People and Or­gan­iz­ing (PnO)

PnO is a research group at Copenhagen Business School dedicated to understanding how people shape and experience organisational life. At PnO, we explore the human side of organisations.

Our mission is to produce original, practice-oriented research that speaks directly to today’s organisational challenges. By staying close to everyday challenges and experiences in organisations, we aim to create knowledge that not only deepens academic understanding but also has a meaningful societal impact and drives change.

Seeing Organisations Through a Human Lens

We believe that organisations come alive through people. Our research begins with the everyday experiences of those who work within them—how they think, feel, act, and interact in their professional lives.

Drawing on social psychology, organisational sociology, sociology, and organisational ethnography, we examine the subtle dynamics of organisational life.

We work closely with a wide spectrum of professionals, from leaders and managers to frontline practitioners. These include police officers, healthcare staff, HR professionals, IT experts, academics, welfare workers, and production managers. Through their stories and practices, we uncover the complex, often invisible ways that people shape—and are shaped by—their organisational worlds.

A Problem-First Approach

We don’t study the processes of organising in isolation—we start with the problems they face. Our research is driven by the dilemmas, tensions, and challenges that arise in different settings. These might be societal issues, workplace conflicts, or complex local problems.

By grounding our research in the everyday realities of organisational life, we ensure that it is not only academically rigorous but also directly relevant to those navigating complex organisational settings.

Our focus is on everyday encounters; how managers, employees, and citizens interact and collaborate in diverse and evolving contexts. We explore settings such as agile organisational models, public-private partnerships, leadership reform struggles and translations, digital and AI-driven transformation processes, innovation initiatives, frontline work, and workplace well-being programmes.

Processes of organising unfold in specific, lived settings—contexts where interactions, tensions, and negotiations take shape. We believe these are the spaces where the most important questions arise.

How We Think and Work

A rich and diverse set of theoretical concepts guides our research. We work with interpretive frameworks, work practices, scripts and narratives, sensemaking and meaning creation, emotional labour, institutions, communicative practices, micro-interaction processes, collaboration, and power relations.

We focus on practice-based analysis, zooming in on how individuals and groups engage with each other and their environments in processes of organising in and around organisations.

We use qualitative and interpretive methods that allow us to stay close to lived experiences. These include ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, shadowing, and observational studies. Our approach is grounded in phenomenological and social constructivist traditions, helping us to capture the subtle, often overlooked dimensions of organisational life.

Turning Research into Impact

At PnO, we don’t just study practice, we engage with it. Our proximity to everyday work life allows us to collaborate meaningfully with practitioners throughout the research process.

We share our findings in ways that are accessible and actionable: through public talks, policy briefs, technical reports, practitioner-oriented books, and podcasts. Alongside our practitioner engagement, we contribute to global academic conversations by publishing in leading journals.

All of these activities are anchored in our Impact Lab, a dedicated common space where research meets real-world influence in, for example, workshop activities, meetings with practitioners, and other dissemination events and books.

Educating Future Organisational Leaders

Education is central to our work. We help develop and lead academic programmes at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), including:

• HA Psyk
• Cand.merc. (Psyk)
• Human Resource Management (HRM)
• People and Business Development (PBD)

We also play a key role in executive education, supporting professionals through specialised master’s programmes such as:

• Master of Public Governance (MPG)
• Master of Management Development (MMD)
• Master of Business Development (MBD)

Our group is led by:

Associate professor, Frans Bevort

Associate professor, Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen 

Please contact us for any further information.

Mathilde Hjerrild Carlsen, Postdoc

Charlotte Dadelborg Thomsen, PhD fellow