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Alan Meyer

Professor Emerit of Management

Affiliations: Management, Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship
ameyer@uoregon.edu
Phone: 541-346-5178
Office: Anstett 397D
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About

Biography:

Alan Meyer studies industry emergence, corporate venturing, and technology entrepreneurship using organizational theory and sociology as theoretical frames. He is a field researcher who triangulates between archival data and primary data gathered through interviews and naturalistic observation. His early research explored the health care sector, with a focus on hospitals' responses to 'environmental jolts'—unexpected shocks that created natural experiments in organizational change.

Nanotechnology and venture capital are recent research contexts, where the National Science Foundation has supported his work on corporations' adoption of venture capitalists' investment practices, and the emergence of a network of scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors seeking to commercialize nanotechnology. Meyer has been awarded grants totaling more than $2.1M by the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Health Services Research, the U.S. Army Research Institute, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, and the Australian Research Council.

Meyer cofounded the Lundquist Center for Entrepreuership's Technology Entrepreneurship Program, an interdisciplinary program that enables graduate students in business, law, and the sciences to work in multi-disciplinary teams to pursue the commercialization of leading-edge technologies invented by scientists at UO, OSU, OHSU, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He currently facilitates Academy of Management sponsored bootcamp-style workshops that mentor young African management scholars in Ghana, Rwanda, and South Africa.

Meyer has served as associate editor in chief for Organization Science; as associate editor for Academy of Management Journal; and on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Academy of Management Journal. He has co-edited special issues of Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Academy of Management Journal.

Degree History:
  • PhD, University of California Berkeley, 1978
  • MBA, University of Washington, 1970
  • BA, University of Washington, 1968
Previous Positions:
  • Technology Entrepreneurship Researcher in Residence, School of Business, University of Queensland, Australia
  • Visiting Research Fellow, Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, Stanford University
  • Visiting Professor, School of Business, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
  • Visiting Professor, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University
Professional Leadership:
  • Fellow, Academy of Management
  • Editorial Board, Strategic Management Journal
  • Advisory Board, Academy of Management Annals
  • Advisory Board, Academy of Management Discoveries

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Areas of Expertise

General Research Areas:

  • Innovation and change
  • Institutional theory
  • Organization theory and design
  • Organizational and managerial cognition
  • Strategic management

Specialized Topics:

  • Corporate venture capital
  • Healthcare organization and management
  • Industry emergence
  • Nanotechnology commercialization
  • Regional economic development and identity
  • Technology entrepreneurship

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Publications

Journal Articles:

Wright, April L., Alan D. Meyer, Trish Reay, and Jonathan Staggs. "Maintaining Places of Social Inclusion: Ebola and the Emergency Department." Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839220916401.

March 2020

Van de Ven, Andrew H., Alan D. Meyer, and Runtian Jing. "Opportunities and Challenges of Engaged Indigenous Research." Management and Organization Review 14, no. 3: 449-462. https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2018.28.

September 2018

Meyer, Alan D., and William H. Starbuck. "Mahalo: Sustaining JMI's Positive Spirit." Journal of Management Inquiry 27, no. 2: 154-157. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617726272.

April 2018

Hannah, David R., Alan D. Meyer, and Marc-David L. Seidel. "Escape from Abilene: Developmental Opportunities in the Review Process." Journal of Management Inquiry 27, no. 2: 140-143. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617726270.

April 2018

Meyer, Alan D. "Emerging Assumptions about Organizational Design, Knowledge, and Action." Journal of Organizational Design 2, no. 3: 16-22. https://doi.org/10.7146/jod.15576.

December 2013

Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Jennifer, Matthew L. Metzger, and Alan Meyer. "Rekindling the Flame: Processes of Identity Resurrection." Academy of Management Journal 56, no. 1: 113-136. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0778.

February 2013

Beckman, Christine M., Kathleen Eisenhardt, Suresh Kotha, Alan D. Meyer, and Nandini Rajagopalan. "The Role of the Entrepreneur in Technology Entrepreneurship." Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 6, no. 3: 203-206. https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1136.

September 2012

Beckman, Christine M., Kathleen Eisenhardt, Suresh Kotha, Alan D. Meyer, and Nandini Rajagopalan. "Technology Entrepreneurship." Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 6, no. 2: 89-93. https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1134.

