Dr M. May Seitanidi

Dr M. May Seitanidi (FRSA, SFHEA) is a Reader at Kent Business School, University of Kent. She has served the School and University in a number of positions including, elected Senate member and member of the Academic Freedom Senate sub-committee, director of the PhD Programme at Kent Business School, Pathway Institutional Lead in Business and Management (ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership SeNSS), member of the Postgraduate Development Committee of the Graduate Research College (University of Kent), among others.
As a scholarship student, at the London School of Economics (LSE) and at the International Centre of Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at the University of Nottingham (PhD received in 2017), May’s research focused on the social partnership stages between business and non-profit organisations in the UK and their transformational potential for the organisations and for society at large.
May has worked in Cross-Sector Collaborations for over 30 years as a practitioner and academic, published three books, several papers and co-edited four special issues in top journals in the field of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships. She has worked for the public, private and non-profit sectors including for the Department of Health in London; as the Director of a Marketing & PR Consultancy in Greece (MPRC Norther Greece); she was the Founder of the Hellenic Sponsorship Centre and the award-winning magazine Sponsors & Sponsorships. May is the founder of the International Cross-Sector Social Interactions (CSSI) Community and the CSSI Symposia Series organised by leading scholars in top universities around the world; she is the co-founding Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Social Partnerships (ARSP, served for 13 years), an annual international publication in cross-sector collaboration for the social good.
May has consulted in a wide variety of community development programmes and delivered executive education programmes around the world.

May's research investigates the interactions between societal wellbeing and capitalism exploring the interdependences within and across organisations aiming to advance collaborative systemic solutions through forms of collaborative societal governance. 

Her research previously looked at excellence in co-creation of value in complex institutional environments involving public-private-non-profit organisations.

May’s work has provided roadmaps of collaborative implementation for business, voluntary and public sector organisations, increasing the accountability and institutionalisation of collaborative innovation, capturing the dynamics of collective action and understanding the potential of people, organisations and societies pursuing intentionally the elusive social good. 

Through her research, May shepherds three interrelated thematic areas:

• Hybrid policy and governance.
• Multi-layered authority systems at local and international levels.
• Societal solutions to complex socialissues (examples: cross-sector partnerships/micro-finance/contract farming for poverty alleviation, cross-sector social partnerships/employee volunteering for social exclusion; cross-sector collective action/programmatic agreements for co-ordinated emergency medical service provision).

May's work has been published in the following journals:

• Journals of Business & Society
• Journal of Business Ethics
• Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly 
• Corporate Reputation Review
• Emergence: Complexity & Organization Journal International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing
• Management Decision

May has published three books:

• The Politics of Partnerships (2010, short-listed for the SIM 2013 Best Book Award
• Social Partnerships and Responsible Business. A Research Handbook (2014, co-authored with Andrew Crane)
• Creating Value in Nonprofit-Business Collaborations: New Thinking & Practice (2014, co-authored with James E. Austin and received the 2014 Finalist ‘Terry McAdam’ Best Book Award Book of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management)

May has taught across the Corporate Social Responsibility curriculum in the UK, Europe, US, Middle East and Africa and delivered several programmes at all levels: undergraduate, postgraduate (including MBAs) and Doctoral.

She has further delivered Executive Education programmes and workshops. May currently teaches Corporate Social Responsibility, Socially Responsible Management, Business Ethics & Sustainable Management and Research Methods. 

May has been nominated for several teaching awards at Kent Business School. Her research interests in Teaching and Learning focus on Doctoral Education and Reflective Learning.

May is happy to consider supervising proposals in the broad area of:

• Cross-Sector Social Partnerships
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Collective Action for Complex Social Issue
• Organisational and Social Change
• Governance and Accountability in Hybrid Forms of Social Interaction

She particularly welcomes research proposals that adopt a practice or process perspective. The complex social issue she has been focusing upon recently is Suicide Prevention in Higher Education and in the Construction industry.

