Keele Management School

I joined Keele Management School in September 2011, having previously worked as a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England and prior to that, the University of Wolverhampton.  I completed my first degree on a part-time basis at the University of Wolverhampton before gaining my MA in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management, and then a PhD, both at Keele.  I worked in the financial services sector before commencing my career in higher education, as well as working for a number of years at a Further Education college.

My research interests are broadly concerned with labour management and labour process changes in the UK public sector, and with public sector industrial relations.

My research focuses on changes in the labour management and labour processes of front-line public sector workers, and their resistance to these changes.  My current research activity is concerned with discrete parts of the public sector including education (schools; further education; higher education) and the emergency services (fire; police; ambulance).

Seifert, R. and Mather, K. (2013) ‘Neo-Liberalism at Work: a Case Study of the Reform of the Emergency Services in the UK’, Review of Radical Political Economics, forthcoming.

Mather, K. Worrall, L. and Mather, G. (2012) ‘Engineering compliance in UK Further Education: the creation of the Stepford Lecturer’, Employee Relations, 34(5) pp.534 -554.

Mather, K. and Seifert, R. (2011) Front Line Emergency Services: Skill Mix and Task Allocation, Centre for Employment Studies Research (CESR), July, pp. 12-15.

Mather, K. (2011) Employee Relations and the Illusion of Trust in Trust in HRM, R.H. Searle and D. Skinner (eds) Cheltenham:  Edward Elgar pp. 201-222.

Mather, K. and Seifert, R. (2011) Teacher, lecturer or labourer? Performance Management Issues in Education, Management in Education, 25 (1) pp.26-31.

Worrall, L., Mather, K., Siefert, R. (2010) Solving the labour problem among professional workers in the UK public sector:  organisation change and performance management, Public Organization Review 10, pp. 117-137.

Mather, K., Worrall, L. and Seifert, R. (2009) The changing locus of workplace control in the English FE sector, Employee Relations 31 (2) pp. 139-157.

Mather, K., Worrall, L. and Seifert, R. (2007) Reforming further education:  the changing labour process for college lecturers, Personnel Review 36 (1) pp. 109-127.

Cooper, C., Worrall, L. and Mather (2007) Organizational change and its dysfunctional effect on managers in large organizations in Research Companion to the Dysfunctional Workplace, J. Langan-Fox, C.L. Cooper and R. Klimoski (eds) Edward Elgar, pp. 402-421.

Conference Papers

Mather, K. and Seifert, R. (2011) Dealing with emergencies: skill mix changes on the front line, Paper to International Labour Process Conference, Leeds, April.

Siefert, R. and Mather, K. (2010) Being on the front line: a study of fire, police and ambulance, Paper to BSA Work, Employment and Society Conference, Brighton, September.

Seifert, R. and Mather, K. (2010) Front Line and Back Room: An Empirical Study of Industrial Relations in the Police, Fire and Ambulance Services, Paper to British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) Conference, Manchester, July

Mather, K. and Seifert, R. (2010) Strike bans for front-line emergency service workers: a study and a comment, Paper to European Industrial Relations Association Conference, Copenhagen, June.

Mather, K. (2009) An enquiry into aspects of labour process theory as applied to state-employed professionals, Paper to UWBS Public Sector Research Group, Wolverhampton, May

Mather, K. and Seifert, R. (2009) The reorientation of lecturers' work: a case study of the changing lecturer labour process in Further Education, Paper to University of Wolverhampton Business School (UWBS) Research Conference, Wolverhampton, May.

Mather, K. (2003) Restructuring the further education sector: growing managerialism and its consequences for lecturers in the West Midlands, Paper to BUIRA Conference, Leeds, April.

Mather, K. and Seifert, R. (2003) A study of changes to the labour process of further education lecturers in the West Midlands, Paper to International Labour Process Conference, Bristol, April.