Dr Anna Topakas
Management School
Senior Lecturer in Work Psychology
Deputy Director of PGR (Management)
+44 114 222 3240
Full contact details
Management School
Room C049
91Ö±²¥ University Management School
Conduit Road
91Ö±²¥
S10 1FL
- Profile
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I am a member of the Institute of Work Psychology (IWP) research centre within the 91Ö±²¥ University Management School.
Prior to joining the University of 91Ö±²¥ in 2012, I held a Research Associate position at Aston University, Birmingham, where I also completed my PhD in the domain of leadership and teamworking.
My areas of interest and expertise are in organisational leadership and followership, teamworking, workplace relationships and employee health and wellbeing.
- Research interests
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Over thousands of years, leadership has been the dominant way for people to organise and coordinate their efforts in pursuing shared objectives, and to nourish and protect themselves and each other. It persists as a mode of organising because it works, mostly. What makes leadership structures and processes effective has been a burning question in the management domain for over six decades. In my work I explore questions around the role of leadership in facilitating individual and collective thriving, and how organisations can support virtuous interactions and relationships to build both collective and individual resilience and productivity.
My recent research projects focus on the role of relationships in facilitating manager and employee wellbeing and good mental health, as well as performance. I am also looking at inter- and intra-organisational collaboration and how it can facilitate improvements in service delivery and achieve performance gains.
My research has received funding from BA/Leverhulme and the Wellcome trust.
I am a reviewer for a number of journals, including the British Journal of Management, Work and Stress, Frontiers in Communication, Applied Psychology: An International Review, and the Institute for Work Psychology International Conference.
Selected Research Projects
I have conducted research with large public-sector organisations as well as international charities.
In healthcare, I worked as a Research Fellow (2009-2013) on a series of large-scale projects focused on using longitudinal survey data to identify the factors contributing to employee engagement, satisfaction and wellbeing, as well as organisational performance (e.g. trust mortality rate, patient satisfaction, infection rates, financial performance). This work resulted in a series of reports:
In policing, I have been working with South Yorkshire Police and Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council since 2013 on a series of projects exploring the factors that affect the organisational change process, in the context of restructuring initiatives.
As part of a larger team, I have worked with the Wellcome Trust, a charitable organisation, to explore the effect of diversity and inclusion on the healthcare research industry, with a focus on workforce diversity.
My more recent projects involve the evaluation of manager training in mental health awareness, the role of workplace leadership in tackling loneliness, and leader and follower identity dynamics, among others.
Research to Practice
I work closely with private and public sector organisations to support leaders with their daily challenges and help them foster positive work environments. Below are some resources for managers interested in employee wellbeing:
National Leadership Centre Thinkpieces: by Dr Anna Topakas
Centre for Loneliness Studies Blog: Managers Responding to Loneliness in the Workplace by Dr Anna Topakas
- Publications
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Journal articles
- . The Leadership Quarterly, 101844-101844.
- . The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1-40.
- . European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology.
- . Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43(7), 884-900.
- Beyond personality: Exploring the role of motivations, self-evaluations and values in leadership emergence within an organizational setting. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology in Practice, 8, 32-49.
- . Health Services and Delivery Research, 2(50).
- . Leadership Quarterly.
- . Leadership Quarterly, 23(2), 281-291.
- . Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1387548.
- . Journal of Business Venturing.
Chapters
- , Research Handbook on Destructive Leadership (pp. 132-154). Edward Elgar Publishing
- , The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Climate and Culture Oxford University Press
- In Hodgkinson, G P & Ford, J K (Ed.), International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (pp. 61-91). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Conference proceedings papers
- Internal Leader Identity Congruence in Authenticity at Work and Ego Depletion. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY OPEN, Vol. 82 (pp 24-24)
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2022(1)
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2022(1)
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2022(1)
- Attachment styles and loneliness: The role of leader-follower relationship quality. 81th Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Virtual.
