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Dr Stephanie Decker

Stephanie Decker

Lecturer

PhD, University of Liverpool

Economics and Strategy Group

I joined Aston Business School in September 2010, after having lectured at the University of Liverpool Management School.  Prior to this I have held research fellowships at Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics, and Humboldt University Berlin, as well as having been a guest lecturer at Bocconi University Milan. After studying for an undergraduate degree at the University of Cologne, I changed to the University of Liverpool for postgraduate study, where I completed my PhD, for which I received the Coleman Prize in 2007.

Download CV

http://aston.academia.edu/StephanieDecker

Modules Taught

Research Interests

I currently hold a research grant from the British Academy for a project on shifting bargaining power between less developed countries and the aluminium industry.

In the past I have held research fellowships at universities in the USA, UK and Germany. I have received grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Economic and Social Science Research Council, the Economic History Society, the Royal Historical Society, and the German Academic Exchange Service.


 

  • 'Corporate Political Activity in Less Developed Countries: The Volta River Project in Ghana, 1959-1966', Business History 53, no. 7 (2011).

  • “Herman Chinery-Hesse: The Bill Gates of Ghana?”, Teaching case for Aston Business School (2011).

  • “No Longer at Ease: Corruption as in Institution in West Africa”,  with Dmitri van den Bersselaar, International Journal of Public Administration  34,11 (2011)

  • “Postcolonial Transitions in Africa: Decolonization in West Africa and present day South Africa”, Journal of Management Studies 47,5 (2010), 791-813.  

  • doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2010.00924.x

  • “Building up Goodwill: British Business, Development and Economic Nationalism in Ghana and Nigeria, 1945-1977”, Enterprise & Society 9,4 (2008)

  • “Advertising and Corporate Legitimacy: British multinationals and the rhetoric of development from the 1950s to the 1970s”, Business History Review, 81 (Spring 2007): 59-86.


Journal articles

  • 'Corporate Political Activity in Less Developed Countries: The Volta River Project in Ghana, 1959-1966', Business History 53, no. 7 (2011).

  • “Herman Chinery-Hesse: The Bill Gates of Ghana?”, Teaching case for Aston Business School (2011).

  • “No Longer at Ease: Corruption as in Institution in West Africa”, with Dmitri van den Bersselaar, International Journal of Public Administration  34,11 (2011)

  • “Postcolonial Transitions in Africa: Decolonization in West Africa and present day South Africa”, Journal of Management Studies, Accepted Article (2010), doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2010.00924.x

  • “Wirtschaftsnationalismus und Dekolonisation der Wirtschaft”, (transl. Economic nationalism and economic decolonization), Archiv fuer Sozialgeschichte 48 (2008) (transl. Archive for Social History), pp. 461-486.

  • “Building up Goodwill: British Business, Development and Economic Nationalism in Ghana and Nigeria, 1945-1977”, Enterprise & Society 9,4 (2008)

  • “Advertising and Corporate Legitimacy: British multinationals and the rhetoric of development from the 1950s to the 1970s”, Business History Review, 81 (Spring 2007): 59-86.

  • “Decolonising Barclays Bank DCO? Corporate Africanisation programmes in Nigeria, 1945 –1969”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 33,
  • No. 3 (September 2005): 419-440.

Book Chapters

  • “Return to Imperial Trade? John Holt & Co (Liverpool) Ltd. as a Contemporary Free-standing Company, 1945-2006”, Chap. 9 in The Empire in One City? Liverpool's Inconvenient Imperial Past, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 300-332.

Book reviews

  • Toyin Falola. Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria, 1945-1965. African Studies Review 50, 2 (2007), pp. 268-9.

  • Adodeyi Olukoju. The Liverpool of West Africa: The Dynamics and Impact of Maritime Trade in Lagos 1900–1950. African Studies Review 51,1 (2008), pp. 140-141.

  • Hartmut Berghoff (ed.) Margetinggeschichte: Die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik. Business History 50,3 (2008), p. 396.

  • Teresa da Silva Lopes. Global Brands: The Evolution of Multinationals in Alcoholic Beverages. Business History Review 83,1 (2009), pp. 208-210.

  • Kathleen E. A. Monteith, Depression to Decolonization: Barclays Bank (DCO) in the West Indies, 1926-1962. Business History Review 84,4 (2010), pp. 851-853.

Working Papers

  •  “Economic Nationalism and the postcolonial expropriations of Multinationals: Ghana and Nigeria, 1960-1980”.

  • "The Silence of the Archives: Postcolonialism and Business History Methodology"

Conference presentations

  • “Why historians won't talk about method?", Paper invited for the Qualitative Historical Methods in Management and Organization Studies workshop at Queen Mary University London, 8-9 September 2011.

  •  “Narrative Strategies and Organisational Legitimacy: British Imperial Business and the Development Consensus”, Conference paper, accepted at the European Group for Organisation Studies at Gothenburg 7-9 July 2011, Association of Business Historians Annual Conference at the University of Reading, July 2011, and the British Academy of Management, Aston University, 13-15 September 2011.

  • “Advice never hurts the giver: The Role of Economic Advisors in Ghana”, Conference paper presented at the Business History Conference 2011, St. Louis, MO.

  • “The welfare agenda in colonial development: West Africa 1940-1965”, Paper presented at the University of York, Department of History, 3 February 2011.

  •  “Economic Decolonisation & non-traditional investment: International business promotion in West Africa, 1950-1970”, Conference paper presented at the Association of Business Historians Annual Conference, University of York, July 2010, and the Wind of Change conference, University of East Anglia, April 2010.

Teaching cases

  • “Herman Chinery-Hesse: The Bill Gates of Ghana?”, Teaching case for Aston Business School (2011).