Company
Dr David Atkinson
Founder and research lead at ImaginAND
Dr David Atkinson is a founder of ImaginAND and provides the research and conceptual foundation behind its approach to meaning intelligence, judgement and institutional responsibility.
He is a part-time Lecturer in Business and Management at York St John University and a Senior Research Fellow with the British Army Centre for Leadership. His current work examines judgement, responsibility and institutional behaviour in complex, technology-enabled and high-stakes environments.
Before entering academia, David served as a Royal Air Force Communications Engineering Officer, specialising in software engineering management and operational systems. He later founded and led ventures across multiple sectors, creating an unusual combination of engineering, commercial, operational and academic experience.
David completed a PhD in Critical Management Studies at Lancaster University Management School in 2006. His doctoral work received two international awards for research excellence, including First Prize in the 2007 European Doctoral Association for Management and Business Administration Outstanding Thesis Awards.
His research explores the relationship between imagination, organisation and socio-economic order. Working in the tradition of critical management studies and applied negative dialectics, he examines how institutions, markets and technologies shape the possibilities of work, enterprise and decision-making.
His 2023 book, Reimagining Capitalism: Applying Negative Dialectics for a Better Future, extended this work into questions of institutional judgement, narrative formation and technological transformation. He is currently developing Material Entropic Dynamics, a framework concerned with responsibility, constraint and institutional behaviour.
Within ImaginAND, David’s work informs the venture’s approach to language, contradiction, ethical drift, symbolic misalignment and the conditions under which leaders exercise judgement.
In brief
Academic foundation
PhD in Critical Management Studies, Lancaster University Management School, 2006.
Research recognition
Two international awards for research excellence, including First Prize in the 2007 European Doctoral Association for Management and Business Administration Outstanding Thesis Awards.
Research themes
Judgement under uncertainty, responsibility, institutional behaviour, applied negative dialectics, imagination and technology-enabled decision environments.
Professional recognition
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; earlier in his career he held Chartered Engineer and FIET status.
Research in the product
David’s frameworks shape the research and method behind the platform and its approach to contradiction, ethical drift and symbolic misalignment. Read his insights for the thinking in his own words.
Founding ImaginAND
ImaginAND is the independent entrepreneurial venture David founded to carry this research into working technology. Read the venture story, the investor narrative or how Veda supports the build.
Writing
ImaginAND is an independent entrepreneurial venture. It is not an initiative of, and is not endorsed by, York St John University, the British Army Centre for Leadership, the Royal Air Force or any other institution with which Dr Atkinson holds or has held roles; those roles are stated here as biography only.