Mitaali Katoch
Thesis title: Survival learnings of family-run fashion firms: Expanding the significance of organisational adaptation and environmental selection in organisation studies
Start year: 2023
Research topic
My doctoral work investigates—through an institutional lens, the transfer of intangible resources across multiple generations (Magrelli et al. 2022) within enduring, contemporary corporate fashion firms within the luxury industry.
These storied fashion organisations have exchanged knowledge of business practices for hundreds of years. The transacted, intellectual capital at the centre of this scholarship comprises human, social, and project capital (after Turner et al., 2016). The negotiated nature of knowledge exchange between older and prospective generations constitutes the foreground of this study. While the process of succession is widely known in the fashion industry (BoF Team, 2016) (Sherman, 2019), how knowledge is transferred across generational gaps and how the process of innovation is jointly governed remains opaque. The research is centred on understanding how different forms of knowledge are transferred across generations and how the next generation manages the innovation process to remain relevant during the succession process.
Academic school / department
Publications
- Cook, M. (2023) Drawn Thought. Edited by Charles Matz, Jonathan Dillon, Mitaali Katoch. Crucible Press. ASIN: B0BWZXL81H.
- Katoch, M. (2021). From Grain to Gold: The Regeneration of New Delhi’s Dhan Mill Compound. In: Crespi, L. (eds) Design of the Unfinished. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Chap.
- Brooker, G., Harriss, H., Walker, K. (eds.) Matz, C.A., Dillon, J. (exec eds.) Interior Futures (2019) Katoch, M. (Project production). Crucible Press.
Further details
I am pursuing my doctoral studies at Oxford Brookes Business School’s Business and Management Programme, Oxford Brookes University. I am an alumnus of the Royal College of Art, London (RCA), where I completed my MRes in design. My research at the RCA focussed on the theme of enabling and enacting project-based ambidexterity within the context of a heritage luxury fashion house. My dissertation analysed the 2014 documentary film Dior & I as a case study, utilising the conceptual framework of Turner et al.’s 2016 project-based ambidexterity. In addition to my scholarship, I am the Managing Director of Development and a shareholder of a multi-business-unit holding company—based in London and New York—specialising in arts, culture, media, and technology industry investments. My professional activities focus on corporate strategy, organisational design, and strategic partnerships. In March of 2023, I presented a lecture at the Work In Progress (WIP) exhibition at University of Arts London’s Central St Martin's Masters Architecture Programme titled Survival Learnings in a Creative Organisation. In the spring of 2022, I planned and co-executive-produced the Education and Creative Technologies Testbed Symposia launch of the Human-Machine Collaboration Conference, organised by the University of Oxford’s Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division, supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS). I executive produced the British Council’s GREAT webcast lecture: Local Knowledge, Global Networks. Digital Futures for Higher Education, featuring Prof. Howard Hotson, Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History, University of Oxford. I continue collaborating with researchers at the University of Oxford's TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, a research hub centred on innovative pedagogical platforms) and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) on the role of advanced media technologies.