Karin Berglund – new professor 2025
Karin Berglund is professor of business administration.
Her research focuses on how alternative forms of entrepreneurship are organised and practised.
“I want to understand what factors can influence businesses’ ability to effect a sustainable transition,” she says.
1967 Born in Umeå
2007 Obtained her PhD in industrial economics and organisation with her thesis Jakten på Entreprenörer: om öppningar och låsningar i entreprenörskapsdiskursen, Mälardalen University.
2012 Docent in business administration, Stockholm University
2017 Professor of business administration with a specialisation in entrepreneurship, Stockholm University
2017 Visiting professor, Linnaeus University
2020 Professor II, Nord University, Bodö, Norway
2024 Professor of business administration, Örebro University
Ever since her doctoral thesis on entrepreneurship, Karin Berglund’s research interest has focused on how entrepreneurship and sustainability are connected.
“In my research, I have seen how the concept of business has expanded over time to include social, ecological, equitable and collective ambitions.”
Karin Berglund’s research focuses on change: how individuals, organisations, and societies can develop and reform. Her studies show how norms linked to entrepreneurship and innovation – often presented as keys to a better future – can often be exclusionary and consequently unsustainable, both from a social and environmental point of view.
“The notion that economic goals should always set the agenda often dictates what is possible, and the boundaries created rarely consider social and ecological values. The result, in many cases, is that the desired changes rather maintain the status quo than pave the way for truly sustainable development,” she says.
Karin Berglund has brought new perspectives to research by showing how the neoliberal societal system affects the possibilities for a tangible transition. She has also addressed how higher education can contribute to reform.
“As university teachers and researchers, we must promote a more critical approach, which, in collaboration with students, can lead to the development of new approaches and practices for sustainable entrepreneurship.”
In the book Revitalizing Entrepreneurship Education, coauthored with Karen Verduijn, Karin Berglund examines how sustainability can inspire a new pedagogy for higher education. This work has also formed the basis for the Erasmus project Transforming Enterprise Education – a European collaboration project aiming to both strengthen resilience against contemporary major crises and better address ecological and social challenges.
Reinforces male ideals
Karin Berglund shows how the strong norms surrounding entrepreneurship and innovation reinforce male and Western ideals of independence and agency, at the expense of the collective efforts required to achieve transition.
“Today’s ideals devalue and diminish traditionally feminine-coded qualities that could lead to increased sustainability. In a neoliberal context, where individual responsibility is emphasised, the individual woman is expected to manage all the injustices she faces on her own, which in practice upholds inequality rather than challenges it.”
Together with two colleagues, Karin Berglund has received two major research grants to study these questions, which has led to the establishment of the virtual centre of excellence Embla.
Take more responsibility than expected
Another of Karin Berglund’s research areas involves businesses who assume more corporate social responsibility than what is expected of them. The Hungarian-American IT company Prezi shows that corporate social responsibility can become a path to democracy, equity, and sustainability. Entrepreneurship can be a political tool for change, Karin Berglund emphasises.
She has also explored the role of entrepreneurship in the public sector and how it can pave the way for a sustainable transition.
“Today, few identify themselves as active change agents in the public sector. The dominant ideologies of change, focusing on efficiency, have undermined entrepreneurship as a human and ethical driving force. Only when judgement, sensitivity, and ethics are allowed to lead the way can true innovation and constructive organisational collaboration materialise.”