Using social identity motives to foster team cohesion and performance in organisational settings

Supervisors: Dr. Matthew Easterbrook (School of Psychology, University of Sussex) and Jeremy Holt (Centre for Team Excellence)

The studentship: This PhD will examine the social psychological factors that promote team performance, resilience and well-being within organisations, and will design and implement suitable interventions within organisational settings.

Within organisations, individuals are often embedded within smaller social groups, or teams with whom they work closely, interact and identify-often more strongly than they do with the overarching organisation.

Group- and identity-processes therefore play a highly significant role in determining the connections members feel to both the organisation as a whole and their immediate team, with consequences for the goals, norms, and behaviours that individuals identify with, internalise, and display.

This PhD will examine the identity- and group-processes within organisations that help and hinder group effectiveness, resilience and well-being and will use this newfound knowledge to design and implement practical interventions to promotes these.

The student will be expected to liaise closely with external organisations throughout the PhD, and will therefore need exceptional oral and written communication skills, along with a strong academic background.

This PhD will be jointly supervised by Dr. Matthew Easterbrook and Jeremy Holt, CEO of The Centre for Team Excellence (CfTE), an organisation specialising in promoting team identity and performance using social psychological techniques.

The student will spend some of their time each week within the CfTE, working closely with them, thus gaining invaluable practical experience of applying social psychology in real-world settings.

A recent partnership of this kind between CfTE and the School of Psychology led to a very successful PhD, resulting in a high quality publication and subsequent full-time employment for the student.

Applications should be made by Friday 10th March 2017. The award of the studentship will be based on a competitive process. If awarded, it would be a full-time studentship (funded for a duration of three years) covering tuition fee, and a maintenance allowance. The maintenance allowance is currently £14,296 per annum.

Eligibility requirements for potential candidates:
This award will only pay fees at the Home/EU rate (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/brexit/). Candidates may not be eligible for the full award if they do not meet UK residency requirements. For full details of eligibility, please check the ESRC guidelines.

Candidates must have, or expect to obtain, a First or a high Upper Second Class Honours undergraduate degree, or equivalent qualification, and/or a Master’s degree in Psychology or a related discipline.


Guidance for applicants:
Application procedures can be found here: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/psychology/pgstudy/psychologyphdstudentships2017

Please submit an online application for the ’PhD in Psychology’ programme, for September 2017 entry through this link: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/phd/applyhttp://www.suhttp://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/phd/applyssex.ac.uk/study/phd/apply

State in the ’Funding information’ section of your online application that you are applying for this studentship, giving the title of the project
as above and mention Dr. Matthew Easterbrook and CfTE in the ’Supervisor suggested by applicant’ section.

The source of funding should be specified as ’Centre for Team Excellence’.


Candidates should provide:
A research statement that briefly outlines your current state of knowledge, hypotheses that could be addressed, and an outline of potential methods. Your answer should not exceed 2 pages including references, be set at minimum 10-font type with margins a minimum of 1cm.
A current degree transcript(s) with full details of performance on all completed courses.
Two academic references.
An up-to-date CV.


Timetable
Deadline for applications: Friday 10th March 2017.

Further information
The School of Psychology is one of the largest centres for the study of psychology in the UK. We have nearly 40 academic faculty, about 100 research students and the same number of postgraduate students taking Master’s degrees. Our undergraduate intake is about 250 a year, which gives us an academic community of nearly 1000 people working in a rich and supportive learning environment.

Psychology is a diverse discipline and our size means that we span major research areas in social, cognitive, biological, developmental and clinical psychology. Psychology at Sussex was rated 10th in the UK for research in the 2014 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). 91% of our research at Sussex is ranked as world-leading or internationally significant.

To discuss the details of this PhD project further, please contact Dr. Easterbrook: [Email Address Removed].