Inaugural Lecture - Lars Thøger Christensen
Inaugural lecture by Lars Thøger Christensen, Professor
Department of Intercultural Communication and Management
It is well established in marketing, management and organizational studies that organizations frequently talk to themselves in order to discover, confirm and celebrate who they are, what they stand for and how they would like to be seen by their constituencies. Most research has treated this propensity as a rather self-contained process shaped by organizational conceit or even narcissism. The performative qualities of such talk, e.g. its potential to stimulate new organizational practices, are largely left unexplored. In his inaugural, Lars Thøger Christensen will discuss such qualities and delineate how the notion of autocommunication keeps popping up in new guises and shapes – from identity management to corporate social responsibility – as an indispensable perspective in our attempts to understand the communicative behavior of contemporary organizations.
After many years at The University of Southern Denmark, Lars Thøger Christensen has returned to CBS where he continues his work within the areas of organizational identity, corporate communication, transparency, corporate social responsibility – and autocommunication. Together with colleagues from CBS, Kent State University and VU University, Lars is involved in several studies of organizational transparency, including an investigation of its social, political and epistemological potentials and limitations. In addition, he currently studies – also with colleagues from CBS – the relationship between corporate words and action, an issue of utmost importance in the communication environment of today shaped by growing emphasis on consistency and credibility.
Lars Thøger Christensen holds a Ph.D. in Communication, an MA in Social and Political Sciences and a BA in History from Odense University. He was departmental chair at the Department of Marketing, Odense University 1996-2000 and director of SDU’s flexible MBA education 2008-2013, a period in which the education received an unconditional accreditation from ACE Denmark. Lars’ publications are widely cited and he has received several awards for his work, including the Statoil Research Prize, the Textbook of the Year by National Communication Association and the Literati Network “Outstanding Paper” Award.
Please register at tilmelding.ikl@cbs.dk
Programme
15.00-15.05 – Welcome by Head of Department Dorte Salskov-Iversen
15.05-15.15 – Welcome by Alan Irwin, Dean of Research at CBS
15.15-16.00 – Inaugural lecture by Lars Thøger Christensen
16.00-17.00 – Department of Intercultural Communication and Management hosts a reception