Stephen is Professor of Management, Associate Dean International and Accreditation, and Co-Director of the University’s innovation space ‘The Atom’ (Te Kahu o Te Ao) at Rutherford House www.wgtn.ac.nz/innovation

His research focuses on how historical understandings can limit innovation and creativity. He has co-authored 11 books, including 'Creativities' (Edward Elgar, 2022), 'The Past, Present and Future of Sustainable Management' (Palgrave, 2021), 'A Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap book about Management Theory' (Sage, 2020), 'A New History of Management' (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and 'Strategy Builder' (Wiley, 2015). Three recent articles in A* journals have been awarded ‘Paper of the Year’ prizes, including his co-authored article in Human Relations, ‘Unfreezing change as three steps’, which has been downloaded 500,000 times. The youtube channel 'A New History of Management' contains animations that outline Stephen and his collaborators’ research.

Stephen teaches management, strategy and entrepreneurship at Victoria and has taught at ENPC Paris, EHTP Casablanca, JIBS Sweden, Peking University, Melbourne Business School, Stockholm University, Trinity College Dublin, Tsinghua University and Warwick Business School. He has also advised and developed executive courses for organizations such as HSBC, The Commerce Commission, The Financial Times, Kordia and the ANZ. Stephen became New Zealand’s first Academic Fellow of the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes in 2015, was Chair of the CMS Division of the Academy of Management from 2016-2021, and was appointed to the Academy of Management's 'Subject Matter Experts' panel in 2021. In 2022 he was an Otto Monsted Research Fellow at Copenhagen Business School.Stephen is Professor of Management at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research focuses on how historical understandings can limit innovation and creativity.

He serves on the Advisory Board of the Rethinking Entrepreneurship in Society project at CBS.