The Department's research field may be described as the ”organisation of economic activities”. The primary purpose of the Department is to contribute to an understanding of the economic organisation of society and, in particular, how and why activities are organised in markets, enterprises, business sectors and other ”institutions”.
 
Ultimately, the purpose is to describe the suitability of a given organisation from both a social and a business point of view. The Department’s contribution to CBS’ profile therefore lies in the strategic area: How are enterprises organised and what are their limits to obtain maximum competitiveness? It is implemented by way of competition strategy, technology strategy, human resource management, knowledge management or – with a new term – organisation strategy.
The department research is therefore often conducted against a highly concrete empirical background, where the primary goal is not model development but to understand real-world phenomena.

The Department has a long-standing tradition of research in industry, innovation and technology-related topics, and these areas remain a major element of its research field. So far, a large part of Department research (especially its technology-oriented research) has had a strong empirical foundation and been inductively oriented. One of the strengths of the Department is that it has deep and detailed empirical knowledge of the research fields addressed, based on combinations of interviews, surveys, register data and many types of secondary sources.

The research areas are

Innovation studies

• Organisation of innovation
• Appropriability of innovations and intellectual property studies
• Institutional environment for innovation
• University-industry relations
• Innovation management and strategy
• User-producer relationships

Industrial dynamics

• Industry analysis
• Regional studies, industrial clustering and agglomeration studies
• Labour market dynamics
• The dynamics of market organisation
• Project-organised industries

Forms of organisation

• Make-or-buy decisions
• Outsourcing
• Corporate/technology strategy
• IPR strategy
• Theory of the company
• Resource-based theories

Law and Economics

• Industrial economics
• Intellectual property theory

Research methods

• Theory of science
• Economic modelling
• Statistical/econometric methods
• Case studies