June 2012

Meyer, Alan D., Kathryn Aten, Alan J. Krause, Matthew L. Metzger, and Samuel S. Holloway. "Creating a University Technology Commercialization Program: Confronting Conflicts between Learning Discovery, and Commercialization." International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management 13, no. 2: 179-198. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEIM.2011.038858.

August 2011
October 2008

Lampel, Joseph, and Alan D. Meyer. "Field-Configuring Events as Structuring Mechanisms." Journal of Management Studies 45, no. 6: 1025-1035. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2008.00787.x.

September 2008

Walsh, James P., Alan D. Meyer, and Claudia Bird Schoonhoven. "A Future for Organization Theory." Organization Science 17, no. 5: 657-671. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1060.0215.

September 2006

Meyer, Alan D., Vibha Gaba, and Kenneth A. Colwell. "Organizing Far from Equilibrium: Non-Linear Change in Organizational Fields." Organization Science 16, no. 5: 456-473. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0135.

September 2005

Chiles, Todd H., Alan D. Meyer, and Thomas J. Hench. "Organizational Emergence: The Origin and Transformation of Branson, Missouri's Musical Theaters." Organization Science 15, no. 5: 499-519. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1040.0095.

September 2004
May 2001

Meyer, Alan D., Anne S. Tsui, and C. R. Hinings. "Configurational Approaches to Organizational Analysis." Academy of Management Journal 36, no. 6: 1175-1195.

December 1993

Meyer, Alan D. "What is Strategy's Distinctive Competence?" Journal of Management 17, no. 4: 821-833. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639101700413.

December 1991

Meyer, Alan D. "Visual Data in Organizational Research." Organization Science 2, no. 2: 218–236. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2.2.218.

May 1991

Meyer, Alan D., Geoffrey R. Brooks, and James B. Goes. "Environmental Jolts and Industry Revolutions: Organizational Responses to Discontinuous Change." Strategic Management Journal 11: 93-110.

June 1990

Meyer, Alan D., ad James B. Goes. "Organizational Assimilation of Innovations: A Multi-level Contextual Analysis." Academy of Management Journal 31, no. 4: 897-923. https://doi.org/10.5465/256344.

December 1988

Meyer, Alan D. "Mingling Decision Making Metaphors." Academy of Management Review 9, no. 1: 6-17. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1984.4277746.

January 1984

Meyer, Alan. "Adapting to Environmental Jolts." Administrative Science Quarterly 27, no. 4: 515-537. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392528.

December 1982

Miles, Raymond E., Charles C. Snow, Alan D. Meyer, and Henry J. Coleman. "Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process." Academy of Management Review 3, no. 3: 546-562. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1978.4305755.

July 1978
Book Chapters:

Gaba, Vibha, and Alan D. Meyer. "Discontinuous Change in Organizational Fields." In Oxford Handbook of Organizational Change, edited by Marshall Scott Poole and Andrew Van de Ven, 364-396. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198845973.013.22.

July 2021

Anderson, Phillip, and Alan D. Meyer. "Complexity Theory and Process Organization Studies." In The SAGE Handbook of Process Organization Studies, edited by Ann Langley and Haridimos Tsoukas. London: SAGE Publishing.

October 2017

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In the News

Alan Meyer holds up his lifetime achievement award while posing for a photo at the AOM conference
Alan Meyer Receives Academy of Management Honor
Professor Emerit Alan Meyer is the recipient of the 2022 Academy of Management Distinguished Service Award.
Illustration of a coronavirus cell
How Healthcare Workers Can Stay the Course During a Pandemic
Management professor Alan Meyer's research on hospital workers' response to Ebola in Australia can be applied to the COVID-19 pandemic.
May 2019 Inner Circle
Where Talent Meets Opportunity

We're bringing together world-class faculty and ambitious students.

Alan Meyer
Professor Earns Distinguished Award
Professor emeritus of management Alan Meyer was recognized as “a researcher who goes the extra mile” with a 2018 OMT (Organization and Management Theory) Distinguished Scholar Award.
Welcome New Faculty and Staff
The Lundquist College of Business is happy to welcome the new faculty and staff members joining us this fall term.
Driving Change

The Lundquist College of Business has honored associate professor of management Jennifer Howard-Grenville as the 2013 Thomas C. Stewart Distinguished Professor.

A Wonderland of Innovation
A Wonderland of Innovation
Lundquist College of Business professor leads UO researchers studying virtual teams using virtual worlds at Sun Microsystems.

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