Markus Hällgren

Markus Hällgren (markus.hallgren@umu.se) is a professor of Management at Umeå School of Business, Economics, and Statistics, Department of Business Administration, Umeå University. He leads the TripleED research program. His research focuses on organizational routines, leadership, sensemaking, and team dynamics in extreme contexts. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in environments ranging from mountaineering expeditions and hospital emergency departments to police operations, military command centers, mountain rescue, ski guides, IT projects, and construction. Hällgren also explores the role of fiction, including zombie narratives, in understanding societal challenges and unimaginable future events. He founded Extreme Environments – Everyday Decisions (www.tripleEd.com) and is a co-founder of the Organizing Extreme Contexts network (www.organizingextremecontexts.org), bringing together over 700 scholars. Since 2019, he has also led Competence Forum Region North, a platform for discussions with key organizations (e.g., police, military, security services) on societal resilience. Hällgren has co-developed influential approaches to research like Projects-as-Practice (2005; with Anders Söderholm), Extreme contexts (2014; with Linda Rouleau and Mark De Rond), and Extreme Fiction (2019; with David Buchanan). He was a visiting researcher at Stanford University 2011-2013. He has secured funding from major Swedish research agencies, including repeated funding from the Swedish Research Council and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and received several prestigious awards, such as Best Paper from the Academy of Management Annals and the Royal Skyttean Award. His work has been featured in media outlets like the Financial Times, Irish Times, and Dagens industri, and published in leading journals, including Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Perspectives, Annals of Tourism Research, and Journal of Management Studies.

TripleEd (Extreme Environments – Everyday Decisions), founded by Markus Hällgren in 2010, is an international, interdisciplinary research program focused on decision-making and organizing in extreme contexts. The team includes four professors, six associate professors, two assistant professors, two postdocs, and two doctoral students from Umeå University, Cranfield University, York University, and HEC Montreal. The team come from various disciplines: Business Administration, Education, Computer Science, and Disaster medicine at Umeå University. (www.tripleED.com)

In 2014, Hällgren and Linda Rouleau co-founded the Organizing in Extreme Contexts network, which now connects around 700 scholars. Markus coordinates the network together with a team of six. The network has contributed to special issues, such as the Journal of Management Studies. On Markus initiative the network has launched the Extreme Contexts Virtual Workshop Series in 2020, a mentorship program, a R&R-club, and author- and paper portraits.

Knowledge forum Region North was co-founded in 2019 by Hällgren and Lars Wahlberg, deputy Police commissioner in Region North. Later the Security police, the Armed forces of Region North, the County Administrative Board of Västerbotten and Norrbotten, Umeå University, county councils of Norrbotten and Västerbotten joined. The forum aims to bring together organizations critical for society, and through reflection and science, increase their ability to cope with extreme events. Since 2019 multiple workshops have been organized.