Deirdre Coveney

Profile

Deirdre completed a PhD in Strategy at Warwick Business School, focusing on ownership lifecycles, with particular interest in the acquisition and divestiture behaviour of Private Equity firms from a strategic management view. During her PhD, she was distinguished as the Doctoral Student of the year in her final year at Warwick Business School. She also completed a research visit to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She was successful in receiving the Strategic Management Society’s Will Mitchell Dissertation Grant, awarded to up to 10 PhD candidates across the world, studying stratgegy. She completed a competitive Masters of Science in International Business and Management in the University of Groningen, graduating Cum Laude/First Class Honours. This was followed by a Research Master in Business Research, from the University of Groningen, graduating Cum Laude/First Class Honours. She developed in-depth technical and problem-solving skills during an intensive Engineering undergraduate degree At University College Dublin, a top research University. 

She has presented her research at a variety of conferences, including the Academy of Management’s Annual Conference, Strategic Management Society’s Annual Conference, Strategy Science’s Annual Meeting, the Carnegie School of Organisational Learning’s Annual Meeting and the Wharton School’s Corporate Strategy and Innovation Conference.

Research interests

Deirdre's research focus has been on corporate development, in particular exploring mergers, acquisitions, alliances and divestments. The areas that she is exploring further are the motives, operating cycles and outcomes of Private Equity investments relative to public investments, to examine how and why firm survival and performance is impacted by the corporate development strategies they engage in. She has been examining how Private Equity, as a governance form and organisational structure, create value across their portfolios of ownership, and choose how to exit in unique ways. She has also been researching green investing, and how PE firms elect to invest in green industries. Primarily a quantitative researcher, she combines individual-level, firm-level and industry-level data to examine the wide-spread implications of public and private investing. She also utilised qualitative data to engage in abduction through her work.

Qualifications

• PhD in Business & Management, Warwick Business School, UK
• Master of Research in Business Strategy, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
• Master of Science in International Business & Management, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
• Bachelor of Civil Engineering, University College Dublin, Ireland

Student education

Deirdre has taught on a variety of undergraduate, postgraduate and executive teaching. She has received an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching in 2021 from Warwick Business School, after completing the teaching accreditation that is offered to PhD students. She has taught a vareity of course work across the realms of corporate strategy, strategy as practice. innovation management, human resource management, sustainability and economics in highly regulated fields. She was the senior tutor for the Mergers & Acquisitions Global MBA programme at Warwick Business School from 2020 to 2024, one of the top ranked MBA programmes in the world. She currently is an undergraduate dissertation theses, and teaches corporate strategy, innovation management and CSR topics at LUBS.