Peter Lawrence is Professor Emeritus of International Management at Loughborough University Business School.
After attending secondary modern schools, serving in the Royal Air Force and further pre-university study at a technical college, Peter did a history degree at University College London. This was followed by qualifications in education gained at Cambridge, school teaching and technical college lecturing experience and an MA in Sociology at Essex University.
His university career began with a lectureship at Strathclyde, followed by a senior research fellowship working on comparative Anglo-German projects for the Department of Industry while based at Southampton University. This led to a life-long interest in differences in management style and business culture as between countries, and several of Peter's books are on this theme including Managers and Management in West Germany (1980), Management in France with Jean Louis Barsoux (1990), Management in the USA (1996), and Management in Western Europe (2000).
Peter came to Loughborough University as a lecturer in 1980 to teach operations management, but over the years made an incremental transition to teaching international management. He was twice promoted in post, was the first person in the Business School to be given a personal chair in 1991 and became professor emeritus in 2001.
In his time at Loughborough Peter has been fully involved in the School's postgraduate work, teaching on all the MBA and MSc courses. He has supervised 21 PhD candidates to completion, most of them at Loughborough and has examined 50; he is still active in PhD supervision.
Most of Peter's research while at Loughborough has been on management in other countries, the most recent project being a comparative study with Jette Schramm of the Copenhagen Business School of management in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Around the time Peter ceased full-time work at Loughborough he embarked on a new study of business developments in the West based primarily on interviews with CEOs and business owners in the UK and USA.
The publications resulting mostly from these research interests cover over 70 articles including one jointly authored in the Harvard Business Review, about 190 guest lectures and conference presentations, and 26 books including some that are jointly authored or edited. His last two books are The Change Game (2002) and, with Jette Schramm and Karl Sivesind, Management in Scandinavia: Culture, Context and Change (2005).
Apart from the continuing link with Loughborough University, current or recent appointments include visiting professorships at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (1998-2002), University of Leicester (2001-2006), and the University of Northampton (1994-); external examiner appointments include those at the London School of Economics (2003-2005) and Oxford Brookes University (2005-2009).
Peter is currently considering a new research initiative looking at the business creation that results from established companies outsourcing away from core competence. This trend, together with the switch in emphasis in the West from manufacturing to services, may have implications for the context and direction of management education.