David Sims is Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Cass Business School, City University, London, Associate Dean, and Director of the Centre for Leadership, Learning and Change. After a childhood career as an operational researcher in BP, he has developed an academic background in organizational behaviour, with an M.A. from Leeds and a PhD from Bath University. His research and consulting interests are in the relationship between managerial living, leading, learning and storying. He has applied these interests through both research and consulting to topics as diverse as why people get angry in organizations, the motivation of middle managers, how people love their organizations into effectiveness, agenda shaping, problem construction, consulting skills and mergers. He is the author of some 90 books and articles on these topics. He won the 2008 IgNobel prize for literature for his paper on indignation in organizations.

He worked for 20 years at the University of Bath, where he was the Director of Studies for what was then the most popular undergraduate programme in Management in the UK. He has also worked for the National University of Singapore, Brunel University, where he was the founding Head of the School of Business and Management, and more recently City University, where he has been Associate Dean for MBA Programmes at Cass Business School and then the Head of the Faculty of Management at Cass. This means that he has been practicing leadership in the notoriously difficult field of academia for a long time. He has also held a Visiting Professor role at the Stockholm School of Economics for a number of years.

David is a strong believer in the need for new ways of understanding leadership, and has likened much current research and development in the area to ‘searching for the keys to leadership under the lamp post’.

He is married with two grown up daughters, and his hobbies include being a church organist and supporting Saracens’ rugby club.