A total of 25 PhDs from 11 countries and 21 universities came to Oslo in late August 2023 to participate in the annual SCANCOR PhD Workshop on Institutional Analysis. The event was jointly organized by the University of Oslo, BI Norwegian Business School and Oslo Metropolitan University.

The workshop brought five leading organizational researchers to Oslo to give lectures and hold seminar sessions. This year’s lineup included:

• Bruce Carruthers, Northwestern University 
• Gili Drori, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Renate Meyer, WU Vienna
• Woody Powell, Stanford University
• Sarah Soule, Stanford University

They were joint by five local scholars who also contributed lectures to the course:

• Eric Breit, BI Norwegian Business School
• Mari Elken, University of Oslo
• Catherine Holst, University of Oslo
• Peter Kalum Schou, BI Norwegian Business School
• Arild Wæraas, Oslo Metropolitan University

Throughout the workshop, there was a very productive atmosphere and many engaged discussions both during the public lectures, in the closed seminar sessions, and during social events.

Jens Jungblut, the Norwegian SCANCOR board member and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo was very satisfied with the workshop:

“We are very happy to jointly host the workshop here in Oslo, especially given that it is the first time that the workshop takes place in Norway. It is also a great experience to introduce all three major higher education institutions in Oslo to the group of PhDs and invite them to the three campuses throughout the week.”

According to Jungblut, the workshop contributes greatly to SCANCOR’s core task to promote exchange between the Nordic countries on the one and Stanford and Harvard on the other side, especially since this workshop gives PhDs from many different universities the opportunity to collaborate and interact with world-leading organizational researchers during an intensive week in Oslo.

“Hopefully the PhDs will be left with inspirations and new ideas to complete their own doctorate” says Jungblut. “I am very grateful for the good support we have received both from the administration at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, but also the collaboration partners at Oslo Metropolitan University and BI Norwegian Business School. Finally, it is important to point out that the workshop would not have been possible without funding from the Research Council of Norway through a NFR-INTPART grant, which also co-finances our collaboration with SCANCOR in general.”