Expertise
How are markets shaped? My research revolves around market(-ing) practice and the strategic efforts of various actors to change how markets work. This includes activities that shape individual economic exchanges, rules and norms for such exchanges, and how such exchanges are represented as markets. The research approach I work with is inspired by the sociology of science and techniques and could be characterised as constructivist market studies. In my PhD thesis, Organising Distribution, I studied the modernisation of Swedish food distribution in the 1940s and 50s. I also take interest in methodological issues and in particular the use of sociological methods in studying markets. Over the years I have worked with a number of such methods such as quantitative network analysis, historical methods, autoethnography, and visual archaeology. In my work on market(-ing) practice I've been fortunate enough to co-operate closely with C-F Helgesson, formerly at SSE, now at Uppsala University. Over the past two decades I have also been involved in the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Market Studies group with a number of likeminded colleagues across Europe: Luis Araujo, Manchester; Franck Cochoy, Toulouse; Susi Geiger, UC Dublin; Debbie Harrison, BI; Robert Spencer, Kedge Marseille; Alexandre Mallard, Ecole de Mines ParisTech; Stefan Schwarzkopf, CBS; Liz McFall, Edinburgh; Philip Roscoe, St. Andrews, among others.
I am currently engaged in five research projects: an international comparative study of valuation and pricing of cancer drugs (funded by RJ, with Ebba Sjögren and Lei Huang); an interdisciplinary project on how the rise of online influencers reshapes commercial and social relations (funded by VR and SHB, with Riikka Murto and Johan Nilsson); a project on how firms, sectors and societies build resilience (with Pär Malmberg, funded by the Swedish Transport Administration); a project on tensions between multiple value-creation logics in the Nordic forestry sector (funded by SHB, with Kaisa Koskela-Huotari and Suvi Nenonen); and a 'hobby project' with an international group of scholars to develop a process-relational ontological foundation for marketing.