Jesper Strandgaard
Professor
Primary research areas
Pursuing this research interest, he addresses issues of institutional action and agency, industry emergence and field structuring as well as organizational identity construction and legitimacy in studies of High-Tech firms, mergers and acquisitions, and cultural-creative enterprises.
Organization Theory
Organizing and managing creative and innovative enterprises as well as the challenges and practices involved in these ventures.
The role of cultural and market intermediaries is studied. A focus is on how these intermediaries assign value to products and services though their evaluative forms and practices in the fields of film, food and festivals.
Institutional Theory
Industry emergence and field structuring – how do new industries and fields get started and structured over time?
Organizational identity construction and legitimacy – studies the search for ‘optimal distinctiveness’ and attempts to balance distinctiveness and similarity.
Media and educational institutions are studied and the role they play in production, diffusion and consumption of managerial knowledge, management concepts and management practices.
Organizational and Institutional Change and Transformation
Mergers and acquisition as a distinct example of organizational change involving transformation and integration challenges.
Culinary movements seen as innovators is studying their role as innovators and their impact on innovations and changes in the culinary field.
Not all new ideas are good ideas!
My research is conducted through empirical studies typically collaborating with the organizations in focus to get access to the organization and field in question. This involves also providing feedback on findings during the research as well as feedback on results.
My research on food and the culinary field contributes first and foremost to building and disseminating knowledge and practices concerning the ‘Sustainability Challenge’. The current project ‘Culinary Movements as Innovators’ and the research on ‘Culinary School Gardens’ are examples of this. A project like ‘Cre8Tv.EU – creativity for innovation and growth’ provided policy implications for the EU on top of the feedback to participating organizations.
Regarding other forms of dissemination and impact, two areas of my teaching, respectively HD-O (teaching Organization and Management) and CBS Executive Summer School (‘Det Relationelle Lederskab og Virksomhedens Organisering‘), are examples of dissemination where I consider having immediate, direct, practical impact on the participants.