If you look at the list of EGOS Honorary Members: it is about the who is who of management and organization research
in Europe and beyond! Among others, it contains such renowned scholars as John Child, Stewart Clegg, Sylvia Gheradi, Royston
Greenwood, Bob Hinings, Jim March, Hari Tsoukas and lets not forget about the first on the list David
Hickson (1998 20 years ago).
Georg Schreyögg, Professor of Organization and Leadership at Freie Universität Berlin (also my professional home), is not
the first German to join the Honorary Members of EGOS: Alfred Kieser (2012) was one of them, two years earlier Arndt Sorge
(2010) and the first German was actually a woman: Renate Mayntz (2002). But Georg will definitively be the first Bavarian
on this list! Although he has lived in Berlin now for more than a quarter of a century, Georg has never hidden his Bavarian
roots I have, however, never seen him wearing leather trousers!
But why has he been nominated and chosen as the 2018 EGOS Honorary Member? Is this really justified? Are you sure, Georg?
Many EGOSians said yes, not only ones from Germany or the German-speaking countries. For Georg has been extremely productive
for more than four decades, and has contributed profoundly to eight or so related but distinct areas in the field of management
and organization and in business studies more broadly.
► The first and foremost area is organization theory. He has not only delivered one of the first critiques of the then dominant contingency approach of organization and written
the leading German textbook in the field, but has also contributed significantly to the development and application of Luhmanns
system theory to organizations. In doing so, he opened management and organization research in Germany for other disciplines,
in particular sociology. This was new and unusual at a time when business studies in the German-speaking countries, i.e. Betriebswirtschaftslehre,
were still dominated by (micro-)economics.
► The second area of his scholarly engagement is strategic management, a field that in the 1980s was still little developed. Starting with his habilitation, which was published in 1985, Georg
turned to this area which has had a significant impact on other sub-disciplines in the field of business studies; a field,
moreover, to which he still contributes today (e.g. by critiquing and advancing the concept of dynamic capability).
► The third area of management research to which Georg turned is organizational culture and change. Again, he was among the first theorists who cast severe doubts on a design approach to organizational culture
and development, which at that time dominated in the field of business research (though not in sociology). Georg also covered
new ground by importing knowledge from the humanities, in particular from theatre studies, to this area of research and practice.
► A fourth field to which Georg contributed decisively is knowledge management and organizational learning. His studies in this field find that knowledge is difficult to manage within and across organizations. In consequence, he
proposed to fundamentally rethink the concept of organizational knowledge.
►A fifth field to which Georg has contributed in a fundamental way is business ethics, building essentially on the work of Jürgen Habermas and philosophers from the
Erlangen School. This was at a time when corporate social responsibility only received sparse attention, not only from scholars
but also from practitioners.
► In the sixth field, he initiated empirical studies in the field of corporate governance in Germany, in particular in that of the separation of ownership and control in publicly listed firms.
► A seventh area is organizational path dependence, building upon the early work of economist Brian W. Arthur and economic historian Paul David. As the head (or co-head) of
the Pfadkolleg (http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/en/forschung/pfadkolleg/index.html), he co-authored the theory of organizational path dependence which is widely linked to management and organization research
at the Freie Universität Berlin.
► Finally, it is worthy of mention that Georg Schreyögg has always reflected deeply on matters concerning the discipline of business studies or more precisely the Betriebswirtschaftslehre; for instance about its diminishing integrative potential.
By contributing to these diverse fields, Georg Schreyöggs areas of interest and competence are exceptionally broad,
even for a German professor of business studies. Nevertheless, his studies, no matter whether they are theoretically (or even
philosophically) and/or empirically informed, exhibit great depth. Moreover, they are all very timely. Hence it comes as no
surprise that his works are cited a lot, not only within the German-speaking countries, but also internationally, in particular
as he started at an early date to publish his findings in English. In terms of international publications and citations Georg
is one of the top scholars from German-speaking countries in the field of business studies. Based upon GoogleScholar citations
(as of July 1, 2018), his work has been cited more than 14,000 times.
It hence comes as no surprise that Georg has not only been offered the rare position of a Senior Professor at Freie Universität
but also received numerous awards, including the Honorary Doctorate (Dr. h.c.) of the University of Graz in Austria; much
earlier, from 20042007, he was one of the International Visiting Fellows of the Advanced Institute for Management (AIM)
Research in London.
However, being a leading scholar in the field of management and organization is not all that is required to become an onorary
member of EGOS. One also has to be heavily involved with EGOS. And that is exactly what he has been from its very early days
on (actually from 1978 40 years ago). He has presented dozens of papers at numerous EGOS colloquia, acted more than
ten times as a sub-theme convenor or co-convenor, and was one of the main organizers of the 2005 EGOS Colloquium at Freie
Universität Berlin. He published in Organizations Studies as early as 1980, edited an special issue of this journal on Theatre and Organizations in 2004, and served on
the Board of Organizations Studies for many years. Perhaps at least as important, Georg helped EGOS to become a formal organization (actually as an association
under Belgian law), promoted its change from a bi-annual to an annually held Colloquium, and encouraged EGOS membership with
the subscription of OS: three measures not everybody liked at that time, but from which we profit today.
Georg, dear colleague and friend, if I may say so, your EGOS Honorary Membership is well deserved!