Trained as philosopher, he is fascinated by the organization society we live in. He research, write and teach about practices of organizing, strategizing, accounting, and marketing. His aim is to upset some of the taken for granted views on managing and organizing; simultaneously, he want to amplify, accelerate, breed, and, perhaps sometimes maybe even create new perspectives that allow us to see things differently.
Martin was born in small village in Austria in 1974. He read philosophy, political science, psychology, law and sociology at the University of Vienna. He loved philosophy. While he was convinced about its importance, he was less convinced whether the intellectual isolation in which the philosophy department lingered was helpful. During his masters thesis he decided to look over the fence and analyze business practices from a philosophical perspective. He liked it — so much indeed, that he jumped over that fence and developed his Ph.D. as interdisciplinary project inquiring new practices of organizing.
Based on his project, he became one of the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ recipients of the prestigious DOC Scholarship. As part of the scholarship he visited the University of Technology in Sydney in 2001. The initial plan was to stay for three months — which turned into nine eventful years.
He started his first academic appointment at UTS, splitting his time between the School of Management and School of Design in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building. With a couple of friends he started experimenting at the interface of business, design and creativity. They developed Sydney Esquisse, one of Australia’s most exciting art and design festivals which run for several years and attracted hundreds of thousand people. For a couple of years he worked as co-editor in chief of (inside) Australian Design Review which was a fascinating journey into the world of design and creativity. Finally, with two partners he founded and directed what became Australia’s best-known brand experience agency, PLAY Communications. While he was experiencing the pleasures and sorrows of being an entrepreneur, his ongoing love affair with research took the better of him.
Today, he concentrate on writing, researching and working with managers and those who are managed around the globe. While he have an eclectic bookshelf behind him, his eyes are firmly focused on organizations, the economy and society: how do we manage organizations? How do organizational cultures shape insiders? How do brands engage with outsiders? How do we strategize our futures? And how can we make organizations behave more ethically? Currently Vienna and the Copenhagen Business School provide the congenial environments for the pursuit of these questions.
Managing & Organizations: An Introduction to Theory & Practice 3rd Ed.