, A., Leahy, S., McCollum, D. (2015) In what sense ‘distinctive’? The search for distinction amongst cross-border student migrants in the UK. Geoforum 64: 90-99.
McCollum, D., Nowok, B., Tindal, S. (2014) Public attitudes towards migration in Scotland: exceptionality and possible policy implications. Scottish Affairs 23 (1): 79-102.
Presentations
Future Reserves Research Programme Conference (June, 2018). Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Whitehall, London. Assisted in the production of the presentation: 'Negotiating civilian and military lives.'
Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society, biennial conference (Nov., 2017) Washington DC, United States of America. Prepared and presented the paper 'Best of both worlds? Articulating the skills of the citizen soldier.' This paper is in the process of being written up for the International Journal of Human Resource Management.
British Sociological Association annual conference (April, 2017). Manchester, United Kingdom Assisted in the production of 'Negotiating Civilian and Military Lives: family, work and reservist duty.' This paper is in the process of being written up for Sociology