Jens Rennstam
Professor

Presentation

I earned my PhD in Business Administration from Lund University in 2007. Following two postdoctoral periods, one at the University of Utah and the other at the University of Colorado Boulder, I took up a position as docent in business administration at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University. Currently, I am professor of organization studies at Malmö University.

I study how organizations and processes of organizing influence our working lives and society. My research spans various areas within the field of organization studies, such as control, professionalism, gender and sexuality, branding and craft, and my work is grounded in rich empirical studies across varied contexts – from engineering and policing to city branding and coffee roasting. My work has contributed to understanding non-managerial forms of control, critiqued dominant assumptions about knowledge work, analyzed how inclusion and exclusion are collectively organized in institutions such as the police, explored the implications of branding in public organizations, and linked craft-based production and consumption with degrowth ideas.

One of my current research interests is to study craft-oriented, small-scale production and consumption of food, exploring the culture, identities, and meanings embodied by this type of organization. The aim of this research is to develop knowledge about the culture, practice and conditions of craft-based food production and consumption, and how it may challenge and make up an alternative to the current dominant industrial food system.