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Guest lecture

Preserving Knowledge
Associate Professor Mitchell L. Stevens, Stanford University
Knowledge production has long been a key issue, but what does the preservation of knowledge entail? Mitchell Stevens argues that knowledge preservation is an essential mandate of universities, and has four main aspects: universities archive knowledge by maintaining its varied physical manifestations; categorize it through departments, offices, and programs; reproduce it through instruction; and distribute it through social networks. The university as an organizational form has proven remarkably amenable to absorbing the growing complexity and costs of knowledge preservation in the modern era. Paradoxically, the same things that make universities such flexible mechanisms of knowledge preservation also riddle them with inefficiencies and administrative opacity. This paradox has important political implications for universities and their patrons.
Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. His previous appointments include New York University (2003-2009) and Hamilton College (1996-2003). He received his PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1996. Stevens is currently involved in two projects on the organization of higher education. The first is a comparative study of how U.S. research universities have formally organized research on world regions since World War II. The second considers the relationship between U.S. higher education and the American welfare state during the Cold War.

As of July 1, 2010, Mitchell Stevens will succeed Professor Woody Powell as the director of SCANCOR, The Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research at Stanford University.

Registration:
kht.ioa@cbs.dk
Registration by e-mail before 4 June 2010
Arranged by:
Department of Organization

Tid: 10.06 10.00 -12.00


Sted: Department of Organization
Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej 14 A
2000 Frederiksberg


Lokale: K4.74




Sidst opdateret af Dorrit Majlund 28.05.2010