Alvesson, Mats: A Passion for Critical Reflexivity and Rational Change

By employing a critical perspective toward a broad range of organizational subjects, Mats Alvesson has managed to challenge much of the conventional understanding of modern organizations and, subsequently, produce a series of alternative insights that has substantially developed organizational research and potentially enabled both organizational and societal change. While this has included the establishing of a critical approach to management studies and several novel methodological ideas, it has also involved unpacking a variety of popular concepts such as culture, control, brand, identity, power, leadership, gender, method, and organizational change as such. Mostly based on in-depth empirical studies Alvesson has repeatedly shown the value of critically acknowledging the process by which these phenomenon are understood and acted upon in real-life complex and ambiguous organizations, an approach that have enabled not only a variety of alternative understandings of organizational life but also a sense of optimism about accomplishing progressive change. Consequently, Alvesson acknowledges the value of seeing the construction of knowledge as a combination of a technical, interpretative, and critical approaches.