John Tull

Dr John Tull PhD, CMBE, MIPP, MA, MFin, MBA, DipCoDir, BAHons, AFHEA

Lecturer in Business Management

Dr. John Tull joined University of Greenwich following a two-year fulltime postdoctoral fellowship at Royal Holloway, University of London where he conducted extensive research for the ESRC-funded study of NATO member organisational learning/adaptation. He continues to collaborate with that project to co-author its interdisciplinary publications while providing module leadership, tutoring and teaching/dissertation support to students at final-year UG and PG level in the Business School.

John has conducted nine invited ‘impact’ events since mid-2024 where he has co-presented detailed findings from the military learning project in Portugal, Estonia, Germany, Slovakia and the UK, plus a briefing for the relevant unit of the US Army. These events have enabled military units and military academies to adopt recommendations from the study findings and invite further collaboration. These activities and the pipeline of publications have wider relevance for public management leadership communities in ‘high reliability’ organisational (HRO) contexts as well, a promising opportunity for future research and knowledge exchange collaborations.

John comes to academia with extensive experience in international business management in high-tech across Asia, including 7 years in regional C-level executive roles such as Chief Marketing Officer, China & Asia Pacific, Alcatel-Lucent Inc. 2005-2007. From 2009, he transferred those experiences and skills to spend over a decade working/researching in international development as Global Director, Acting Programme Director, Senior Business Consultant, grant writer, researcher, and trainer-of-trainers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America (spanning entrepreneurship development, PPP alliances, food and export commodity value chain sustainability, mobile ICT business services).

Business and management

Responsibilities within the university

John is a Lecturer in Business Management, leading the Innovation in Competitive Environment module and his new ‘The Impact Mindset’ module. He teaches in other undergraduate and postgraduate Management, Sustainability, International Entrepreneurship and Business Creation modules, and supervises Master’s and PhD dissertations.

John is also:

  • Co-convenor of the Special Interest Group for Research Methods and Methodologies, for the School of Business, Operations and Strategy

Organising Committee member for the annual Learning and Teaching Festival in Greenwich Business School.Mentor for the University of Greenwich Generator, including teaching in the Help to Grow programme for SMEs.

Awards

Recognition

Co-convenor of the Pragmatism in Organizational Studies international scholarly network (2022-present)

Co-convenor of the highly-successful EGOS sub-theme ‘Creatively Transforming Challenging Situations: Insights through Pragmatism’, Athens, July 2025

Member of EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies) and PHILOS (Philosophy of Organization Studies).

Member of the British Academy of Management

UK Research Innovation ICURe Engage Certificate 2025 (commercialisation of academic research course)

Research / Scholarly interests
  • John's current research focuses on organisational learning (and mis-learning), specifically military learning in NATO member countries (ESRC 2021-2024).
  • His wider research interests, stemming from lengthy practitioner experience in the high-tech sector in Asia, and in SME development in emerging markets mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, lie in organisational knowledge strategy, practices and innovation policy.

Key funded projects

Continuing to collaborate with the ESRC-funded multi-year project on Lessons Learned in NATO member countries (ES/V004190/1) to complete the publications and impact events in 2024-25.

‘Creative U’ pilot project for designing an entrepreneurship development curriculum with young prison inmates, funded by the Networks and Urban Systems Centre Research Group, University of Greenwich (2025).

Media activity

University of Greenwich business research showcased at NATO event. (press release link)

Recent publications

Presentations