Dr Matt Offord
- Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Management Education (Management)
telephone:
0141 330 3680
email:
Matt.Offord@glasgow.ac.uk
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5659-1992Biography
Matt is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Management Education. As a learning and teaching specialist, Matt focuses on business education through experiential learning. In practice this means offering experience-based alternatives to complement more traditional teaching. This could be through outdoor learning and field trips (ecopedagogy) or through games, such as business simulation games and educational escape rooms (games-based learning).
Matt's research is based on sociocultural evolution and computational social science. His interests are primarily how culture changes over time and what the mechanisms for change are. This is the lens through which Matt researches and writes about changes in leadership and management and Higher Education.
Matt is a second-career academic, having served for 30 years in the Royal Navy as a submariner and also as a mine clearance diver. He ran his own business as a management consultant working with well known business education companies and in the maritime sector, working in the UK, Middle East and Europe.
Research interests
Matt is a member of the School's Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour research cluster.
Matt's study in sociocultural evolution was used to explain the importance of prestige in leadership and how leadership structures evolve. He uses this to teach about 21st Century Leadership, especially the role of informal networks for agile decision making.
His specific interests are:
- Computational Social Science
- Cultural Evolution of Leadership and Higher Education
- Leadership in the 21st Century
- Prestige
- Social Networks
Grants
|
Grant | Description |
Amount |
|---|---|---|
|
RN Defence Fellowship 2010 - 2017 | Research into prestige based informal leadership in Royal Navy warships in the UK and South Atlantic |
£150000 |
|
Senior Hudson Fellowship 2016 - 2017 | Research into Royal Navy Officer Training using Social Network Analysis based at St Antony's College, University of Oxford |
£20000 |
|
ASBS Research Reinvigoration Fund 2022 | Research into free-riding in group work in business educaiton |
£2000 |
|
ASPECT Innovation Fellowship 2023 | Development and evaluation of escape room games for teaching in maritime education |
£8000 |
Supervision
Matt is interested in supervising in the following fields:
- Ecopedagogy
- Experiential Learning theory
- Outdoor Learning
- Agent Based Models in teaching
- Business simulation games
- Digital business education
- Pedagogy of simulation
- Sociocultural evolution in the leadership studies field
- Mazid, Tasfia
The Role of Paradoxical Leadership in Influencing Followers to Deal with Multiple Contradictory Demands'
Matt currently supervises three PhD students studying paradoxical leadership, post-heroic leadership and emotional intelligence. Matt has also supervised undergraduate Business & Management students and MBA students.
Teaching
Matt is a Senior Fellow of Recognising Excellence in Teaching (RET) and Certified Management and Business Educator (CMBE). Matt specialises in the use of experiential learning theory in outdoor learning, serious games, simulations and case teaching. He teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and has delivered executive education around the world. Matt has published research on the use of educational escape rooms and also works with business partners to use escape rooms in learning development programmes.
Interests:
- Ecopedagogy
- Experiential Learning Theory
- Outdoor Learning
- Serious Games
- Business Simulation Games
- Digital Educational Escape Rooms
Matt was shortlisted for the Best Innovation Strategy Award 2024 at the Association of MBA & Business Graduates Association Excellence Awards for the Futures In Leadership Course (4th Year Honours - Business and Management)
Professional activities & recognition
Prizes, awards & distinctions
- 2021: Distinction in Post Graduate Certificate of Academic Practice (University of Glasgow)
Research fellowships
- 2016 - 2017: RN Hudson Fellow (Oxford University)
- 2010 - 2017: RN Defence Fellow
Editorial boards
- 2022 - 2023: Continuity and Resilience Review (Special Edition)
Professional & learned societies
- 2021 - 2022: Member, The Cultural Evolution Society
- 2017: Fellow, The Institute of Leadership and Management
- 2022: Senior Fellow, Recognising Excellence in Teaching (RET)
Selected international presentations
- 2022: 27th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (Quebec City)
Additional information
