The Management, Organisation & Society Group (MOS) conducts empirical and conceptual research as well as research-based teaching about organisations: how they are structured and managed, how they emerge and change, how they function and how they are challenged, and how people work and interact within them.

Our current research includes studies of strategic alliances and entrepreneurship, how power and resistance is expressed and channeled in organisations, how learning and teaching is enabled and obstructed, how initiatives, innovations and technologies create new conditions for work, leadership and organising, and how people’s bodies, emotions and identities affect and are affected by organisational norms, values and practices.

We are also interested in how organisations influence and are influenced by the world around them. Organisations exist in societies that both enable and constrain their activities. The interplay between organisations and society is of importance for a number of issues, including reward systems and economic growth , change and reduncancy  processes , social and ethnic conflicts, equal opportunities, health and disability, as well as ethical and environmental issues. As organisational researchers we study these problems by analysing how they are created and changed through organisational processes and structures.

Doing so, we seek to make significant and original contributions that enhance the theoretical and empirical understanding of management and organisation and spur nuanced public debate about the role of management and organisations in society.

Research themes

The Management, Organisation & Society Group (MOS) conducts research mainly along the following four themes:

•             Organisation, culture and society
•             Health, embodiment and diversity
•             Innovation, organisation and knowledge
•             Management, IT and new work practices

Our faculty members and doctoral students also conduct research in other areas. You can find out more about our individual researchers by reading their research profiles on the website.

Organisation, culture and society

This topic explores the relationship between organisational activities, cultural phenomena and wider societal developments . Particular emphasis is on how organisations, independently and in constellations, affect and shape cultural and societal values, trends and patterns. We also investigate how dominant cultures and ideas affect the ways in which organisations function and develop.

Health, embodiment and diversity

Researchers involved in this theme investigate issues of power and resistance in workplace health promotion, how bodies, emotions and identities are shaped and expressed in organisations, and how gender, disability and other diversity aspects are managed in organisations. A central idea is that people are constituted in, enable and change formal and informal aspects of management and organisation.  Current projects include studies of companies working to promote health and well-being amongst employees and organisational efforts to integrate disabled employees.

Innovation, organisation and knowledge

Research within this theme explores the dynamic interplay between different forms of knowledge and organizational  activities/practices. Innovation is regarded central to the development of organisations and societies.  We investigate the organisational conditions for innovative product development and the growth and dissemination of new management practices. Doing so, our research seeks to enhance our understanding of innovation as an empirical phenomenon  and to contribute to a more critical and theoretically informed understanding of organisational, social, product and service innovations. 

Professor Tommy Jensen is the Chair of the Management, Organisation & Society Group at Stockholm University School of Business. A full list of our faculty members and doctoral students is presented to the right.