J.L. (José Luis) Gallegos

Organizations are ubiquitous. That is not surprising given their extremely important role in varied domains. Thus the study of organizations is central to our understanding of societies and economies. How societies and markets change and persist is therefore closely related to understanding organizations’ change and persistence, which is a principal interest of Organization Theory (OT) research. Persistence and change co-exist and co-constitute one another and include various accompanying processes. For example, change is often accompanied by contestation as the status-quo is often preferred by some while challenged by others. Alluding to the past, history, legacy, tradition, and the role of time often underlie and enable organizations’ persistence. Concepts such as conformity, creativity, innovation and identity, hint to both persistence and change and are thus central to investigating how and why organizations, organizational forms, organizational populations and categories persist and change. Specifically, what are the antecedents, underlying processes and consequences explaining organizations’ change and persistence?

We are looking for a PhD candidate in OT to be part of this broad research program. The specific focus of the PhD projects will be determined in collaboration between the PhD candidate and the supervising faculty with strong encouragement for the student’s development of her/his particular interests; generally the expectation is that the focus would take a macro perspective namely, organization(s) as the main unit of analysis, and be aligned with the supervisors’ core expertise.