Shahla Ghobadi

Biography

Shahla Ghobadi is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at The University of Manchester. She holds Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of New South Wales, with a background in IT Management and Industrial Engineering. She was a Visiting Scholar at J.Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University in 2014. Shahla examines how organisations take advantage of knowledge assets to create innovative products and foster social change. She focuses on two research streams: (1) collaboration in software organisations, and (2) collaboration and social activism. The first stream examines how collaborative practices such as agile development, user/developer ecosystems and open innovation form and foster development and organisational capabilities. The second stream explores how social activist organisations leverage new media in creative ways to motivate powerful organisations to collaborate with them and pursue enduring social change. Very recently, she has pursued a third research stream that examines how strategic signalling by professional organisations in academia influences the evolution of academic fields. 

Shahla''s research is published in leading outlets such as Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information Systems Journal (2 papers), Information and Organization, Information & Management, Information Systems Frontiers, Behaviour & IT, Journal of Knowledge Management, and Journal of Systems and Software. She has received multiple competitive awards from recognised bodies such as the British Academy (2017), Australian Government (2014), and Australian School of Business (2008-2011). She specialises in utilising in-depth, inductive field studies to reveal novel, hidden, and nuanced processes in her research inquiries.  

Shahla has designed and implemented undergraduate and postgraduate courses that teach organisations change, entrepreneurship and innovation and discuss the unique role of technology in those processes. She received Social Responsibility Award in Curriculum at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester in 2016, followed by a Making a Difference Commended award at the university level in 2017. Prior to joining academia, she spent seven years working in automobile and software industries. Industry inspired and significantly enriched her research on collaboration in software teams and organisational change. In 2006, she wrote a book on system dynamics in Farsi. Published by a premier local management publisher, the book has helped a wide range of professionals and students to apply system thinking and modelling in research and profession.

Areas of expertise

• H Social Sciences (General) - Information Systems, Software Organization, Social Activism, Collaboration