Nils Brunsson

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Nils Brunsson (born December 26, 1946 ) is a Swedish organizational sociologist and professor of business administration at Uppsala University .

Life

Brunsson studied philosophy and economics at the University of Gothenburg . After graduating in economics in 1969, he received his doctorate there in 1976. After his habilitation, he held professorships at the Universities of Gothenburg (1976–1979) and Uppsala (1979–1980) until he moved to Stockholm in 1980 . There he has been a professor since 1980 and, from 1986, the Chair of Management and Organization at the Stockholm School of Economics and Director of the Center for Public Management (1982–2010). In addition, Brunsson has been a professor at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management since 1997 . In 2010, Brunsson left Stockholm and took over the professorship for business administration at Uppsala University . Although he is a professor of economics, Brunsson is considered to be one of the most influential sources of impetus in sociological organizational research, which is also widely received in education and political science .

He also held visiting professorships and research stays in Paris (2001–2002; 2009), Stanford (2004–2006), at the Science Center Berlin (2008) and the Niklas Luhmann visiting professorship at Bielefeld University (2007).

In addition to teaching, Brunsson is involved in various academic endeavors and in the editorial offices of specialist journals, for example the Scandinavian Journal of Management or Organizational Learning .

In the 2017 summer semester, after his first visit ten years ago as "Luhmann" guest professor, Nils Brunsson is once again a visiting scientist at Bielefeld University.

Brunsson is married and has four children.

Research interests

His main research interests lie in the area of ​​planning and decision theory , and in particular the question of how the form of the organization influences the decision-making processes of its members. He assumes that organizational action only becomes rational when it is based on an irrational decision-making process. This is due to the large number of inconsistent demands that a society makes on an organization. In addition, Brunsson deals with the rationale for reforms in organizations. He assumes that reforms are not approached in order to actually achieve improvements in the organization, but merely as a routine process of creating stability in an organization. Over the past few years, Brunsson has developed the theory of "meta-organization" together with sociologist Göran Ahrne. Brunsson became known to a broad readership in organizational research through his much-cited essay "Reform as Routine" in 1989.

Brunsson's work is considered to be an important impetus for Niklas Luhmann's systems theory , especially for its organizational sociological theses. Not least for this reason, he was Niklas Luhmann visiting professor at the University of Bielefeld in the summer semester 2007, where he teaches as a visiting researcher again in the summer semester 2017.

Honors

In 1987, Brunsson was awarded the Best Researcher Prize by the Swedish Society for Business Administration and Economics and also the Dafolo Prize. In 1996 he was voted Teacher of the Year by the students. In 2005 he was awarded a six-year research grant from the Swedish Science Council ( Vetenskapsrådet ). In 2009 he was made an honorary member of the European Group for Organizational Studies . In 2011 he received the Lilly Und Sven Thuréus Prize of the Royal Society of Sciences.

Publications

Brunsson has published over 20 books and numerous articles in specialist journals, some of which were also in German.

  • The Irrational Organization: Irrationality As a Basis for Organizational Action and Change. John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1985, ISBN 0-471-90795-2
  • The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions, and Actions in Organizations. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1989, ISBN 0-471-92074-6
  • with Johan P. Olsen : The reforming organization. Routledge, London 1993, ISBN 0-415-08287-0
  • Organizing Organizations. Fagbokforlaget, Bergen-Sandviken 1998, ISBN 82-7674-422-2
  • with Bengt Jacobsson: A World of Standards. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-925695-0
  • Mechanisms of Hope. Maintaining the dream of the rational organization. Copenhagen Business School Press, 2006, ISBN 87-630-0145-4
  • The consequences of decision-making. Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-19-920628-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Profile of Nils Brunsson on the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research (SCORE) website; accessed on August 8, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m curriculum vitae (23 June 2014) of Nils Brunsson on the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research (SCORE) website; accessed on August 8, 2014.
  3. ↑ Niklas-Luhmann Visiting Professorship ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of Bielefeld University; accessed on August 8, 2014.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-bielefeld.de
  4. ^ Curriculum vitae (January 12, 2007) of Nils Brunsson on the website of Bielefeld University; accessed on August 8, 2014.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Brunsson, Nils
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish organizational sociologist and professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1946