Nick has won multiple awards for his work, including the 2005 Emerald Outstanding Special Issue Award, the 2002 EMAC Conference award for best doctoral paper, and a 2002 UK CIM/AM Research Excellence Award. In 2009 he was featured in The Times as ‘one of the 15 scientists whose work will shape the future’.
His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Business Ethics, Industrial Marketing Management, the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Strategic Marketing, the American Journal of Bioethics, the International Journal of Psychophysiology,and Nature Preceedings. His first book Doing Business Research was published by Sage in 2008. He received his Ph.D. from Aston University (UK) in 2003.
In his leisure time, Nick is still an active sportsman, playing competitive club cricket, as well as also partaking in badminton and football. He occasionally tries to play golf, but the less said about that the better. He is also an enthusiastic guitarist, and enjoys listening to music at unsociably-loud volume.
Research Interests
Nick’s research is generally located within the psychological tradition, containing aspects of the social, cognitive, and neuroscientific approaches. Within this broad context, the specific research areas he works in centre around the concept of relationships among people, individually and in groups. Nick’s primary area of research and contribution has focused on relationships within the sales force, but he is also involved in research within the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience, and has a long standing interest in measurement theory and philosophy of science.
Sales Force Relationships: The sales force is a key driver of profit for the firm, generating substantial amounts of income and cost. Coupled with the nature of the sales function as a link between the firm and its customers, effective management of the function is thus of major benefit to salespeople, the firm, the value chain, and society as a whole. This work explores the relationships and social environment of the sales force within the firm, and the consequences for salespeople’s behavior and psychological well-being. Results show that the social interactions between sales managers and salespeople play a key role in problem resolution and influencing the ethical behaviors, higher performance, and psychological well-being of their salespeople. It is emerging that this social role may be even more important than the technical role that sales managers play (e.g. feedback and decision-making). Studies related to this have been published in journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, and Industrial Marketing Management.
Organizational Cognitive Neuroscience: Applying cognitive neuroscientific theories and methods to organizational problems affords a new and powerful explanatory mechanism for human behavior in this context. It is towards this end that the Organizational Cognitive Neuroscience Centre was created. Work on defining an agenda for OCN research has appeared in the natural and social scientific literature (International Journal of Psychophysiology, American Journal of Bioethics, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Nature Preceedings; Journal of Consumer Behavior), and there are exciting new developments currently underway. Examples include testing genetic differences across leadership styles, and also developing a theory of thin-slice cognition within sales force interactions.
Measurement and Philosophy of Science: The link between fundamental philosophy of science concepts such as reality, knowledge, or measurement, and applied business research is vital but poorly understood by most practicing researchers. Doing Business Research (Sage) aims to demystify these concepts and show how good research depends on understanding the relationship between epistemology, ontology, and methodology, while recent explorations of the relationship between theoretical concepts and observable data, re-evaluates the use of classical techniques (published in European Journal of Marketing) and explores the use of new methods of measurement (currently under review).
Teaching
Nick teaches Marketing Science at the MSc level, and co-ordinates the keystone RMC II (Philosophy of Management Research) module for the doctoral programme. In the past, he has taught marketing management, marketing strategy, and market research. Nick also contributes to the MBA module on Business Ethics. Finally, Nick is heavily involved in Aston's Widening Participation programme, and lectures to secondary school students who visit Aston on various topics such as Branding, and Marketing Ethics.
Selected Publications
BOOKS AND CHAPTERS:
Lee, Nick (forthcoming) The Changing Sales Environment: Implications for Sales Research and Practice. In Piercy, N, Cravens, D., and LeMunier-Fitzhugh, K. (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Sales Management. Oxford.
Lee, Nick, & Gordon Greenley (In press). Data Mining and Scientific Knowledge. In. F. J. Martinez-Lopez & J. Casillas(Eds.) Marketing Intelligent Systems by Soft Computing, Springer.
Lee, Nick, with Ian Lings (2008). Doing Business Research. Sage: London.
INTERESTING EJM EDITORIALS:
The Theory-Practice Divide: Thoughts of the Editors and Senior Advisory Board. European Journal of Marketing 2010, vol 44(1/2), (with Gordon Greenley) ABS 3.
From the Editors: Being a Successful and Valuable Peer Reviewer. European Journal of Marketing 2009, vol 43(1/2), (with Gordon Greenley) ABS 3
From the Editors: The Primacy of Data? European Journal of Marketing 2008, vol 42(11/12), (with Gordon Greenley) ABS 3
From the Editors: The Primacy of Theory. European Journal of Marketing 2008, vol 42(9/10), (with Gordon Greenley) ABS 3
SELECTED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS:
Lee, Nick, David Gilliland, Dan Bello and Talai Osmonbekov (forthcoming) When Electronic Management Tools Work – and don’t Work – in Social-Based Channel Relationships. Forthcoming in the Journal of Business Research.
Kleijnen, Mirella, Nick Lee, and Martin Wetzels (2009). An Exploration of Consumer Resistance to Innovation and its Antecedents.Journal of Economic Psychology, vol 30: 344-357.
Lee, Nick, Amanda Beatson, Tony C. Garrett, Ian Lings & Xi Zhang (2009) A Study of the Attitudes Toward Unethical Selling Amongst Chinese Salespeople. Forthcoming in the Journal of Business Ethics.
Cadogan, John W., Nick Lee, Anssi Tarkiainen and Sanna Sundqvist (2009). Sales Manager and Sales Team Determinants of Salesperson Ethical Behavior. European Journal of Marketing, vol 43 (2/3). [note this article was submitted to an EJM special issue prior to my Editorship].
Lee, Nick, and John W. Cadogan (2009) A Social Exchange Theory of Sales Management in Problem Resolution Situations. Industrial Marketing Management. Vol 38 (355-372)
Senior, Carl, and Nick Lee (2008). A Manifesto for Neuromarketing Science. Journal of Consumer Behavior, vol 7(4/5).
Senior, Carl, Michael Butler and Nick Lee (2008). Fear and Loathing in the Workplace. The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 8(5).
Wieseke, Jan, Nick Lee, Amanda J. Broderick, Jeremy F. Dawson, and Rolf van Dick (2008). Multi-Level Research in Marketing: Differentiating Analytical Outcomes. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, vol 16(4).
Senior, Carl, Nick Lee and Michael Butler (2008). The Neuroethics of the Social World of Work. American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 8: 54-55.
Wieseke, Jan, Christian Homburg and Nick Lee (2008). Understanding the Adoption of New Brands Through Salespeople: a Multilevel Framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol 36(2).
Lee, Nick and Laura Chamberlain (2007). Neuroimaging and Psychophysiological Measurement in Organizational Research: An Agenda for Organizational Cognitive Neuroscience. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 1118: 18-43.
Brown, Joanne, Amanda J. Broderick and Nick Lee (2007). Extending Social Network Theory to Conceptualize On-Line Word-of-Mouth Communication. Journal of Interactive Marketing, vol. 21(3): 2-19.
Lee, Nick, Amanda J. Broderick and Laura Chamberlain (2007). What is Neuromarketing? A Discussion and Agenda for Future Research. International Journal of Psychophysiology, vol 63: 199-204. [This article was ranked 7th most downloaded article in the journal for Quarter 1 2007]
Newman, Anouche, Ian Lings and Nick Lee (2005). Whats in a Handshake? Exploring Business-to-Business Relational Exchange. The Marketing Review, vol .5: 129-144.
Lee, Nick, and Graham Hooley (2005). The Evolution of ‘Classical Mythology’ Within Marketing Measure Development. European Journal of Marketing, vol. 39: 365-385.
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