Professor Alison Pearce

Professor

School: Newcastle Business School

Alison Pearce is Professor of Strategic Entrepreneurship at Newcastle Business School, Affiliate Professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management and Maitre des Conferences at Universite Grenoble Alpes (France) and teaches regularly at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Chonnam National University in Korea and Warsaw University in Poland. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and hsa twice been nominated for National Teaching Fellow. One of the original cohort of British Erasmus students sent abroad in 1987 she spent 15 years living and working internationally in marketing, design and product development culminating in Head of Innovation and Business Development and running her own marketing and design consultancy. Joining the business school in 2005 she led the development of international student exchange programmes and partnerships, representing the university on the KEUDOS project (EU-Korean double degree development) which was runner-up for the Best International Partnership award from the THE. Nominated for National Teaching Fellow in 2015, she was then asked to lead the development of international staff mobility for the university. As part of this work, she developed and led 2 Research & Innovation projects: Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3 (GETM3) (1 million euros from Horizon 2020 and the Korean Research Foundation 2016-22) & Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 4 (GETM4) (1.5 million euros from Horizon Europe, UKRO and Korean Research Foundation 2023-27). GETM4 involves 18 partners in HE and industry in 9 countries. In the meantime, she led the Young Entrepreneurs Accelerator Project for the British Council's Innovation for African Universities programme, managing £125k funding with 2 Kenyan universities and the Entrepreneurship Educators Foundation of East Africa. She has led Entrepreneurship & Innovation Subject Group and the Tourism & Hospitality Subject Group in the business school and hsa been co-convenor of a faculty Research Interest Group. Her work has been published in academic journals, industry magazines, books, blogs, and news media.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Alison's original academic qualifications were in marketing and she completed a Masters dissertation on the marketing of 'unmentionable' products as part of her MBA. After living and working abroad throughout her career, she completed a 3 year action research study for her DBA entitled "How can international staff exchange be implemented as part of the execution of an internationalisation strategy in higher education? The case of a strategic entrepreneur". She has published widely in the intersection between strategic entrepreneurship as an approach to strategy execution and international mobility for both staff and students. With a professional design background, she is also interested in the concept and method of the design entrepreneur.

Since leading the Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3 (GETM3) research and innovation staff exchange (RISE) project, Alison has studied the role of strategic entrepreneurs, autonomous strategic behaviour and strategic neglect in project management and delivery. She has also explored international collaboration and the entrepreneurial traits of young people. GETM4 extends this work into respectful innovation and translation and the role of entrepreneurship in disruptive scenarios.

Alison is a qualitaive researcher, preferring participatory and democratic research methods which produce actionable knowledge and change. She particularly likes the concept of the tempered radical and has coined the terms 'multisociation', 'multiloguing' and 'tempered flexibility' in her writing.

Alison's work has been published in international academic journals, handbooks, conference proceedings, in the news media, industry magazines and blogs.

Key Publications

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How can I thrive at work? The interplay of employees’ environment, work culture and job-related factors, Kitanovikj, B., Eftimov, L., Pearce, A., Cvetkoska, V. 10 Feb 2026, In: DIEM: Dubrovnik International Economic Meeting
Evaluating Strategic Efficiency: A DEA Approach to Comparing Higher Education Prioiritization Across Contexts, Valencia, A., Cvetkoska, V., Kitanovikj, B., Eftimov, L., Pearce, A. 27 May 2025, International Conference on Business Analytics in Practice 2025
How can I thrive at work? The interplay of employees’ environment, work culture and job-related factors, Kitanovikj, B., Eftimov, L., Pearce, A., Cvetkoska, V. 28 May 2025, 7th Dubrovnik International Economic Meeting: DIEM 2025, Dubrovnik, Croatia, University of Dubrovnik
Reducing digital poverty in Kenya? An innovative credit service in a base-of-pyramid market, Elly, D., Oredo, J., Pearce, A., Newbery, R. 10 Sep 2025, Cases on Startups and Enterprise, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar
Tactile Collaboration and Backcasting to Design Meaningful Futures and Strategies., Valencia, A., Cvetkoska, V., Kitanovikj, B., Pearce, A. 10 Aug 2025, 36th Central European Conference on Information and Intelligent Systems CECIIS 2025
Towards Physical and Mental Well-Being in a Disrupted World via Entrepreneurial Action Underpinned by Responsible Digital Innovation: A Research Approach, Pearce, A., Oredo, J., Bailey, M., Dziewanowska, K., Godfrey, A., Tawiah, V., Petrylaite, E., Doyle, P., Quan, R., Valencia, A., Clegg, S., Ko, I. 10 May 2025, Humanizing the Digital Workspace, Cham, Switzerland, Springer
Design Authorship: an intrinsic driver of designer-entrepreneurs, Valencia, A., Pearce, A., Ryan, M. 14 Apr 2024, In: Open Research Europe
The Design, Development and Implementation of a Digital Platform to Enhance Value Co-Creation within an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in SubSaharan Africa, Oredo, J., Pearce, A., Quan, R., Elly, D., Bailey, M., Ndede, F. 22 Dec 2024, Developing University Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in SubSaharan Africa, Singapore, World Scientific
Combining Korean Confucianism with European Values to Build Successful Business Relationships, Pearce, A., Dziewanowska, K., Quan, R., Ko, I. 4 Feb 2022, In: European Journal of International Management
Lundgren Tours: Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire. A young entrepreneur survives and thrives after the ‘double-whammy’ of Brexit and Coronavirus. A Teaching Case Study, Pearce, A., Quan, R., Dziewanowska, K. 1 May 2022, In: International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Current and Recent Projects

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Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3 MSCA RISE Project No 734824, Pearce, A. (Principal Investigator), European Commission, 14/12/16 - 30/12/20, £769,355.00

Professional Activity

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Visiting an external academic institution: Beijing University of Chemical Technology 2023
Visiting an external academic institution: Kenyatta University 2022
Visiting an external academic institution: University of Nairobi 2022
Visiting an external academic institution: Kyungpook National University 2022
Visiting an external academic institution: Chonnam National University 2022
Invited talk: Lessons from the outside: sports, advertising and mental health 2021
Visiting an external academic institution: Chonnam National University 2021
Visiting an external academic institution: Grenoble Ecole de Management 2021
Visiting an external academic institution: University of Ljubljana 2021
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: The 2021 International Conference on Global Entrepreneurial Management & Social Collaboration 2021