EGOS Colloquium 2017 in Copenhagen
Welcome to the 33rd EGOS Colloquium 2017 at CBS!
If you fly into Copenhagen in July 2017, you will probably get a glimpse of the Øresund Bridge connecting Denmark with Sweden.
You may recognize it from the famous television series, where the bridge was both a crime scene and a crucial link between
two organizations – the Danish and Swedish police forces. You will soon discover that Copenhagen is a city of bridges
and that these play a key role in the organization of its economic and civic life; it is for that reason that perhaps our
most famous bridge has found its way into our logo. In the past, our ancestors, the Vikings, sailed the oceans and created
a solid self-perception among Danes of belonging to a great maritime nation.
We have now taken to building bridges instead of sailing out to conquer the world. It is good for
business, good for branding our talents for engineering and design, and not least good for public life, opening up new views
of the city and enhancing its flow. But as we know, bridges don’t just appear out of nowhere, they are complex
organizational projects driven by aspirations, interventions and struggles. As landmarks, bridges typically illustrate aspirations
to greatness. Bridges are simultaneously interventions in the environment and in society. They can make a ferry line and hundreds
of jobs obsolete, demand expropriation of houses, disturb natural habitats, or bring together disjointed neighborhoods. And
bridges and struggles go together.
The 33rd EGOS Colloquium in Copenhagen offers a bridge to discussions concerning the aspirations,
interventions and struggles for The Good Organization. We consider The Good Organization both a tempting prospect and a project inherently ridden with tensions. Would it ever make sense to talk about “The”
Good Organization? What is to count as “Good”? What makes Organization?
