Changes in ERIM’s Management Team

ERIM is pleased to announce that as of 1 April 2009, ERIM’s Management Team will welcome two exciting new appointments. <link people pursey-heugens _blank>Pursey Heugens, Professor of Organisation Theory at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University will succeed <link people patrick-groenen _blank>Patrick Groenen as ERIM Associate Director. Patrick Groenen, Professor in Statistics at the Econometric Institute of the Erasmus School of Economics, will move on within ERIM and succeed <link people eric-van-heck _blank>Eric van Heck as Director of Doctoral Education. Both Pursey Heugens and Patrick Groenen value and support the strategic collaboration of RSM and ESE in research and doctoral education in the field of research in management. With this new team, ERIM will be in a strong position towards its re-accreditation process for the KNAW in 2010.

ERIM thanks Eric for his many contributions to the ERIM Doctoral programme. Eric van Heck has received the prestigious MIT Sloan Visiting Scholarship and will be at the MIT Sloan School of Management Centre for Information Systems Research (CISR) as of the summer of 2009.

ERIM looks forward to working with Patrick Groenen in his new role at ERIM. The ERIM Doctoral Programme is at the heart of the collaboration of both schools and Patrick will work hard on maintaining and strengthening the success of this joint programme.

ERIM welcomes Pursey Heugens in his role of ERIM Associate Director. Pursey has been a high-performing member of ERIM since his return to RSM in 2005. In recognition of his work Pursey received several research awards, including the ERIM Best Doctoral Dissertation, Outstanding Performance by a Young Researcher, and Top Article awards. He is also an excellent teacher in the ERIM Doctoral Programme.

Pursey Heugens
<link people pursey-heugens _blank>Pursey Heugens is greatly looking forward to his new responsibilities: “I have been with ERIM from the beginning, and I was one of the first PhD students to graduate under the ERIM auspices. I certainly owe the strong start of my career to the Institute, and I am still benefiting from ERIM’s support and encouragement in my everyday academic work as a researcher. I am truly delighted that I now have the opportunity to give back to the Institute in this role and through my efforts as Associate Director. My goal is to ensure that ERIM will remain a primary vehicle for talent development and academic career advancement for every member of the institute – MPhil and PhD students and faculty members alike.”

Pursey P.M.A.R. Heugens (1973) obtained his PhD in management from the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) in 2001, after which he worked as Assistant Professor at Concordia University (2001–2003) and at the University of Utrecht (2003–2005). He returned to RSM in the summer of 2005, and was appointed Professor of Organisation Theory in 2008.

In his interdisciplinary work, Pursey studies comparative corporate governance and business ethics; bureaucracy, institutional, and ecological theories of organisation; and the strategy and governance of alternative organisational forms like family firms, business groups, and professional service firms. His research has been published in top journals like Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organisation Studies, and Journal of Management Studies.

Patrick Groenen
<link people patrick-groenen _blank>Patrick Groenen joined the ERIM Management Team in September 2006, succeeding Philip Hans Franses as ERIM Associate Director. Patrick: “Over the past three years, I have enjoyed being active within ERIM. It is stimulating to meet many of our fellows and members, each striving for high quality research. The professionalism and dedication of the ERIM staff is another aspect that makes ERIM a pleasant place to work.” Patrick is looking forward to his new responsibility. “Since the start of the doctoral programme, I have been teaching statistical methods to our doctoral candidates. By doing so, I have already been in contact with nearly all PhD candidates present at ERIM. It is fascinating to see how PhD candidates develop into independent researchers. I hope to continue and even improve the quality we deliver to our doctoral students. I will work hard to make the ERIM Doctoral Programme the best place to start an academic career in management research for young talented academics at both ESE and RSM.”

Patrick J.F. Groenen (1964) graduated as psychometrician from Leiden University in 1988. He went on to specialise in statistics and data analysis at the Department of Data Theory in Leiden. Since 2002, he has held the position of Professor of Statistics at the Econometric Institute of the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE). Since September 2006, he has been Associate Director of ERIM.

Patrick’s work focuses on visualisation, exploratory multivariate analysis, multidimensional scaling, numerical algorithms and applications in the field of management and economics. In the early stages of his career, he was involved in getting visualisation software into SPSS. Patrick: “In many cases, it helps making a visualisation of your data as it improves your understanding.” To promote these ideas, he has published articles in several academic journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Operations Research, Journal of Empirical Finance, Psychological Methods, Psychometrika, Multivariate Behavioural Research, and the Journal of Classification. He co-authored a text book on multidimensional scaling (Springer, 1997, 2005) and has been co-editor of four special issues and one book.

Eric van Heck
Eric looks back on his time as ERIM Director of Doctoral Education with great satisfaction: “The doctoral community has been a great community to work for. I thank the ERIM management and the ERIM doctoral office for their commitment to high quality research services and their excellent cooperation. We have worked hard to attract excellent candidates, to improve the doctoral programme, and to stimulate our doctoral candidates to pursue an academic career and work at the best business schools in the world.”

<link people eric-van-heck _blank>Eric van Heck has a challenging new road ahead for this year. He holds the Chair of Information Management and Markets at Rotterdam School of Management (RSM). He is conducting research on the strategic and operational use of information technologies for companies and markets. He is best known for his work on how companies can create value with online auctions. He has co-authored or co-edited twelve books such as Making Markets (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) and Smart Business Networks (Springer, 2005).

His articles have been published in journals such as California Management Review, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Harvard Business Review, Information Systems Research and Journal of Information Technology.

More Information
<link people pursey-heugens _blank>Personal Homepage Pursey Heugens
<link people eric-van-heck _blank>Personal Homepage Eric van Heck
<link people patrick-groenen _blank>Personal Homepage Patrick Groenen