Erik Bjurström, Researcher


Erik Bjurström was born in 1966 and grew up in Malung, Dalecarlia, Sweden. He studied theology in Uppsala and made his civil service in Congo before taking up business studies at Stockholm University and Kassel University, Germany. He worked as a business controller, operations analyst and consultant e.g. at the Karolinska hospital, the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) and the Institute for Personnel- and Business development at Uppsala University (IPF), while entering into academic research, rendering a PhD from Uppsala University in 2007. His research interests have been broad and crossed over different but overlapping fields, such as: 1) Intellectual captial & Integrated reporting, especially in networks and different cultural contexts, 2) The meaning of "lean" and quality work as expressions of management control, 3) Business & intelligence (including methodology) in an ill-structured world, 4) Control & collaboration (civil/military &  academy/industry), 5) Control doctrines and alternative notions of control (in other eras and contexts e.g. military mission command  and notions of control stemming from the romantic era, especially with its connections to Heidegger/Nietsche/Goethe's ontological and epistemological viewpoints). 

Erik Bjurström looks at innovation management with an emphasis on managment control of innovative organizations and organizations in unstable environments demanding innovativeness and adaptability. At the heart of these issues is the very idea of control and how it is thought to work, expressed or implicitly assumed in management control doctrines, i.e. networks of assumptions, theories, experiences, culture etc influencing how managment control is practiced. 

PhD students supervised as assistant supervisor:

Christer Nygren
Farhad Norouzilame (former)
Helena Blackbright