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2020(1) (pp 13274-13274)
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2019(1) (pp 16378-16378)
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2018(1) (pp 12424-12424)
- Leadership Identity Construction Through Reciprocal Identity Claims and Grants. Symposium Program
- Portfolio assessment for postgraduate professional skills development. ‘‘Engaging Students in a Research - Intensive Environment’’ Book of Abstracts
- The effect of the variation in leader-member exchange (LMX) on the wellbeing of teams and their members. Paper presented as part of symposium 'Does one cure really fit all? Team identification, group negative affective tone and LMX' chaired by K. Hildenbrand and P. Daher. EAWOP 2017 Abstract Book
- . Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2016(1) (pp 12216-12216)
- It’s not all in the personality: Motivation to lead as an antecedent of leadership emergence. Paper presented as part of symposium "New Insights on Motivation to Lead" (chaired by T. Moldzio). IWP Conference Programme
- Co-creating and maintaining wellbeing through feedback seeking: The topics of feedback requests. ISIRC 2016, Glasgow, Abstract Book
- Organisational Change in Police Organisations: Lessons from the Intelligence Centralisation Case Study (Poster). IWP Conference Programme
- Implicit Leadership Theories (ILT) congruence and its effect on individual and team outcomes: The mediating role of Leader-Member Exchange. Presented as part of symposium "Implicit Leadership Theories: Content, Stability, and Outcomes" (chaired by B. Schyns, discussant R. J. Foti). AOM 2015 Annual Meeting Program
- High-Performance Work Systems and Performance in the Healthcare Sector: A systematic Review of the Evidence. GIHRM Conference Programme
- Do you see me as I see myself? Implications of internal leader identity asymmetry.. 21st Conference of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology, Katowice, Poland.
- Leader Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Group Prototypicality: A Social Identity Perspective. Paper presented as part of the symposium "Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Leadership and Teamwork" (Chair: Cristian Vasquez).. 21st Conference of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology, Katowice, Poland.
- Daily Investigation of Leaders’ Sleeping Hours, Abusive Supervisory Behaviours and Well-being: The Moderating Effect of Leader Narcissism.. 6th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium, Rhodes, Greece.
- Being treated well at work always good? Investigation of spillover effects of leader-member exchange on employees’ daily emotional well-being.. Mini-Conference on Relational Leadership, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, UK.
- Identity dynamics as antecedents of leadership styles.. 5th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium, Mykonos, Greece.
Reports
- Summary of academic perspectives on loneliness for the Film and TV charity
- The Diversity Dividend: does a more diverse and inclusive research community produce better biomedical and health research?
Working papers
- Review of diversity and inclusion literature and an evaluation of methodologies and metrics relating to health research.
- . The Leadership Quarterly, 101844-101844.
- Research group
- Teaching interests
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My current teaching is in the areas of wellbeing, organisational leadership and research methods (PGT and PGR).
In the past I have taught a wide range of topics at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional levels. These include among others leadership, learning, training and development in organisations, HR, cross-cultural management, and organisational behaviour. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
- PhD supervision
I am interested in supervising projects in the following areas:
- Workplace relationships: How can leaders and co-workers fulfil our needs for meaningful work and social interaction?
- Leadership as a facilitator of mental health and wellbeing.
- How leaders and followers experience workplace relationships: the role of attachment styles and emotions.
- The role of gender and/or minority status in perceptions, attitudes and behaviours relating to leadership.
- The role of identity and identification in the leadership process.
- How does leader humour affect perceptions about and reactions to leadership efforts?
Dr Anna Topakas supervises:
- PhD student Samet Arslan
Previous PhD supervision:
Christos Mavros: Leading for creativity: How ambidextrous leaders facilitate follower’s innovative behaviours
Godbless Akaighe: Narcissistic leaders and team-mates: A toxic combination? (completed 2022)
Michael Duffy Jr: Understanding and sustaining entrepreneurs’ wellbeing (completed 2023)
Queyu Ren: The influence of attachment styles on leader-follower relationships and wellbeing
John Briggs: CEO practice: Towards a framework of past, present and future (completed 2019)
Evelyn Lanka: I know that I am a leader: Interactions, catalysts, barrier and control of the leader identity construction process (completed 2019)
Andreana Drencheva: To ask or not to ask? Entrepreneurs ambidextrous feedback seeking (completed 2016)
Paul Balwant: Transformational and destructive instructor-leadership and their association with student engagement, burnout and achievement in higher education (completed 2015)