The Triple E.D is an international inter-disciplinary group of researchers with different interests and expertise. The common denominator is an interest for less traditional environments and organizational issues therein. The research group consists of:
Markus Hällgren, is a professor of management and organization at Umeå School of Business and Economics, Umeå University. His main research interest lies within everyday practice in extreme contexts. He has done research on mountaineering expeditions to Mount Everest and K2, hospital emergency departments, zombies, and the police. A current ethnographic project involves embodied sensemaking in indoor climbing. He leads the research program Extreme Environments – Everyday Decisions (www.tripleED.com) and is co-responsible of the“Organizing Extreme Contexts” network. His work has been published in outlets such as Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Perspectives, Management Learning, Journal of Management Studies, and International Journal of Project Management. More information here
David Buchanan is Emeritus Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cranfield University School of Management, and Visiting Professor at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University. He works as a freelance speaker and author, specializing in change management, organization politics, and crisis leadership. He is author/co–author of over two dozen books, including Organizational Behaviour (with Andrzej Huczynski; tenth edition 2019), Unconventional Methodology in Organization and Management Research (with Alan Bryman, 2018), and Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach (with Ian Palmer and Richard Dunford, fourth edition 2020). He has also written numerous book chapters and articles on organizational behaviour, change, politics, and research methods. Current research interests include the problems of post-crisis change management, and the prospects for transformational change in healthcare.
Robin Burrow is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at University of York. His research focuses on the understanding lived realities of work in extreme(ly challenging) organizational contexts. His work in this area has four main elements: (1) The relationship between emotions (e.g. fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, pride, euphoria and enrapture) and organizational behaviour, particularly in highly pressurised, safety critical environments; (2) The emergence, transmission and management of ‘emotional climates’ [‘atmospheres’] – e.g. shared feelings of pride and climates of fear – and their impact on human performance; (3) The lived, practiced realities of morally complex forms of labour at the extreme peripheries of society; (4) The spread and entrenchment of nonreality-based beliefs in organizations and society. Robin is also finalizing a new book (commissioned by Oxford University Press) in which he retracing the origins and evolution of contemporary thinking in management and organization studies.
Thomas Biedenbach is an Assistant Professor of Management at Umeå School of Business and Economics at Umeå University in Sweden. He holds a PhD degree from Umeå University and joins the Triple E.D. team as postdoctoral researcher. He has conducted research on capabilities facilitating innovation in the pharmaceutical R&D process, universities’ innovation support system, and effects of platform development on business models. His previous research experiences have emphasized the management of collaborative innovation in complex, uncertain and dynamic environments, which is an extreme(ly fast-moving) business environment. In addition to teaching various management courses at undergraduate and graduate levels, he has experience in teaching research methodology for business students. Find out more about Thomas here.
Frank Dignum, Ph.D. Professor
Virginie Fernandez, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå School of Business and Economics at Umeå University in Sweden. She defended her PhD in Management at the Institute of Business Administration (IAE Graduate School of Management) of Université Côte d’Azur in Nice (France). Her work focused on collective competence and sensemaking in extreme contexts such as mountain rescue. Her current research interests build on her PhD work and extend to embodied sensemaking, decision making in avalanche terrain, improvisation, and temporal stakes in risky and emergency contexts. She teaches in the field of project management, organization theory, and human resources.
Sophie Jané, PhD, is a postdoc in routines, leadership, and risk in extreme contexts at Umeå University School of Business, Economics & Statistics. She received her BA in Psychology at California State University, Long Beach and her PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University. Sophie has conducted research on legitimacy, risk perception, social inclusion, and gender. She employs primarily qualitative methods in her work, including interviews, fieldwork, film, and online forums. Currently, she is exploring sensemaking as an embodied phenomenon, the conditions under which inclusion and exclusion are beneficial and harmful to actors, and the process through which organizations operating in extreme contexts distinguish and legitimize themselves over time.
Sofia Karlsson, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå School of Business and Economics at Umeå University in Sweden. She was previously a PhD student and research assistant at the Centre for Research and Development in Disaster Medicine at the Department of Diagnostics and Intervention. She has studied organization and management/leadership of major incidents in underground mines, tunnels, and chemical incidents. The Postdoc project is a collaboration with the Department of Computer Science and will focus on developing Socially Aware AI scenarios for training and preparation related to mining incidents.
Ola Lindberg, Ph.D, is a associate professor at the Department of Education, Umeå University. He is head of the research group on adult education and workplace learning called “Leadership, Organisation and Working Life” (LOA). He has also worked for nine years as an educational consultant for the medical programme and the Department of Law. His research interest is mostly concerned with the transition and link between education and work.
Ulrica Nylén, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Management at Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Sweden. She has conducted research on business ethics and multi-professional teamwork, shared leadership and collaboration in the human services sector. Currently, Nylén is involved in a research project on non-corporate international assignments in extreme contexts with Swedish police officers as main case. She teaches in the field of Management, Organizational behavior, and Research methodology.
Malin H. Näsholm, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Management at Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Sweden. Her research interest lies mainly in individuals’ experiences of alternative careers and forms of organizing, in particular boundary-crossing, network-based and coopetitive work contexts. Currently she is working on a research project on non-corporate international assignments in extreme contexts with Swedish police officers as main case.
Oscar Rantatalo, PhD, is an associate professor at the Department of Education, Umeå University. He completed his PhD in 2013. Dr Rantatalo’s research interests include areas such as identity work, organizational sensemaking, high-reliability organizing and policing.
Linda Rouleau is Professor of Management at HEC Montreal. Her research interests focuses on micro-strategy and strategizing in pluralistic contexts. She is also researching on sensemaking and organizing practices of managers and leaders. In the last few years, she has published in peer reviewed journals such as Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, etc. She is a co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Strategy-as-Practice. She is co-coordinating the Study Group of Strategy as Practice at HEC (http://geps.hec.ca).
Natalie Toft is a PhD student in business administration specializing in management at Umeå School of Business and Economics at Umeå University in Sweden. She holds a B.Sc. in psychology and an MSc degree in leadership and organization from the department of sociology at Umeå University. Her research interests include leadership from a practice-process perspective and how it is enacted in complex environments, embodied sensemaking, resilient capacity, and mindful organizing. She is currently engaged in her PhD work as part of a project exploring hybrid leadership processes and leader identity through a social-symbolic work lens during extraordinary events in the Swedish police incident command system (ICS) of the Northern region.