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Last updated 26th August 2025

Dr. Zhuang Ma is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Leadership at Huddersfield Business School. He previously held Assistant Professorships at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics (China), where he taught AACSB-accredited HRM and Leadership modules in partnership with the University of Surrey, and at Chongqing Technology and Business University (China), in collaboration with Western University (Canada). He holds a PhD in Management Studies and an MRes in Management from the University of Liverpool, and an MBA from Southwest University. Before academia, he worked as an EFL instructor and department manager at New Oriental Education Group Inc. (NYSE: EDU), and a business director for EPC projects in Nigeria.

Zhuang’s research project, ‘Emotional impact and behavioral response of abusive supervision: a third-party perspective (职场辱虐管理的情绪影响与行为反应研究：基于第三方员工的视角)’ with Professor Jun Huang (Southwest University), was funded by the 2021 Humanities and Social Sciences Planning Fund, the Ministry of Education (21YJA630035), China.

• Leadership and Power Dynamics: the emotional and behavioural impact of abusive and exploitative supervision, how algorithmic management systems create new pathways for abusive supervision,  bystander responses to toxic leadership, and the cultural norms that shape tolerance for power imbalance.
• Workplace Wellbeing, Safety, and Algorithmic Management: employees’ health, safety, and wellbeing in high-pressure or digitally mediated contexts, with a particular focus on platform workers navigating algorithmic management, surveillance, and the wellbeing impacts of human-AI collaboration.
• Newcomers, Socialisation, and Identity Work: how newcomers and early-career professionals adapt through identity work and provisional selves, particularly within hybrid, atypical, or rapidly changing work settings.
• Employability and Inequality: socio-economic gaps in students’ career aspirations and employability outcomes for green jobs, related to his role as Year 1 Tutor and leader of the ASPIRE 1 module at Huddersfield Business School.