Photo of Alf Westelius

Alf Westelius

Professor

Professor in Industrial Management, with a focus on Digitisation and Management

Professor in Digitisation and Management

Alf is Chair in Digitisation and Management. Organisational research and intellectual curiosity are central to him, but not in an ivory-tower sense. Applicability and practical relevance guide his interest, and consulting and tutoring have always been important parts of his work. Digitisation is increasingly influencing our lives and the conditions for organisations and society. Modern IT provides increased flexibility in time and space and enables new ways of organising and conducting work. But the key to dealing with these affordances lies in how you combine new ways of working, new organising and new technology with the existing. This is what Alf explores in his research. 

Selected publications

Alf publishes books and journal articles in English and Swedish. Two recent books are Strategic and Innovative Pricing (at Routledge) and Strategic Management Control (at Springer), both written together with colleagues at Linköping and other Swedish universities.

Below, some samples of the range of his research are provided. Further down, there is generated list of the most recent publications, and a link to the full list of publications.

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Cöster,Mathias; Iveroth, Einar; Olve, Nils-Göran; Petri, Carl-Johan & Westelius, Alf (2020) Strategic and Innovative Pricing : Price Models for a Digital Economy. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429053696

Lundmark, Erik & Westelius, Alf (2014). Entrepreneurship as Elixir and Mutagen. Entrepreneurship, 38(3), 575–600. https://doi.org/10.1111/etap.12004

Westelius, Alf; Westelius, Ann-Sofie & Brytting, Tomas (2013). Meaning, Authority, Rationality and Care as MARCs of sustainable organisations. Cross Cultural Management, 20(2), 161–185. https://doi.org/10.1108/13527601311313436

Lundmark, Erik & Westelius, Alf (2012). Exploring Entrepreneurship as Misbehavior. In Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations (pp. 209–235). https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019012

Westelius, Alf (2009). Energy Counselling and Modern IT : Drawing on Web 2.0 for a Greener World. Communications & Strategies, 76(4th quarter), 97–118. Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-51740

Westelius, Alf & Askenäs, Linda (2004). Getting to know your job - a social actor perspective on using information technology. Information Technology Journal, 3(3), 227–239. Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-23720


Research

Business ecologies, innovation and price models

Business ecologies is a term increasingly used when talking about modern business models. 

In my research, business ecologies signify environmental conceptualisations encompassing far more than the traditional value chain, and where the travel of ideas is an important aspect. In innovation, what is truly new, what is translated from elsewhere, what is simply borrowed straight off, and what is traditional and well-established? In business models, a too little studied and considered aspect is design and application of price models: inbound, internal and outbound. How are risks shared, increased or lessened, and to what extent are the incentives created by the price models consonant with constructive cooperation, rather than with adversarial Zero-sum gaming? Such issues are currently explored in collaboration with colleagues at Linköping University and other universities within the research collaboration CASIP, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Innovative Price models.

Latest Publications

2024

Alf Westelius (2024) Homo academicus as Guild, Employment, and Attitude: The Academy in Transition Debating ‘Homo Academicus’ in Management and Organization: Ontological Assumptions and Practical Implication, p. 275-304 (Chapter in book) Continue to DOI

2021

Mathias Cöster, Alf Westelius (2021) Digitalisering

2020

Fredrik Nilsson, Carl-Johan Petri, Alf Westelius (2020) Strategic management control theory and practice Strategic management control: successful strategies based on dialogue and collaboration, p. 1-7 (Chapter in book)
Alf Westelius, Johnny Lind (2020) Painting the relevant organisation Strategic management control: successful strategies based on dialogue and collaboration, p. 31-43 (Chapter in book)
Fredrik Nilsson, Carl-Johan Petri, Alf Westelius (Editorship) (2020) Strategic management control: successful strategies based on dialogue and collaboration

Education

Digitisation and management

Alf heads the master profile Digitisation and management, directed at Industrial engineering and other engineering master students.

The courses tend to also attract students from abroad. Course titles include Digitisation, business ecologies and business models; Strategy and digitisation - technology, standards and network effects; Strategic organisational application of IT - workflow and knowledge management; and Strategy and management control.

Organisation