Davide Ravasi
Biography
Prior of joining the UCL School of Management, he was a Professor of Management at the Cass Business School, London, and Bocconi University, Milano, where he also received his PhD in Business Administration and Management. He has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Aalto School of Business, Helsinki, and visiting the Rotterdam School of Management, Copenhagen Business School, University of Lugano, and at the International Hellenic University of Thessaloniki.
He has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Management Studies (2010-2013) and sits on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Discoveries, the Journal of Management, the Journal of Management Studies, and Strategic Organization.
He served as Chair of the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management, and Representative-at-Large for the Managerial and Organizational Cognition (MOC) Division.
Research
Davide’s research primarily examines interrelations among organizational identity, culture, and strategy in times of change. He has used several cases of - successful and less successful -organizational change to examine how claims and beliefs about “who we are” or “who we want to be” influence how change is embraced (or rejected) by the organization, and how history, memory and culture affetc the process.
He has also investigated how designers work and how they contribute to strategic change and innovation, and he is interested more generally in cultural-cognitive processes influencing how new objects and practices come to be.
One of his latest studies examined how corporate museums and archives enable organizations to use history, memory, and heritage as valuable resources for design and innovation. Based on this study, he curated an exhibition entitled Che Storie! Oggetti, miti e memorie dalle collezioni dei musei e degli archivi d‘impresa [tr. What stories! Objects, myths and memories from the collections of corporate museums and archives], Milan, April-May 2013.
More recently he has become interested in traditional and new forms of craftsmanship and craft production, and he is one of the editor of an Organization Studies special issue on “Rediscovering and Theorizing Craft in Organization Studies” (deadline for submissions: 28th February 2022): https://journals.sagepub.com/page/oss/call-for-papers
His research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Annals, Organization Science, Organization Studies, and Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Organization, Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of Business Venturing among others. He is also a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Organizational Identity.