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Faculty/Staff Directory

First Name
Brett
Last Name
Crawford
Picture
brent_crawford2.jpg
Title
Associate Professor
Office
SCB 3061
Phone
(616) 331-7413
Department
Management
Expertise
• Organization Theory • Corporate Social Responsibility • Strategy
Biography
Brett Crawford is an organization theorist who relies primarily on qualitative methods (e.g., long multimodal interviews, oral histories, robust archives) to explore how actors (real and imagined) organize to protect and repair institutions. His research is multifaceted, having published empirical, theoretical, and methodological papers in a variety of top journals, including Organization Studies, Strategic Organization, Journal of Management Inquiry, Organization Theory, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations, among others. Brett is also a published poet, having his work featured in The American Fly Fisher. He has held a number of faculty and research appointments prior to returning to GVSU (he played baseball for GVSU as an undergraduate student), including Purdue University, the University of Pittsburgh, Northwestern University, and Stanford University. Brett earned his Ph.D. in Management and Organization Studies from Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) and his MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Education
Ph.D., Management and Organization Studies, Copenhagen Business School MBA, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts-Amherst BBA, Management, Rochester College
Teaching Areas
Strategy Organizational Behavior
Publications
Crawford, B., Toubiana, M., & Coslor, E. (forthcoming). From catch-and-harvest to catch-and-release: Trout Unlimited and repair-focused deinstitutionalization. Organization Studies. Crawford, B., Coraiola, D. M., & Dacin, M. T. (2022). Painful memories as mnemonic resources: Grand Canyon Dories and the protection of place. Strategic Organization, 20(1), 51-79. Elias, S. R., Chiles, T. H., & Crawford, B. (2022). Entrepreneurial imagining: How a small team of arts entrepreneurs created the worlds largest traveling carillon. Organization Studies, 43(2), 203-226. Crawford, B., & Dacin, M. T. (2021). Policing work: Emotions and violence in institutional work. Organization Studies, 42(8), 1219-1240. Chiles, T.H., Crawford, B., & Elias, S. R. (2021). Mind, body, and soul: A spiritual perspective on the entrepreneurial imagination. Organization Theory, 2(2), 1-20. Crawford, B., Chiles, T. H., & Elias, S. R. (2021). Long interviews in organizational research: Unleashing the power of show and tell. Journal of Management Inquiry, 30(3), 331-346. Coslor, E., Crawford, B., & Leyshon, A. (2020). Collectors, investors and speculators: Gatekeeper use of audience categories in the art market. Organization Studies, 41(7), 945-967. Crawford, B., Dacin, M. T. (2020). Punishment and institutions: A macrofoundations perspective. Research in the Sociology of Organizations 68, 97-119.
Service
Editorial Review Board Organization Studies Journal of Management Inquiry

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Page last modified February 2, 2026