Nils Brunsson

Nils Brunsson (* 1946) is a Swedish organization sociologist and professor at the Stockholm School of Economics.

After graduating in economics in 1969 from the University of Gothenburg, he received his doctorate in 1976. After his habilitation, he held professorships at the Universities of Gothenburg and Uppsala, until he moved to Stockholm in 1980. He is since 1980 Professor and since 1986 Chair of Management and Organization at the Stockholm School of Economics and Director of the Center for Public Management. In addition Brunsson since 1997 also professor at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management. He was also a visiting professor and research stays in Paris, Stanford, at the Science Center Berlin and at the University of Bielefeld.

His research interests lie in the area of ​​planning and decision theory, and in particular the question of how affects the shape of the organization decision-making processes of their members. He assumes that organizational action is rational only in this way that it is an irrational decision making process is based. This is due to the large number of inconsistent claims that constitutes a society to an organization. In addition, Brunsson employed on the grounds of reforms in organizations. It assumes that reforms are not addressed in order to actually achieve improvements in the organization, but merely as a more routine process of generating stability of an organization.

Brunssons work is regarded as a major boost to the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann, in particular for their organizational sociology theses. Not least for this reason, he was Niklas Luhmann 2007 Visiting Professor at the University of Bielefeld in the summer semester.

Publications

  • The Irrational Organization: Irrationality As a Basis for Organizational Action and Change. John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1985, ISBN 0-471-90795-2
  • The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions, and Actions in Organizations. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1989, ISBN 0-471-92074-6
  • Johan P. Olsen: The reforming organization. Routledge, London 1993, ISBN 0-415-08287-0
  • Organizing Organizations. Fagbokforlaget, Bergen- Sandviken 1998, ISBN 82-7674-422-2
  • With Bengt Jacobsson: A World of Standards. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-925695-0
  • Mechanisms of Hope. Maintaining the dream of the rational organization. Copenhagen Business School Press, 2006, ISBN 87-630-0145-4
  • The Consequences of Decision-Making. Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-19-920628-7
Organizational studies Integrated Authority File
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