Dr Mladen Adamovic is a Reader in Leadership & Global Management at King’s Business School. He is the Programme Director of the UK Government’s high-profile Secure Leaders Programme, designed for senior leaders in the UK Government security profession. He also serves as the Business School’s Student Exchange Coordinator, fostering international student mobility and driving global academic partnerships. His research and teaching focus on two key areas:

Global Management:

• Inclusion of ethnic minorities
• Name and ethnic discrimination in recruitment
• Cultural differences in the workplace
• Artificial intelligence and ethnic discrimination

 Leadership:

• The glass ceiling and glass cliff for ethnic minorities
• Leading multinational and virtual teams and organisations
• Leadership in sports
• Resilience and self-leadership

Dr Adamovic’s work is characterised by rigorous empirical methods, including survey studies, field experiments, and advanced quantitative data analyses. He has collaborated with organisations such as Cisco, Hudson RPO, Sapia, the UK Cabinet Office, the UK Government Security Profession, WorkSafe Victoria, Talent Beyond Boundaries, Diversity Council Australia, and police unions.

His findings have been published in over 50 peer-reviewed articles in top-tier journals, including The Leadership Quarterly, Industrial Relations, and Human Resource Management Journal. He has also shared his research with wider audiences through articles in Harvard Business Review and The Conversation.

Dr Adamovic has been recognised for his academic contributions with numerous awards, such as: 

• The Leadership Quarterly Best Article Award
• The King’s Business School Impact Prize
• The Financial Times recognition for addressing societal challenges through responsible research
• Recognised among the world’s Top 2% most-cited scientists in the 2025 Stanford–Elsevier global ranking

He has secured over 10 research grants and delivered more than 50 presentations, including several keynotes. His Conversation article on leadership and teamwork was the most-read by a KCL academic in the last three years. His book on ChatGPT in business research became an Amazon bestseller. Together, these achievements underscore the practical value and impact of his work.

Dr Adamovic is a highly regarded educator, receiving consistent top-tier student evaluation scores. He teaches a range of modules on topics such as Leadership, Cross-Cultural Management, Organisational Behaviour, International HRM, data analysis, and research methods. He also contributes to executive education, delivering leadership workshops for senior leaders worldwide. He has demonstrated exceptional supervisory experience, supervising over 30 research and teaching assistants, including early-career researchers, from diverse backgrounds over the past decade. He serves on the editorial board of top journals: Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and Human Resource Management.

He serves on the grant committee of the European Science Foundation and conducts invited expert reviews of major funding applications for other international government organisations. According to Web of Science, he ranks among the top 2% of reviewers globally over the past 5 years.

With extensive international experience, Dr Adamovic has held academic positions at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of Auckland, and the University of Toulouse, where he completed his PhD. In addition, he completed undergraduate studies in Germany, earning 2 qualifications in Business Administration and Economics. He holds 2 Master’s degrees from prestigious international management programmes at the Universities of Kiel, Rennes, Lisbon, and Belgrade.

His dedication to addressing workplace inequality and advancing scholarly understanding of cross-cultural and leadership dynamics has positioned Dr Adamovic as a leading expert in his field.

Dr Mladen Adamovic is currently accepting new PhD students.