Has a background in the engineering industry as an operational researcher, operational research manager, and then in management consulting before joining the Management School at Bath University. He was Director of the Graduate School of Business at Strathclyde. Currently Research Professor at Strathclyde Business School.

Major research interests are into the relationship between operational decision making practices and their strategic consequences; the processes of strategy making in senior management teams; the use of group decision support in the analysis and making of strategy; multi-organizational collaboration; systemic risk assessment and management; and the modelling of the behaviour of large projects disruptions and delays, including issues of the dynamics of productivity changes, risk systemicity and learning curves.

Author of 12 books and over 180 scholarly articles in management science, project management, and strategic management. His most recent books are: with Professor Fran Ackermann Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success Sage 2012, and with Fran Ackermann and Professor John Bryson Visual Strategy Wiley 2014. He has over 18,000 cites to his published work.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy of Management and has awards from the Academy of Management, Institute of Operations Research and Management Science, and the Operational Research Society.