Business Management - Yes Chef!: Exploring meaningful and sustainable careers in professional restaurant kitchens

Supervisor: Dr Tomi Koljone

Bio: I work as a Lecturer in Organisation Theory at the University of Liverpool in the Work, Organisation and Management group. My research focuses on organizations, occupations, and work. In particular, I am interested in how technology shapes and is shaped by occupational work, the mechanisms and lived experiences of organizational inequality, and qualitative research methods. I undertook my doctoral studies in Organization and Management at Aalto University and received a Fulbright Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship for which I visited Boston College in 2020. Before my academic career, I worked in public relations and completed BSc and MSc degrees at Aalto University.

Email: koljonen@liverpool.ac.uk

School: Management

Department: Business Management

Module code: ULMS201

Suitable for students of: Most social science or humanities disciplines would provide good fundamentals. For example, sociology, psychology, social psychology, anthropology, or business and management.

Desired experience or requirements: Some experience of or interest in qualitative research methods. 

Places available: 2

Start dates: 16 June 2025 only

Virtual option: Yes - virtual, hybrid and in-person options

Project length: 8 weeks

Project description:

The hospitality industry is one of the largest employing sectors in almost any economy, however, it rarely gets the attention it deserves in management and organisations research. Working in restaurant kitchens is often seen as a temporary "gig", rather than a long-term career. As depicted in popular culture (e.g., The Bear) many aspects of the job also contradict conventional wisdom of what makes a good job: cooks have very limited autonomy, they work long and unsociable hours, are subject to physical and emotional strain, and the work tasks are often extremely repetitive. However, despite all of this, many cooks and chefs love their work and have fulfilling and successful careers in kitchens. We thus ask, when does a bad job become a good job? To answer this question, this project examines the work of professional cooks and chefs through a semi-structured interview study. Students can expect to work on tasks related to literature review, research design, data collection, and data analysis.

Additional Requirements: N/A