Klaus Weber

About

Klaus Weber is a Professor of Management & Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where he also serves as the faculty director for Sustainability and Social Impact. He is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and the Northwestern Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy. His research concerns the dynamics of organizational and institutional sustainability transitions, the interactions between social movements, corporations, and markets, and economic globalization. Weber specializes in cultural and institutional forms of analysis and methodologies, and his work has been widely published in prominent journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, and Strategic Management Journal, among others. His research has received multiple awards, including best paper awards at the American Sociological Association, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the SYNTEC Conseil en Management. Weber teaches courses on environmental sustainability in Kellogg's MBA program and Northwestern Trienens' MS Energy & Sustainability, as well as doctoral seminars on organization theory, cultural analysis, and research methods. He holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, which he obtained in 2003, and has been a faculty member at Kellogg since 2003.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Business
• Law
• Public relations
• Positive economics
• Accounting
• Public administration

Selected publications

• The Art of the Pivot: How New Ventures Manage Identification Relationships with Stakeholders as They Change Direction

  Academy of Management Journal · 2019-04-04 · 212 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Many new ventures have to “pivot”—radically transform what they are about—because their original approach has failed. However, pivoting risks disrupting relationships with key stakeholders, such as user communities, who identify with ventures. Stakeholders may respond by withdrawing support and starving ventures of the resources needed to thrive. This can pose an existential threat to ventures, yet it is unclear how they might manage this problem. To explore this important phenomenon, we conduct…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Constructing a Distant Future: Imaginaries in Geoengineering

  Academy of Management Journal · 2019-09-09 · 171 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We develop the concept of the distant future as a new way of seeing the future in collective efforts. While a near future is represented in practical terms and concerned with forming expectations and goals under conditions of uncertainty, a distant future is represented in stylized terms and concerned with imagining possibilities under conditions of ambiguity. Management research on future-oriented action has developed around problems of the near future. To explore distant futures, we analyze th…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• People, Actors, and the Humanizing of Institutional Theory

  Journal of Management Studies · 2020 · 76 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract In much contemporary institutional scholarship, the term ‘actor’ is used as a shorthand for any entity imbued with agency. Talking about actors in institutions thus serves the necessity of allocating agency before returning to the analysis of institutional structures and processes. We find this approach to actorhood limiting, conceptually and normatively. Grounded in the perspective of pragmatist phenomenology, we assert the need for distinguishing between persons and actors, and the va…

  PublisherDOI

• Distilling Authenticity: Materiality and Narratives in Canadian Distilleries’ Authenticity Work

  Academy of Management Journal · 2022-07-05 · 34 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Authenticity is increasingly seen as a source of competitive advantage in many industries. Accordingly, authenticity work, the organizational efforts to develop and sustain believable authenticity claims, has emerged as an important organizational practice. We examined the interplay of materiality and narratives underpinning producers’<br/>authenticity work in the context of incumbent and micro-distilleries<br/>operating in the Canadian whisky industry. We found that producers’<br/>material endo…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Under the Radar: Institutional Drift and Non‐Strategic Institutional Change

  Journal of Management Studies · 2021 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Although researchers have acknowledged that not all institutional change results from the intentional efforts of relatively reflexive actors, we lack an explanation of how mundane interactions between actors can result in non‐strategic institutional change. To address this, we advance the theory of institutional drift that reveals how the practice deviation(s) that occur between interaction partners in an institutional order, transformed into tolerable deviations by the self and others,…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brayden G King

  11 shared

• Henning Ottmann

  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

  10 shared

• Mary Ann Glynn

  9 shared

• Frank den Hond

  9 shared

• Frank G. A. de Bakker

  Université de Lille

  9 shared

• Roy Suddaby

  Washington State University

  9 shared

• Gerald F. Davis

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  8 shared

• Michael Lounsbury

  University of Alberta

  8 shared

Education

• PhD, Management & Organizations

  University of Michigan

  2003

Awards & honors

• Ned Smith PhD Research Mentorship Award, Kellogg School of M…
• Research Committee Service Award, OMT Division, Academy of M…
• Faculty Fellow, Yale Center for Cultural Sociology (2014)
• ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution, Administrative Science…
• Faculty Award for Diversity, Northwestern Graduate School (2…

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• Mark Finnh-95
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