Rory authored over 40 scholarly papers, eight books (including two novels). In 2015, his third book - The Case for FairShares - articulated findings from a decade of action research at Sheffield Business School to support social economy development.
In 2019, he published his fifth academic textbook - the third edition of Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice (co-authored with Dr Mike Bull). This is recognised across Europe, Asia, North America and Oceania as a seminal text for social enterprise studies at all levels.
These books helped to win an Erasmus+ grant (FairShares Labs for Social and Blue Innovation, 2017 – 2019). Rory co-authored and edited a new publication in 2017-2020 on developing a methodology to establish FairShares Labs piloted by six organisations in five EU countries.
Rory has peer-reviewed papers for 19 different journals (12 ABS ranked) and chaired streams at the world's top social enterprise and co-operative research conferences. Over his career, he supervised 11 PhD students, 9 of whom successfully completed their research degrees.