Once Upon a Time

Organizations as a field of study originated in 1952 from an interdisciplinary study circle of the Scandinavian Summer University. It attracted researchers with a background in economics, psychology, law, sociology and engineering sciences.

There were lively sessions over the next eight years, until the study circle was ousted from the Summer University on the grounds that it was no longer interdisciplinary, but a discipline in its own right. Nevertheless, co-operation within the group continued under different forms. Throughout the opulent 60s, this group of people was very much concerned with industrial democracy, job enrichment, etc. This gave the group a politically red (or pink) colour and its approach, with its affinity for behavioural rather than axiomatic models, was considered to be 'alternative', at least in comparison with those taken by colleagues in economics and business.

A strong theoretical base found in 'The Carnegie-Tech School' was cemented by James March's stay in Norway and Denmark between 1970 and 1971 and the later creation of the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research. This development secured collaboration between the Scandinavian community and Stanford University, California. SCANCOR has just celebrated its 10th and James March's - slightly delayed - 70th anniversary with a very successful conference held at Stanford, entitled 'Samples of the Future', which attracted 150 scholars from Scandinavia and the United States.

Then, in 1974, at a meeting of a small group of scholars in Breau-sans-Nappe, EGOS was formed! Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (director Clemens Heller and its secretariat) in Paris gave invaluable support over the many years that followed. Then, in association with the Institute of Organization and Industrial Sociology, I organized the first EGOS Colloquium at Arresohoj. Nobody knew me, but no one else volunteered! We Danes also functioned as EGOS secretariat for the next three years, supported by Paris. This spontaneous, ad hoc organizing of activities continued in the years that followed. It was perhaps shockingly informal for some, but it did function! Rotating between the European countries, institutes took upon themselves the responsibility of finding a location for the colloquium, of organizing it, and of finding funding for the miscellaneous costs incurred.

The oil crisis of 1973 suffocated the optimism of the 60s and issues of efficiency, introduction of new technology, organization design, etc. came to fore. In spite of a crisis in the national economy, the research field benefited strongly from a rapid expansion Within the business school sector. From 1970 to the present day the number of students in business economics has increased twentyfold, leading to a rapid expansion in the number of teaching positions. Even though lecturers were forced to invest most of their time in managing the extended teaching programme at undergraduate as well as graduate level, the expansion also increased resources available for research, as a fixed fraction of the positions (it used to be 50 percent) is reserved for research.

In the late 80s, design ambitions were countered by the cultural perspective, although culture change soon became a fad. The latest orientations lean heavily towards social constructivism and institutionalism. More generally, however, the behavioural models disseminated from organization studies into disciplines such as marketing, accounting, political science, sociology of law, industrial economics and philosophy.

Sociology (the first chair was in 1938) has never been a prominent discipline in Denmark. The first and only independent curriculum was created in 1954, but in 1986, the programme was denied enrolment, in effect until 1994, when the Institute of Sociology at Copenhagen University was reorganized. Behavioural sciences flowered, therefore, in organization departments and among the 'missionaries' out in the neighbouring disciplines mentioned above, located in university departments, independent research institutions and consultancy firms.

The interdisciplinary start of organization studies and its later dissemination have made it a discipline rather than a profession. The modest level of 'grounded theories' has tempered the normative ambitions and maintained an affinity with empirical studies, mainly in the form of case studies.

The Clans of Organization Researchers

As Flemming Agersnap's account reveals, organization studies has acquired a strong foothold in Denmark during the last thirty years and the expansion of the business schools has been a major driving force in this connection. Features of the Danish society such as its modest size, homogeneity, well-developed networks and the openness of the business community have facilitated access to both private- and public-sector organizations and the development of a tradition for in-depth case studies and the utilization of qualitative data (interviews, observations, documents), elements of intervention, and a theoretical-empirical approach and reporting modus.