Current Supervisees

• Adetutu (Tutu) Oyerinde: 'The Sustainable Business: The View from the UK Banking Sector'
• Somayeh Taromi Nejad Shirazi (Kent-Wates Scholarship Student): 'Mapping Suicide Prevention in the English Higher Education Sector: A Collaborative Sensemaking Approach in Implementing Suicide Prevention'
  

Past Supervisees 

• Muntaser Melhem: 'Employee performance appraisal: a process perspective of institutional logics and routine dynamics' (completed: 2022)
• Shawaaf M.H.M.H. Alshawaaf: 'Competing Institutional Logics in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships (year 1)'
• Ngechop Yvonne Claire Ndifor: 'Financial Services as a Transformative Social Change Mechanism: The Case of Microfinance Partnerships with Women Entrepreneurs in Cameroon' (completed: 2017)
• Aroob Alrifai: 'Stakeholders and Corporate Philanthropy in a Developing Country of Intense Religious Beliefs, Values & Norms' (Completed: 2013)

Advisor/Visiting PhD Students:

• Yoojin Jang: 'Non-profit-Business Partnerships and network ties In Korea'

• Lamberto Zollo: 'Cross-sector interactions between Governmental Institutions and Non-profit Organizations in Italy'

• Julia Helena Diaz Ramirez: 'Decision Making Processes of SMEs for Partnering with Civil Society Organisations in Colombia'

• Maria Jesus Baroso Mendez: 'The Role of Learning in Cross-sector Social Partnerships in Spain'

PhD/MRes Examinations:

• Dr Janni Thusgaard Pedersen: 'Managing Institutional Complexity in Hybrid Organisations, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Department of Intercultural Communication and Management'
• Dr Helena Knight: 'Collaborative Value Creation: How arts & business organisations create value for society', Cardiff Business School

• Dr Victor Tsemo: 'An Investigation of CSR as a Hidden Source of Corporate Political Power', Wolverhampton Business School

• Dr Sabine Hoffmann: 'Corporate citizenship: Employee attitudes and their relationship to an employer brand. A comparative case study in the German FMCG industry', Bradford University School of Management

• Nicholas Black: 'What is the institutional environment like for small sized social enterprises? A study of discourses, institutional logics and sources of legitimacy', ICCSR, Nottingham Business School

• Dr Gizem Oksuzoglu Guven: 'The impact of social trauma on business ethics: The case of Cypriot Turks', Brunel Business School

Guest Editorships:

• Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen, E., Lüdeke-Freund, F., Henriques, I. and Seitanidi, M.M. (2020). Towards Collaborative Cross-Sector Business Models for Sustainability. Business & Society Journal.
• Van Tulder, R., Seitanidi, M.M., Crane, A. and Brammer, S. 2016. Enhancing the impact of cross-sector partnerships. Four impact loops for channelling partnership studies. Journal of Business Ethics, 105 (5), 111-130.
• Seitanidi, M.M. and Lindgreen, A, 2010. Cross-sector Social Interactions. Special Issue Editorial, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 94:1-7.

Visiting Positions/Fellowships: 

• 2021-24 Visiting Professor in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships. University of Northampton, UK. Collaboration on Research and Teaching in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships.
• 2021 Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in the UK.
• 2020- 23 Visiting Professor in Corporate Social Responsibility, Coal City University, Enugu, Nigeria.
• 2014- Visiting Professor in CSR. University LUISS, Business School, Rome, Italy.
• 2012-17 Visiting Fellow, University of Nottingham, International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility-ICCSR, Nottingham University Business School, UK.
• 2009 - Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), The Higher Education Academy, UK.
• 2007-10 - Visiting Fellow, University of Nottingham, International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility-ICCSR, Nottingham University Business School, UK.
• 2007-11 - External Examiner for the modules: Managing Strategy; International Business Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility; University of Hertfordshire, Business School, UK.