Scandinavian Institutes for Administrative Research (SIAR) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

consulting company and research institute founded by the late Professor Eric Rhenman in the mid-1960s. From 1966 to 1971 SIAR was a research institute. During the 1970s the profile was changed, so that it became the leading Swedish consulting company throughout the 1970s with some ten offices around the world. The institute developed a method for organization development, based on a strong theoretical foundation that was inspired by

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

n researchers such as Herbert Simon,

Philip Selznick Philip Selznick (January 8, 1919 – June 12, 2010) was professor of sociology and law at the University of California, Berkeley. A noted author in organizational theory, sociology of law and public administration, Selznick's work was groundbreaking ...

and

James D. Thompson James David Thompson (January 11, 1920 in Indianapolis – September 1, 1973) was an American sociologist. In 1932, Thompson's family moved to Chicago where he went to a public high school. He graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. ...

. The SIAR school of management described strategy development and long range planning as a problem-solving and decision-making process. Later, inspired by among others, Professors

Chris Argyris Chris Argyris (July 16, 1923 – November 16, 2013) was an American business theorist and professor emeritus at Harvard Business School. Argyris, like Richard Beckhard, Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis, is known as a co-founder of organization deve ...

and Donald Schon, Eric Rhenman, and other leading researchers and consultants at SIAR, contributed to the development of the theories of organizational learning. Several prominent researchers from the United States visited SIAR, often on year-long guest research assignments. Among these were

Walter F. Buckley Walter Frederick Buckley (April 17, 1921 – January 27, 2006) was an American sociologist, and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. Buckley was among the first to apply concepts from general systems theory based on the work ...

, Alvin Zander, Larry Benningson, Larry Greiner,

Jay Lorsch Jay William Lorsch (born 1932) is an American organizational theorist and the Louis Kirstein Professor of Human Relations at the Harvard Business School, known for his contribution of contingency theory to the field of organizational behavior. B ...

and

. Eric Rhenman was a guest professor at Harvard Business School 1974–76, later one more of the leaders at SIAR, Richard Normann, enjoyed a similar position. In 1991 SIAR was merged with the French consulting firm Bossard, which made the new company SIAR-Bossard into one of the 30 largest consulting companies in the world. SIAR-Bossard was acquired by

Cap Gemini Capgemini SE is a multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France. History Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and data processing company. The compa ...

in 1997, and was merged with the Cap Gemini subsidiary Gemini Consulting.

Leading ideas

The leading ideas of the SIAR School of Management,(Bengtsson, L & Skärvad, P-H: Företagsstrategiska Perspektiv, 2001): * Company problems result from change processes, particularly in the organization's environment, which the organization has not been able to adapt to. * Environmental changes can be grouped into reversible variations and structural (permanent) changes. * Structural changes in the environment require re-structuring of the company's organization, while variations can be met within existing organizational structures. * The early theoretical developments of the SIAR School of Management can be summarized as “a theoretical view of how companies can handle structural change.” * The most important task of management is to identify structural change and solve the problems and take advantage of the opportunities created by the changes.

References

{{authority control Research institutes in Sweden