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Dr Leah Tomkins

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies
  • The Faculty of Business & Law
  • The Open University Business School
  • Department for People & Organisations
  • leah.tomkins

Professional biography

Prior to entering academia, Dr Leah Tomkins held senior leadership positions in Accenture, KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), and the Cabinet Office, Whitehall.  She specialised in planning, designing and implementing change management and leadership programmes in both private and public sectors, and both in the UK and internationally. 

Research interests

Key research interests include:

  • philosophical, experiential and critical approaches to leadership

  • ethics of care in organizational experience

  • selfhood, subjectivity and meaning of work

  • phenomenology, hermeneutics and sense-making

  • idiography and the 'case for the case'

  • participative action research 

  • critical and experiential approaches to organizational learning 

  • leadership in the security services

 

Recent and forthcoming books include:

Tomkins, L. (Ed.) (2020). Paradox and Power in Caring Leadership: Critical and Philosophical Reflections. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Tomkins, L. & Pritchard, K. (2019). Health at Work: Critical Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge.  

Recent journal publications include:

Tomkins, L., Hartley, J. & Bristow, A. (in press). Asymmetries of Leadership: Agency, Response and Reason. Leadership.

Tomkins, L. (2019). ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!’ Radicalising hermeneutics with Kafka’s The Castle. Tamara, Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 17(3), 37-49. 

Kubiak, C., Tomkins, L. & Larkin M. (2019). Surveillance, Intervention and the Politics of Care. International Journal of Care and Caring, 3(2), 165-181.

Tomkins, L. & Nicholds, A. (2017). Make Me Authentic, But Not Here: Reflexive Struggles with Academic Identity and Authentic Leadership. Management Learning, 48(3), 253-270.

Tomkins, L. & Ulus, E. (2016). ‘Oh, was that experiential learning?!’ Spaces, Synergies and Surprises with Kolb’s Learning Cycle. Management Learning, 47(2), 158-178.

Tomkins, L. & Simpson, P. (2015). Caring Leadership: A Heideggerian Perspective. Organization Studies, 36(8), 1013-1031.

Tomkins, L. & Ulus, E. (2015). Is Narcissism Undermining Critical Reflection in Our Business Schools? Academy of Management Learning and Education, 14(4), 595-606.

Tomkins, L. & Eatough, V. (2014). Stop ‘helping’ me! Identity, Recognition and Agency in the Nexus of Work and Care. Organization, 21(1), 3-21.

Tomkins, L. & Eatough, V. (2013). The Feel of Experience: Phenomenological Ideas for Organizational Research. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 8(3), 258-275.

Tomkins, L. & Eatough, V. (2013). The Meanings and Manifestations of Care: A Celebration of Hermeneutic Multiplicity in Heidegger. The Humanistic Psychologist, 41(1), 4-24.

 

Teaching interests

Teaching modules include:

  • leadership
  • management decision making
  • ethics 
  • stakeholder communication & engagement
  • change management
  • identity - personal, social & institutional
  • critical reflection
  • research methods
  • training and learning

Impact and engagement

Dr Tomkins is the PI for the Open University's action research project on organizational learning with the Metropolitan Police Service in London.

Publications

A dialectical approach to the politics of learning in a major city police organization (2021)
Bristow, Alexandra; Tomkins, Leah and Hartley, Jean
Management Learning ((OnlineFirst))

Asymmetries of Leadership: Agency, Response and Reason (2020-02-01)
Tomkins, Leah; Hartley, Jean and Bristow, Alexandra
Leadership, 16(1) (pp. 87-106)

Where is Boris Johnson? When and Why it Matters that Leaders Show Up in a Crisis (2020)
Tomkins, Leah
Leadership, 16(3)

Lost in Translation, Recovered in Conversation? Leadership and Social Media (2020)
Tomkins, Leah
Leadership ((Early Access))

Caring Leadership as Nietzschean Slave Morality (2020)
Tomkins, Leah
Leadership ((Early Access))

Surveillance, intervention and the politics of care (2019-05-01)
Kubiak, Christopher; Tomkins, Leah and Larkin, Mary
International Journal of Care and Caring, 3(2) (pp. 165-181)

‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!’: Radicalising hermeneutics with Kafka’s The Castle (2019)
Tomkins, Leah
Tamara, the Journal of Critical Organization Inquiry ((In Press))

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Philosophical Contributions to Leadership Ethics (2018-01-31)
Ciulla, Joanne B.; Knights, David; Mabey, Chris and Tomkins, Leah
Business Ethics Quarterly, 28(1) (pp. 1-14)

Make me authentic, but not here: Reflexive struggles with academic identity and authentic leadership (2017-07-01)
Tomkins, Leah and Nicholds, Alyson
Management Learning, 48(3) (pp. 253-270)

“Oh, was that ‘experiential learning’?!” Spaces, Synergies and Surprises with Kolb’s Learning Cycle (2016-04-31)
Tomkins, Leah and Ulus, Eda
Management Learning, 47(2) (pp. 158-178)

Is Narcissism Undermining Critical Reflection in Our Business Schools? (2015-12-01)
Tomkins, Leah and Ulus, Eda
Academy of Management Learning and Education, 14(4) (pp. 595-606)

Caring Leadership: A Heideggerian Perspective (2015-08-31)
Tomkins, Leah and Simpson, Peter
Organization Studies, 36(8) (pp. 1013-1031)

Stop ‘helping’ me! Identity, recognition and agency in the nexus of work and care (2014-01)
Tomkins, Leah and Eatough, Virginia
Organization, 21(1) (pp. 3-21)

Introduction (2020-03-02)
Tomkins, Leah
In: Tomkins, Leah ed. Paradox and Power in Caring Leadership: Critical and Philosophical Reflections. New Horizons in Leadership Studies (pp. 1-14)
Publisher : Elgar

Leadership and the Art of the Invisible (2020)
Tomkins, Leah
In: Abreu Pederzini, Gerardo ed. Considering Leadership Anew: A Handbook on Alternative Leadership Theory ((In Press))
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars

Autoethnography through the Prism of Foucault’s Care of the Self (2020)
Tomkins, Leah
In: Herrmann, Andrew ed. The Routledge Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography ((In Press))
Publisher : Routledge

Learning and Health: Discourses of Reinvention (2019-09-10)
Tomkins, Leah
In: Tomkins, Leah and Pritchard, Katrina eds. Health at Work: Critical Perspectives (pp. 67-82)
ISBN : 9780815383888 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Hermeneutics: Interpretation, Understanding and Sense-making (2018-01)
Tomkins, Leah and Eatough, Virginia
In: Cassell, Catherine; Cunliffe, Ann L. and Grandy, Gina eds. SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Business and Management Research Methods (pp. 185-200)
ISBN : 978-1-5264-2926-1 | Publisher : Sage

An Ethic of Care: Reconnecting the Private and the Public (2017-11-03)
Tomkins, Leah and Simpson, Peter
In: Mabey, Chris and Knights, David eds. "Leadership Matters?" Finding Voice, Connection and Meaning in the 21st Century. Routledge Studies in Leadership Research (pp. 89-101)
ISBN : 9781138572058 | Publisher : Routledge

Using Interpretative Phenomenological Psychology in Organisational Research with Working Carers (2017-04-26)
Tomkins, Leah
In: Brooks, Joanna and King, Nigel eds. Applied Qualitative Research in Psychology (pp. 86-100)
ISBN : 9781137359155 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan

Leadership, care and (in)justice
Tomkins, Leah
In: Tomkins, Leah ed. Paradox and Power in Caring Leadership: Critical and Philosophical Reflections. New Horizons in Leadership Studies (pp. 16-27)
ISBN : 9781788975490 | Publisher : Elgar

From Blame to Praise in Policing: Implications for Leadership and the Public Conversation (2020-10-09)
Tomkins, Leah
CPRL, Milton Keynes.

From Blame to Praise in Policing: Implications for Strategy, Culture, Process and Well-being (2020-10-01)
Tomkins, Leah
CPRL, Milton Keynes.

Bridging the Theory/Practice Gap in Policing: ‘What Matters’ versus ‘What Works’ in Evidence-Based Practice and Organizational Learning (2020-10)
Tomkins, Leah
CPRL

Organizational Learning and the Metropolitan Police Service Report from the Scoping Study (2020-07)
Tomkins, Leah
CPRL