History
Early years
In 1968-69, two young scholars from Scandinavia, Johan P. Olsen from the University of Bergen and Søren Christensen from the Copenhagen Business School, visited James G. March at the University of California, Irvine because of their interest in organization theory. Not long after their one-year visit, Jim March moved to Stanford University. But before taking up residence at Stanford in 1971, he arranged to spend six months in Bergen and six months in Copenhagen. This established relationship marked the beginning of a lasting interest in organization theory among a large number of Nordic scholars. Accordingly, several conferences and workshops were organized throughout the 1970s, and organization theories were spread to all corners of the Nordic countries.
March also invited young researchers to Stanford as visiting scholars. Olsen and Christensen continued to visit Stanford, and from the early 1980s also Guje Sevón, from the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki, and Nils Brunsson, from the Stockholm School of Economics, visited on an almost annual basis.
Soon there was a steady stream of visitors from the Nordic countries. Soon the idea began to establish not only an organization that would allow for a continuing flow of visitors, but also a more efficient administration to serve them. In 1988, during a conference on organization theory in Norway, a charter for a formal consortium was launched. The Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research, SCANCOR, formally opened at Stanford on 10 March 1989.
Working collaboratively with the School of Education, March secured space for SCANCOR in the Center for Educational Research at Stanford (CERAS), a modernist atrium building designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. SCANCOR’s space needed renovation, and the vision emerged to create offices reflecting quality Nordic design. The members of the SCANCOR board during its first 10 years – Brunsson, Christensen, Olson, and Sevón - gathered funds for renovation and ongoing administration. SCANCOR's Stanford opening was attended by numerous dignitaries, including Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. An institution had been brought into being. The photo above shows the SCANCOR board members, SCANCOR adminstrator Barbara Beuche and the first cohort of visiting scholars. –Guje Sevón, Stockholm School of Economics.
The research and teaching agenda of the Scandinavian Consortium was shaped by trends in organizational research at the time, notably: embeddedness in societies and environments, experiential learning and adaptation in organizations, the ways in which symbols and beliefs in organizations affect organizational action, and the examination of alternatives to simple rationality in organizations when goals are ambiguous and unstable. These trends, in conjunction with important changes in modern society such as internationalization, the expansion of information technology, and the growth and increased complexity of organizations, encouraged the development of research streams in which comparative and cross-national perspectives would have priority.
Into the future
Woody Powell served as Director from 1999-2010, strengthening SCANCOR’s position within the Stanford academic community, organizing an annual PhD workshop with US faculty for students abroad, and developing the SCANCOR Monday seminar series, the postdoctoral program, and conferences that brought together researchers from Europe and North America. Recent events have focused on topics of corporate governance, institutional change, the knowledge society, and distributed innovation.
In 2010 Mitchell Stevens assumed the Directorship. His first task was to reaffirm the collaboration between SCANCOR and Stanford’s School of Education by shepherding the construction of a new home for SCANCOR in the lobby level of CERAS. The Board commissioned San Francisco architecture firm MKThink to design a facility that eloquently recognizes the harmony of Scandinavian and North American modernism. The new offices are a hub for SCANCOR visitors, who continue to work and study all over the Stanford University campus.
SCANCOR has played a part in the production of countless books, special issues of journals, articles and dissertations. It continues to be a bridge between Nordic and North American styles, facilitating an ongoing co-evolution in organizational social science in different but increasingly interconnected parts of the world. Now well into its third decade, the organization stands as an exemplar of productive transnational scholarly collaboration, and it remains an intellectually flexible place. As Jim March said in 1989, SCANCOR is “a state of mind more than an institution, a mélange of spirits more than a clear vision."
Behind the creation of Scancor in 1988 were 7 Scandinavian Universities and Business Schools:
from Denmark
- Copenhagen Business School
from Finland
- Swedish School of Economics, Hanken (Helsinki)
- Helsinki School of Economics
from Norway
- Norwegian School of Economics
- University of Bergen
- The Norwegian Research Centre in Organization and Management
from Sweden
- The Stockholm School of Economics
