Stephanie is Professor of Strategy and one of two Deputy Deans for Birmingham Business School (2023-26). She is also Co-Vice Chair Research & Publications at the British Academy of Management (2022-25) and joint Editor-in-Chief of Business History (2019-24).

As a historian working at a business school, her work is concerned with the connection between the social sciences and history, specifically organization studies, strategy, international business and (business) history. She is interested in how to theorise from historical research and in developing archival and historical methods to study organizations. Her historical research focuses on the history of organizations, entrepreneurs and the wider political economy in Africa. 

Book in for Office Hours with Prof Stephanie Decker

Stephanie's work has been published in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Business & Society and Business History. She has received research funding from the Economic & Social Science Research Council, the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Newton Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (US) and the British Academy. She has held visiting appointments at the University of Cagliari (Italy) Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) and Humboldt University Berlin (Germany).

Her work has been widely recognized in business and management, and business history, and won several prizes, including:

• The Emerald Citations of Excellence 2017 for her co-authored AMR article;
• The Henrietta Lawson Prize (twice), the first time for the best article in Business History Review in 2018, for her single-authored article on multinational legitimization strategies in Ghana and Nigeria; and the second time for her co-authored article on Enron with Adam Nix and Carola Wolf in 2021;
• The Best Full Paper Award in the African Studies Track at British Academy of Management 2020 for her co-authored paper with George Obeng on base-of-pyramid approaches in Ghana.

Stephanie’s current research spans the three distinct areas. She continued to develop historical methods and approaches to organizational memory in strategy, international business and organization studies. As a co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Historical Methods in Management (Edward Elgar, 2023), she continues to support greater diversity and accessibility of historical approaches in business and management.

Her business historical research focuses on the interaction of multinationals and international organizations with non-Western societies, with a focus on West Africa. She has recently published a book on Postcolonial Transitions and Global Business History (Routledge, 2023) and she continues to promote more diverse, interdisciplinary and international research in the field in her role as joint editor-in-chief for Business History (since 2019). During her tenure she has expanded the size of the editorial team and the editorial board, and developed the social media presence of the journal to make the editorial process more accessible to authors and reviewers.

In collaboration with the archival sector, she has conducted several research projects on digital archives, computational archival science and approaches to big qualitative datasets, with a particular focus on email archives. This research has been supported by the AHRC and is currently funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. 

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) – PR057259, 2013

PG Cert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, University of Liverpool, 2010

PhD, University of Liverpool, School of History, 2006

MA in 20^th History, University of Liverpool, School of History, 2001

Magistra Artium, intermediate examination (equivalent to BA), University of Cologne, Economic & Social History, International Law, Social Anthropology, 2002