Jane McKenzie is Professor of Management Knowledge and Learning at Henley Business School. Jane has been active within the Henley Forum for Organisational Learning and Knowledge Strategies since 2000, contributing to at least one research project per year. She was Director of the Forum between 2009 and 2016. If you had to describe her interests in one sentence it would be "How connections and contradictions affect knowledge work and learning capacity in organisational life". This means she is interested in how organisations develop and how decision makers successfully handle the dilemmas and contradictions that arise in relationships as a result of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Jane believes strongly that academic research in isolation will not solve the intractable management and leadership problems that complex organisations are facing today. Rigourous research always needs to have an eye to its practical use in improving business practice. This is why she spends most of her working life in spaces where academics think together with leaders and managers involved with real world practice. She supervises many DBA’s and continues to contribute to Forum Research. She is currently editing a book with Professor Jean Bartunek about working effectively in Academic Practitioner partnerships. She spent half her working life in industry and half at Henley Business School and has written three books and many papers. You can learn more about her work from the Henley website and downloading some of the free ‘Knowledge in Action’ pamphlets.