Barbara Czarniawska in memoriam

Barbara Czarniawska in memoriam

It is with sadness that we write these words. An eminent organizational scholar and remarkable person is no longer among us. Senior Professor of Management Studies at Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law, Barbara Czarniawska, passed away on April 7, 2024.

Barbara was a long-standing friend of the IOA – Department of Organization and was appointed as an Honorary Professor at Copenhagen Business School in 2006. Her academic career spanned geographical as well as disciplinary boundaries, and her work was ground-breaking, theoretically, methodologically, and intellectually.

Barbara visited IOA multiple times to give lectures, and PhD courses, and interact with colleagues. She encouraged us to move ideas, data, and analyses forward towards a more sophisticated understanding of organizations. Barbara taught us to understand how organizations can always be looked at differently but that we should never lose sight of the importance of being selective and nuanced in our choice of theoretical lenses. Junior and senior faculty of IOA have changed and grown by meeting Barbara and from being provoked and inspired by her penetrating analyses and original reflections.

Barbara was a pathbreaker who greatly increased the visibility of Scandinavian organization research internationally. She was a lightning example of a critical, creative, and qualitative approach to the study of organizations. We will miss her.