Role
Toke Bjerregaard is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Management, Nottingham Business School (NTU), in the Responsible and Sustainable Business Lab. He is interested in the work of strategizing and organizing in complex contexts. Current research explores the work of strategizing and organizing for grand challenges and sustainability.
Career overview
Toke’s research has revolved around the work of strategizing, organizing, and managing in complex contexts. The research has addressed the strategies and practices of organizations in navigating a range of complex settings. The research is often grounded in a practice-based studies. He has also had a keen interest in research conversations at the intersections of institutional theory and practice-based management studies, for example addressing how organizations seek to harness complexity to harvest its possible benefits. Over the past years, these interests have evolved into a line of studies on strategy processes and practices around grand societal challenges within and between organizations. He thus studies the practices and processes through which organizations strategize and tackle societal challenges. Toke holds a PhD from and has worked as associate professor at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Teaching: taught topics such as global management (strategy, IHRM, global talent management, CSR in MNCs, culture etc), qualitative methodology, team management, strategy as practice, organizational change etc.
Toke supervises students within the broad fields of strategy, organization and leadership as well as international business and management. He is open for supervising students within all academic levels, from undergraduate to PhD students. Examples of recently supervised dissertation topics include (but are not limited to):
- Strategy: strategic change, strategy implementation/emergence, open strategy, strategy meetings and workshops, emotions in strategizing, strategic sensemaking/giving, strategy as practice, consultants' involvement in strategizing, strategizing for digital transformation, sustainability strategizing
- Organization: Organizational change, organizational culture, leadership, identity, institutional entrepreneurship, institutional change, post-merger/acquisition (cultural) integration, sensemaking, organizational knowledge, talent management
- International business and management: strategizing/organizing in MNCs, IB and societal challenges, cross-border practice/knowledge transfer, IJVs, strategic/organizational change in MNCs, international M&As, power and politics in MNCs, IHRM (e.g. global mobility, global talent management), sustainability strategy/CSR in MNCs, institutional voids/complexity, social and political strategies of MNCs, partnerships, cross-border management/leadership, culture, global virtual teams
Research areas
Toke studies the strategies and practices mobilised by organisations and their actors in strategizing, organizing and managing in complex contexts. Recent projects explore practices and processes, within and between organizations, involved in tackling grand societal challenges. Some studies for example explore strategy practices and processes of multinational corporations in tackling grand societal challenges. These studies are examples of ‘grand challenge’ research within the field of strategy studies that deals with challenges faced by local and global communities and firms’ involvement in tackling them.
Research topics: Managing, strategizing and organizing in complex contexts, strategy-as-practice, grand challenges and sustainability
Publishing in journals such as: Organization Studies, British Journal of Management, Strategic Organization, European Management Journal, Technovation, Economic and Industrial Democracy.
External activity
Referee activity: reviewing for journals such as Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Management, Human Relations, Academy of Management Review, Research Policy, European Management Journal
Editorial review board member at: European Management Journal (the EMJ Best Reviewer Award for 2023)
TB has been involved in different consultancy jobs, for example writing reports for key industry and government actors, providing input to research councils on furthering research and development at the intersection of universities and industry.
Collaborations and knowledge exchange with a wide range of public, private and hybrid organizations on research projects.
Stays abroad: Stanford University, Lund University.