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Dr. Adeel Akmal is a Research Fellow at the University of Otago, with affiliations in the Department of General Practice and Rural Health within the Dunedin School of Medicine and the Dean's Office of the Otago Business School in the Commerce Division. He holds the position of Manager for the Centre for Health Systems and Technology (CHeST), a role he has occupied for over three years. Akmal completed his PhD at the University of Otago in 2019, with a thesis entitled "The Efficacy and Maturity of Quality Improvement Approaches in the New Zealand Healthcare System." His cross-divisional presence has fostered extensive collaborations across the Otago Business School and Dunedin School of Medicine, enhancing his research network in health systems and management.
Akmal's academic interests center on quality improvement in production and service organizations, particularly healthcare, operations and organizational management, public sector policy, and human resource management. As CHeST Manager, he has coordinated symposiums and seminars featuring prominent figures from New Zealand's healthcare sector and international experts. Key publications include "Lean thinking in healthcare–findings from a systematic literature network and bibliometric analysis" (Health Policy, 2020), "Sustainable HRM: toward addressing diverse employee roles" (Employee Relations: The International Journal, 2022), "Understanding resistance in lean implementation in healthcare environments: an institutional logics perspective" (Production Planning & Control, 2022), "What makes an effective Quality Improvement Manager? A qualitative study in the New Zealand health system" (BMC Health Services Research, 2022), and "Does organizational readiness matter in lean thinking practices? An agency perspective" (International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 2022). His research has accumulated over 550 citations. Awards include Otago's 3-minute thesis recognition and the Best Paper Award at the Performance Management Association Conference 2018 in Warsaw.