Professor Susan Murphy is currently engaged in three research areas on leadership and the leadership development process. First, her work on leader identity as a precursor and outcome of leadership development is a follow-up of work with US and UK colleagues. She is examining this in the context of early leadership development and investigating conflict among leader identities that are rooted in societal expectations, yet incompatible with organisational requirements. She is part of a grant proposal to the Leverhulme Foundation to explore these relationships.
Second, as a follow-up to earlier work in television and film leadership through directors, producers, and top management, she is looking to these creative industries to extract lessons to apply to other sectors seeking to improve creativity and innovation. Third, she continues work on gender and leadership, looking at stereotypes for ageing male and female leaders. Given stagnant numbers of female CEOs around the world, this line of study will lead to an understanding of additional issues behind leadership success rates. The studies will attend to financial, personality, and laboratory study outcomes to understand these issues.