Columbia Business School Directory » Eric Abrahamson

Eric Abrahamson

Hughie E. Mills Professor of Business
Management

Bernstein Faculty Leader
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics

BA, Haverford, 1982; MPhil, New York University, 1987; PhD, 1990

Joined CBS in 1989

Office:  722  Uris
Phone:  212-854-4432
E-mail:  ea1@gsb.columbia.edu
Fax:  212-316-9355
Curriculum Vitae

 

Biography

Professor Abrahamson studies the creation, spread, use and rejection of innovative techniques for managing organizations and their employees. He is best known for his work on fads and fashions in management techniques. He is also an expert on the management of organizational change. He has explored the topic of change management in Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout (Harvard Business School Press, 2005), which won a Best Book of the Year award from Strategy and Business.

More recently, Abrahamson has been studying the dynamics of moderately messy system - offices, organizations and even industrial districts - that would function less well were they any less messy or any more orderly. A summary of his scholarly work was published in Research in Organizational Behavior under the title "Disorganizational Theory and Disorganizational Behavior: Towards and Etiology of Messes" (2002). Most recently, Abrahamson has coauthored, with David Freedman, a book that popularizes these ideas about the benefits of moderately messy system: A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, How cluttered closets, jumbled offices, and on-the-fly planning make the world a better place (Little, Brown and Company, 2007).

He lectures and consults on these topics for companies around the world.

Memberships & Affiliations

Outgoing Program Chair of the for the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management

2002

Chair of the for the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management

2001

Program Chair Elect of the for the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management

2000

Member of the Academy of Management Review editorial board

1999, 3 year term

Member of the Human Relations editorial board

1999

Program Chair Elect for the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management

1998

Member of the Administrative Science Quarterly editorial board

1998-2000

Consulting editor for the Academy of Management Review

1997-1999

Member of the Academy of Management Review editorial board

1996, 3 year term

Representative at Large for the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management

1995-1996

Member of the Academy of Management Review editorial board

1993, 3 year term