Mr George Briley

Professional biography

George Briley is a PhD candidate at the Open University completing a thesis titled: My time at the bar: Management, leadership and organisation from below during the industrialisation of hospitality labour. His research explores leadership and management practices in contemporary service work, particularly with a focus on hospitality labour processes. His most recent publication is Exposing and re-placing leadership through workers inquiry in the journal Leadership. His research interests include the sociology of work, management, leadership, industrial relations, automation, workers inquiry, and ethnographic methods.

He explores the idustrialisation of hospitality labour discussing the impacts of the gig economy and other management technologies. Particularly, he considers how labour organising might be developed in this sector, also considering the wider field of industrial relations in which it occurs. Through his background in anthropology, he holds a keen interest in immersive fieldwork methodologies and ethnography, particularly in developing forms of co-research such as workers inquiry.