Assistant Professor, Strategy & Entrepreneurship
UCL School of Management, University College London
Designing organisations for collaborative work, as technology and location change how we work together.
About
I am an Assistant Professor in the Strategy & Entrepreneurship Group at UCL School of Management. I study organisational design and collaborative work: how organisations coordinate, collaborate and adapt as the technologies they work with and the places they work from change.
My research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and has received the AMR Best Paper Award and an OMT Division Best Published Paper finalist nomination. I am a Co-Investigator on a UCL Grand Challenges project on organisational design for AI-augmented workforces, serve on the editorial review board of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and am a founding member of the Work AI Institute at Glean. My work has been covered by the BBC, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the New York Times and Forbes.
Before UCL, I was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Center for Work, Technology, and Organizations. I hold a PhD in Technology Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and a PhD in Structural Engineering from UC San Diego. In between, I led R&D at a clean technology startup, worked in aerospace, and spent time as a digital nomad. Those years are where my questions about technology, space and organising began.
Research
My research looks at organisational design and collaborative work. It runs in two streams that often overlap: how technology changes who and what takes part in work, and how location changes where and when work happens together. Most of my work is qualitative field research, with configurational and quasi-experimental designs where the question calls for them.
Technology
Technology as an organisational actor, not only a tool. I study how AI and other agentic systems take part in work alongside people: the forms of agency humans and technology share, how algorithms are integrated into work, how teams of people and AI agents are designed, and how organisations can give standing to stakeholders that cannot speak for themselves.
Location
Space, place, geography and distribution. I study how organisations collaborate when people are not in the same place or at the same time: location-independent organisations, hybrid work arrangements, the design of physical workspaces, and the digital spaces where work increasingly happens.
Publications
Journal articles
Rhymer, J. (2023). Location-independent organizations: Designing collaboration across space and time. Administrative Science Quarterly, 68(1), 1–43. DOI
Finalist, OMT Division Best Published Paper Award (2023)
Murray, A., Rhymer, J., & Sirmon, D. G. (2021). Humans and technology: Forms of conjoined agency in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 46(3), 552–571. DOI
AMR Best Paper Award (2022)
Pahnke, E. C., Sirmon, D. G., Rhymer, J., & Campbell, J. T. (2023). Resource interdependence and successful exit: A configurational perspective on young technology firms. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 17(3), 507–534. DOI
AoM ENT Division Best Paper Award (2018)
Chapters, reports and practitioner work
Hinds, R., Hoffman, M., Baladi, S., Cao, H., Lee, Y. S., Leonardi, P., Ranganathan, A., Rhymer, J., Rogelberg, S., & Sutton, R. (2026). The Work AI Index 2026: Botsitting, botshitting, and the hidden human labor of AI at work. Work AI Institute, Glean.
Murray, A., Rhymer, J., & Sirmon, D. G. (2026). Tokenized information and mitigating misinformation. In J. Sarkis (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Blockchain Technology for Business. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI
Rhymer, J., Murray, A., & Sirmon, D. G. (2024). Synthetic stakeholders: Engaging the environment in organizational decision-making. In Research Handbook on Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making in Organizations (pp. 225–238). Edward Elgar. DOI
Hinds, R., & Rhymer, J. (2023). How to design your hybrid work policy: A research-backed playbook. The Work Innovation Lab by Asana.
Working papers
Rhymer, J., Murray, A., & Sirmon, D. G. The advent of synthetic stakeholders: How organizations engage non-traditional entities.
Estevez Cores, S., & Rhymer, J. From workplace to meetspace: How hybrid work arrangements transform employees’ in-office social interactions.
Xia, N., Chang, Y., Ahmetoglu, Y., Loiwal, V., Rhymer, J., Vernet, A., & Cox, A. With great control comes great responsibility: Co-designing embedded AI agents for collaborative freelance work. Under review.
Teaching
I teach organisational design for sustainability on two UCL master’s programmes:
- Sustainable Business in Practice (MSIN0244), MSc Business and Sustainability
- Building Sustainable Ventures (MSIN0261), MSc Entrepreneurship
I also teach executive education and workshops.
CV
Download my CV (PDF), updated September 2026.