Institutions and organizations in unsettled times

Renate E. Meyer is Professor of Organization Studies at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. At WU Vienna, she is the Head of the Institute for Organization Studies and Co-Director of the Research Institute for Urban Management & Governance. Renate is also Part Time Professor in Institutional Theory at Copenhagen Business School and holds visiting positions at Saïd Business School, Oxford University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and University of Alberta Business School.

Renate is interested in institutional persistence and renewal, collective action in crises, as well as governance arrangements and fault lines in multi-sector settings. Phenomena studied include polarization, climate change, anti-vaccination discourses, science skepticism, multistakeholder arrangements in various crises. Renate is a former Editor in Chief of Organization Studies and has served as Chair of European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) and as Chair of the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management (AOM). She was awarded EGOS Honorary Membership (2024) and is the 2025 OMT Distinguished Scholar.

The title for this years lecture is "Institutions and organizations in unsettled times"

We live in unsettled times in which wicked crises, that is crises that are multi-scalar, non-linearly interlinked, transgress organizational, institutional, and cultural boundaries have become a new normal. They require collaboration and collective action, a capacity that is increasingly fragile given the geopolitical tensions, the rise of authoritarianism, institutional erosion, and multiple organizational governance gaps. I will discuss these developments with examples from my ongoing empirical research in the areas of climate change, societal polarization, and populism.