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Frank Mei­er

Associate Professor

Subjects
Decision-making Board Change management Leadership Public management Organisation Project management Education Discourse Qualitative methods Social responsibility

Primary research areas

Lead­er­ship and so­ci­et­al trans­formation
Lead­er­ship and lead­er­ship stud­ies are fa­cing new de­mands by grand, so­ci­et­al trans­form­a­tions, weth­er in the shape of crisis - e.g. cli­mate, geo­pol­it­ics, pan­dem­ics - or in the shape of policy or stra­tegic change - e.g., di­git­al­isa­tion, auto­ma­tion, di­versity and cost-re­duc­tion. Lead­er­ship is sup­posed to lead in dif­fer­ent ways - to ad­ress, strategize, alivi­ate, ex­plore and ex­ploit - these trans­form­a­tions and may it­self change as it re­lies on or is be­ing hol­lowed out by the very same trans­form­a­tions as per­haps in the case of auto­ma­tion
Nov­el lead­er­ship the­or­iz­ing
I ad­dress these so­ci­et­al trans­form­a­tions via sev­er­al the­or­et­ic­al vant­age points, e.g., re­spons­ible lead­er­ship, ad­apt­ive lead­er­ship, lead­er­ship in in­ter­ac­tion or the com­mu­nic­at­ive con­sti­tu­tion of lead­er­ship as well as through a great vari­ety of em­pir­ic­al op­por­tun­it­ies.
Lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment
Lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment is an in­teg­ral and lo­gic­al part of the re­search port­fo­lio and via in­ter­ac­tion­al stud­ies, I try to de­tail how learn­ing takes place in lead­er­ship and man­age­ment edu­ca­tion set­tings.

I ex­plore lead­er­ship in the real world to in­stig­ate dia­logue and re­flec­tion with prac­ti­tion­ers. Ideally, I re­gister how lead­er­ship prac­ti­tion­ers them­selves un­der­stand and re­act to the so­ci­et­al and or­gan­iz­a­tion­al trans­form­a­tions and fol­low how these re­acti

Turning leadership studies towards societal transformation 

I am a leadership scholar with a particular focus on how societal changes, often understood as changes in stakeholders’ expectations to leadership, are handled in the leadership process. With the leadership process, I mean the way organizational influence processes play out between organizational members. My theoretical platform – the communicative as constitutive approach - means that I have a distinct opportunity to understand the leadership process as a dialogic accomplishment which, for instance, takes place during otherwise perhaps uneventful meetings. 

My research contributes to  

- Turning leadership to face societal transformation rather than tired and opaque ‘psychological processes’ or the even less credible ‘personality traits’. 

- New ways of thinking leadership theory beyond the tired research interview into interactions and communication going on the organization 

- A realization, that more-than-human beings – e.g. ideas, ideals, technology, futures and pasts – play a role in the leadership process  

- A renewed understanding of responsible leadership if these more-than-human beings also have a voice, in which case what is usually called nature or tech suddenly gets a voice in the leadership process 

- New ways of designing and delivering leadership development as more-than-human beings turn up and participate in programs as well as in the leadership process 

On the level of impact, I contribute to 

- Teaching and course development at CBS Executive Education programmes like Master of Public Governance and Master of Business Development as well as the Norwegian Master in Knowledge Management 

- My broader engagement in management education, in which field I for example currently am vice-chair in the Norwegian national evaluation of 11 master programmes in leadership 

- Various leadership development engagement outside CBS like CBS Executive Foundation, the leadership course with Postgraduate Programme in Orthodontics at the University of Copenhagen. 

Publications

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August 2025

Leadership Work in an AI Development Project

How Topicalizing Takes Part in the Production of Direction

Frank Mei­er, Associate Professor

Lise Ju­ste­sen, Associate Professor

Ur­su­la Ples­ner, Associate Professor

Go to publication

2024

From Container to Concerns

Brigid Carroll

Frank Mei­er, Associate Professor

Go to publication

21 December 2023

Det er nødvendigt, at ledere forlænger håbet, når AI-projekter ikke indfrier løfterne

Ur­su­la Ples­ner, Associate Professor

Frank Mei­er, Associate Professor

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Outside activities

Valu­ing In­vis­ible Work (VIEW) , 2020 - 2024

The col­lab­or­at­ive pro­ject Valu­ing in­vis­ible work (VIEW) sought to un­der­stand ef­fi­ciency am­bi­tions and di­git­al­iz­a­tion pro­jects in prac­tice and was fun­ded by the In­de­pend­ent Dan­ish Re­search Coun­cil, 2020-2024. The pro­ject fo­cussed on the craft­ing and cir­cu­la­tion of promis­sory doc­u­ments such as di­git­al­iz­a­tion strategies and busi­ness plans and on the new tasks that arise with di­git­al­iz­a­tion. The was to in­vest­ig­ate and the­or­ize the ‘in­vis­ible work’ in­volved in di­git­al­iz­a­tion pro­jects, in­clud­ing how it is ascribed mean­ing and val­ued.
Link to WETO

Lead­er­ship De­vel­op­ment in the Pub­lic Sec­tor , 2014 - 2018

Lead­er­ship and 'per­son­al lead­er­ship' are today seen as cru­cial con­di­tions for the wel­fare state to be able to ful­fil its tasks. At the same time, man­age­ment de­vel­op­ment is seen as an im­port­ant con­di­tion for man­age­ment to be able to meet ex­pect­a­tions. In re­cent years, there­fore, massive in­vest­ments have been made in man­age­ment de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes – both in the form of in­tern­al or­gan­iz­a­tion­al pro­grammes and in the form of ac­tu­al man­age­ment train­ing aimed at pub­lic sec­tor man­agers. Des­pite the wide­spread in­vest­ment in lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment, it is not known what or­gan­iz­a­tion­al ef­fects the lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment pro­grams have. Stud­ies of lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment pro­grams typ­ic­ally fo­cus on in­di­vidu­al par­ti­cipants' per­form­ance in terms of com­pet­en­cies. On the oth­er hand, this pro­ject will in­vest­ig­ate the or­gan­iz­a­tion­al ef­fects of the de­vel­op­ment pro­grams. What prac­tices and be­liefs do the pro­grams form and com­mu­nic­ate in re­la­tion to the wel­fare state's or­gan­iz­a­tions? What do these prac­tices and no­tions mean for the re­la­tion­ship between man­agers and em­ploy­ees and for the per­form­ance of the or­gan­iz­a­tions' tasks? To an­swer these ques­tions, the pro­ject will ex­am­ine both the con­tent/ped­ago­gic­al prac­tices of lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and their or­gan­iz­a­tion­al sig­ni­fic­ance. The pro­ject will use dis­course, case and sur­vey meth­ods. An in­tern­al or­gan­iz­a­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme and a dip­loma pro­gramme have been chosen as cases.
https://www.cbs.dk/en/cbs-agenda/areas/cbs-leadership-centre/news/award-winning-research-project-management-courses-do-not-work-as-intended