Solbjerg Plads 3, B3
DK-2000 Frederiksberg
Head of Department: Jesper Norus
Telefon: +45 3815 2815
Fax: +45 3815 2828
E-mail: bd.ioa@cbs.dk

The primary research areas are organization theory, business and industrial sociology, management and strategy, and human resource management. The four areas are described below. See Research@CBS (CBS research database) for publications from the department.

Organization Theory
This research area represents the department's studies on organizational structures, cultures, and processes.

The area develops and unfolds in the interface between research object and theoretical point of departure. The diversity in choice of research fields has been pronounced over the years. Currently focus is on hospitals, NGOs, temporary organizations and knowledge intensive companies. The theoretical point of departure has varied greatly, but currently seems to center on institutional, constructivist and systems theories.

Research on organization theory at the department represents an attempt to open 'the black box' that in the theory of economics is equivalent to agents: to demonstrate how the structure, culture and process of agents determine their function and in effect their participation of the economic system. This type of behavioral supplement to the more analytical theory of economics must be an integrated element in any education and at all levels being necessary insights for understanding and applying analytical models in practice.

Business and Industrial Sociology
Currently this field comprises two major domains one of which focuses on the basis for and development of the informal social structures, norms and attitudes characterizing the company and working life, and the interplay between the latter of the formal norms and rules of the company. The emphasis on norms represents an important challenge to the rational agent model of economics. The analyses include both interaction among employee groups, companies and stake holders, and how the organizational conditions, organizational boundaries and the two sides of industry interact with employee behavior and contribute to manage problems and conflicts.

The other major domain is the analysis of national, regional and industrial business systems. At the macro/meso level, international and regional comparative analyses have generated an important correction to the universal theories of traditional business economics on relationships and development. Nations, regions or sectors seem to develop along specific dynamics that only make sense by including historical and institutional conditions for company actions. The company must been understood as a complex social whole in which social roles and the integration of roles operate in a specific context.

The rationale of this research area is that any company forms part of and creates both its identity and its means of subsistence in the interplay with systems of businesses and regulatory mechanisms located in time and space. Understanding the dynamics of these systems and determining their significant impact on the functioning and efficiency of companies is the important basis for policies and management.

Management and Strategy
The sociological tradition of the department is reflected in management issues being analyzed in a historical and national context - both 'top-down' and 'bottom-up'. Focus is not on the manager as an individual, but on management processes and systems, including participative forms of management (industrial democracy).

Other novel approaches are management and strategic processes conditioned by ambiguity and paradoxes and management of organizations characterized by professions, part-time participation and voluntariness.

Management of Technology represents a more recent approach to both strategy and management. The technological development is changing radically tasks, production processes and the need for innovation in the modern company. Technology becomes a strategic resource that makes new demands on competence development, quality control, management of innovation and the organizing of the company and its external network.

Human Resource Management
The point of departure is that human resources are strategically important, especially in knowledge based and services oriented companies. The analyses identify needs and opportunities for developing and sustaining competencies.

Learning is treated in terms of various types of learning processes, traditional as well as experienced, organizational learning processes tied to the job itself. Other important issues are the division of responsibility between top management, line managers and the personnel department for recruitment, socialization, and development of human resources. A more recent and international aspect of this area is the distribution of various policies and practices among different nations and types of organizations.

European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) 2003 ( http://www.egos.cbs.dk )
Professor Peer Hull Kristensen was elected chairman of EGOS in July 2001.The response has been very positive and in effect the Department of Organization and Industrial Sociology has gained a strong position in the European community of researchers within organization theory. The 19th EGOS Colloquium in 2003 will take place in Copenhagen hosted by the Copenhagen Business School and in this context the department will make itself known as an attractive research environment.