Keele Management School

After completing my PhD at Keele in 2004, I was an ESRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Exeter and subsequently a lecturer at the University of Warwick in organisational behaviour before returning to Keele in August 2007 to join the marketing department. Prior to my career in academia, I held marketing posts in a variety of organisations that encompassed the private, public and charity sectors. I have taught at undergraduate, MA, MSc and MBA levels in the areas of both organisational behaviour and marketing.

Specific courses taught at undergraduate level include: marketing research, brands and branding, marketing management and foundations of organisational behaviour. At masters level they include: marketing design and production, research in action, researching organisational space and organisational analysis.

My current research interests lie in two broad areas. These have both been explored through empirical studies into the experience of call centre operators who telework from their own homes. The first is emotion in the workplace and how this particularly relates to gender and the playing out of power relations and identity. This work has focused on the amount of unseen and unvalued emotional work that takes place both in the workplace and in the home, which is essential to ensure its smooth functioning. The second area is how we both construct and consume social spaces. This work has looked at how, in the absence of their staff from the workplace, call centre supervisors seek to manage the homes of their staff as work space in an attempt to retain control and compensate for their invisibility.

• Surman, E, (2009) 'The Global Consumer' in Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour. Maclaren, P and Parsons, L (eds) Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann
• Surman, E and Sturdy, A (2009) 'Emotion' in Understanding Corporate Life. Hancock, P and Spicer, A (eds). London: Sage
• Miller, C; Maclaren P; Parsons, L and Surman, E (2009) Praxis or Performance: Does Critical marketing have a Gender Blind-spot? Journal of Marketing Management
• Knights, D., and Surman, E. (2008) 'Adressing the Gender Gap in Studies of Emotion', Gender, Work and Organization, 15(1): pp1-8
• Surman, E. (2002) 'Dialectics of Dualism: The Symbolic Importance of the Home/Work Divide', ephemera, 2(3): pp. 209-223
• Jones, C., and Surman, E. (2002). 'After Organization Studies', ephemera, 2(3): pp. 186-192
• Surman, E. and Knights, D. (2004) Final Report to Financial Services Forum - Telework - A Supervisory Perspectice, Nottingham University Business School http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/forum/members/frameset_members.html
• Surman, E. and Knights, D. (2002) Interim Report to Financial Services Forum - Teleworking, Nottingham University Business School http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/forum/members/frameset_members.html

I teach 'Global Marketing Decisions' on the BA in Marketing.