Management (Employment Relations and Human Resources) PhD

The London School of Economics and Political Science

This programme offers you the chance to undertake a substantial piece of work that is worthy of publication and which makes an original contribution to the field of employment relations and human resource management. You will begin on the MRes and will need to meet certain requirements to be upgraded to PhD status.

The MRes/PhD in Management – Employment Relations and Human Resources (ERHR) is part of a rigorous and interdisciplinary graduate training programme. It is designed to stimulate critical thinking and creative ideas and provide you with the analytical skills to design, carry out, report, read and evaluate qualitative and quantitative research.

As a research-led department of management at the heart of LSE’s academic community in central London, we are ranked #3 in the world for business and management.

The ERHR group’s investigation and teaching pursue Human Resource Management (HRM) foundational domains (e.g. recruitment and selection, diversity and inclusion, well-being, voice, learning and development, engagement and retention, compensation, performance management), as well as strategic HRM, labour unions and other institutions, corporate social responsibility and value chains, new and emerging employment relationships (e.g. gig economy and zero-hour contracts), digital HRM and people analytics, emerging technology and the future of work.

We aim to produce top-quality social scientists with the ability to engage with the conceptual foundations of employment relations and human resource management – from both an international and comparative perspective – and employ robust methods to produce significant and original research.

You will work closely with international and world-class faculty as part of a vibrant community of doctoral students, all of whom are pursuing varied research in different fields of management. The programme also includes a comprehensive methodological training with the opportunity to specialise in a designated field.